Reason Magazine - Topics > Regulation

Rescue Me

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:02:00 EDT

Now that President George Bush has dropped his veto threat, the gargantuan housing bailout is on the verge of becoming law, pending passage in the Senate. Thus, a housing bubble that has long been artificially inflated by the ever-growing presence of the government (and quasi-government) in the lending market, especially the lower-income segments; will now be artificially re-inflated, especially in the lower-income segments, by a government doubling down on its bad bets. Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already have their federally guaranteed fingers in about half of all U.S. mortgages, what will be their market share at the end of this downturn/re-regulation process? Sixty percent? Eighty?

To see one reason why we got so quickly to this point, look no further than this objective news lede in the Washington Post.

The House yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to slow the steepest slide in house prices in a generation, rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure and reassure global markets that mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be allowed to fail.

In other news, Jesus yesterday easily approved legislation that seeks to turn water into wine.

Did the Supreme Court Approve the Order to Lock and Unload?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:12:00 EDT

While researching my column about the District of Columbia's new gun law, I came across a tendentious assertion by Peter Nickles, D.C.'s acting attorney general, that I didn't have space to address. Defending the District's requirement that guns be kept both locked and unloaded until the very moment they're needed "to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person," Nickles told Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher:

It's clear the Supreme Court didn't intend for you to have a loaded gun around the house. I don't think the court thought this was going to become a Wild West scene.

Leaving aside Nickles' assumption that keeping a loaded gun in the house inexorably leads to "a Wild West scene" (a scenario that has not materialized even in juridictions where people are permitted to walk around in public with loaded guns), where, exactly, did the Supreme Court make it clear that keeping a loaded gun is beyond the protection of the Second Amendment? The majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller acknowledges that some forms of gun control are consistent with the Second Amendment and implies that they include "laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents." But that does not mean any law with that ostensible aim is valid; in fact, the Court found that D.C.'s law "regulating the storage of firearms" was unconstitutional because it effectively prevented people from using guns for self-defense. It did not explicitly address the constitutionality of a "safe storage" rule like the one the District has now adopted, which impedes self-defense and is more restrictive than necessary to prevent accidents (a goal that could be served by requiring, for example, that loaded firearms be kept in gun safes with their safeties on). But it's hard to see how the new rule can pass muster, since it substantially impinges on a gun owner's ability to defend himself while doing nothing to advance a legitimate government interest that could not be accomplished through less restrictive means.

Excuse Me While I Get My Gun

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia had violated the Second Amendment by making armed self-defense in the home impractical and banning the most popular weapons used for that purpose. Last week the D.C. Council responded by unanimously approving a law that makes armed self-defense in the home impractical and bans the most popular weapons used for that purpose.

D.C.'s political leaders know they are inviting another Second Amendment lawsuit, but they are determined to defy the Supreme Court and the Constitution for as long as possible.

The new law "clarifies that no carry license is required inside the home" to move a gun from one room to another. It also "clarifies" the District's firearm storage requirements, saying a gun may be unlocked and loaded "while it is being used to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person" in the home.

Much hinges on what counts as a "reasonably perceived threat." If you're awakened in the middle of the night by a crash, may you carry a loaded gun with you as you investigate? Evidently not. The Washington Post reports that D.C.'s acting attorney general, Peter Nickles, "said residents could neither keep their guns loaded in anticipation of a problem nor search for an intruder on their property." According to Nickles, if you see an armed criminal charging your home, or in the event of "an actual threat by somebody you believe is out to hurt you," you're allowed to get your gun, unlock it, and load it.

How long will that take? The new law lets people use a gun safe instead of a trigger lock, which, depending on the type of safe, could allow faster retrieval. But even a gun in a safe has to be kept unloaded, which will tend to slow down the owner's response to a "reasonably perceived threat," assuming he can figure out what that means.

The delay will be even longer because of the District's ridiculously broad ban on "machine guns." The Metropolitan Police Department says the ban covers all handguns except revolvers, which are more cumbersome to load than semiautomatics with detachable magazines.

Under D.C. law, "machine guns" include not only guns that fire continuously but also guns that fire once per trigger pull if they can fire more than 12 rounds without reloading or "can be readily converted" to do so. According to the District's interpretation, even a pistol that fires 12 or fewer rounds counts as a "machine gun" if it could accept a bigger magazine.

That's why Dick Heller, the man who successfully challenged D.C.'s handgun ban, was not allowed to register his seven-shot .45-caliber pistol, which in the District's view might as well be an Uzi. Instead he applied to register a .22-caliber revolver.

Speaking of registration, the District has established a burdensome 12-step process that involves multiple trips to gun dealers and government offices, fingerprinting, a written exam, and ballistic testing. How long does all this take? "Up to 14 days," according to one police department publication. "Approximately eight weeks," according to another. "There are circumstances where it could take months," says Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

Registration easily could turn out to be so onerous or capricious that it effectively denies D.C. residents the right to keep and bear arms. The District's revised firearm storage requirements are even more clearly unconstitutional, since they unreasonably interfere with the very function, self-defense in the home, that the Supreme Court said is protected by the Second Amendment. Likewise the arbitrary ban on semiautomatic handguns, the most commonly used self-defense weapons.

"I am pretty confident that the people of the District of Columbia want me to err in the direction of trying to restrict guns," D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty told Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher. How about erring, just this once, in the direction of respecting civil liberties?

What About Famous Original Singas Pizza?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:40:00 EDT

New York City's regulation requiring the conspicuous posting of calorie counts on restaurants' menu boards was supposed to apply just to big chains that standardize their dishes and already do (or can easily afford) nutritional analyses. But A.P. reports that the threshold for the rule, 15 or more outlets nationwide, is low enough to include obscure local chains and quasi-chains:

"This has been an absolute nightmare," said Enrique Almela, director of operations at Singas Famous Pizza, which has 17 restaurants, most in the borough of Queens....
Almela spoke with The Associated Press from his car Wednesday as he rushed sample pizzas to a food laboratory. He said the calorie tests for his 35 different pizza combinations will cost $10,000, and he doubts they will produce accurate data.
"I may put 15 pepperoni on a pie. Someone else may put 12. We don't measure the amount of cheese we put on," he said. "If you put up roundabout numbers, how does that help anyone?"
The deadline also looked problematic for a unique class of New York City eateries: loosely affiliated, largely immigrant-owned restaurants that share the same name and sometimes the same suppliers, but operate independently.
Afgan Paper & Food Products, which distributes food and packaging materials to many of the eateries, said it was scrambling to get them calorie info.
"The stores are all calling and asking for information. We don't have it," said Mariam Mashriqi, a receptionist at the company.
In the meantime, Mashriqi said, some owners were paying for the laboratory tests themselves.
"These are small stores. They are barely making a profit," she said.

You can find recent reason coverage of the menu board rule here, here, and here.

[via Scott Stein at When Falls the Coliseum]

First Amendment Lite

info@reason.com (Greg Beato) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:00:00 EDT

If you’re a perfume manufacturer and you’d like to name your latest fragrance Opium, no government agent will stop you. The world’s flagship soda is called Coke. A company called Chronic Candy has been selling lollipops flavored with cannabis flower essential oil for eight years. Energy drink connoisseurs routinely enjoy products with names like Fixx, Bong Water, Buzzed, and Speed Freak. Even the controversial energy drink Cocaine is for sale again, after revising its label to comply with Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

If you produce alcoholic beverages, however, puns, drug slang, and ghoulishly percussive monkeys may land you in trouble. Take, for example, the case of the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company. Located in tiny Weed, California, the microbrewery sells bottled versions of its five ales and lagers in retail stores in California, Oregon, and Washington. Since 2004 the bottle caps on all five Mt. Shasta beers have been emblazoned with a slogan that plays on the town’s name: “Try legal Weed.”

Anytime a producer or importer of alcoholic beverages wants to market a new product, it must submit a proposed label to the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for approval. Earlier this year, when Mt. Shasta proprietor Vaune Dillman turned in his application for a new beer he planned to start bottling, he included the design of the bottle caps. Shortly thereafter, the TTB advised him by fax that the slogan “Try legal Weed” was an impermissible “drug reference,” adding, “We do not believe that responsible industry members should want or would want to portray their products in any socially unacceptable manner.”

To put it another way, the TTB believed the 61-year-old businessman and civic booster was guilty of a thought crime. Although no law on the books explicitly prohibits “drug references” on alcoholic beverage product labels, the bureau told him he had to stop using his socially unacceptable bottle caps.

Every year, the TTB reviews more than 100,000 proposed labels, and because the statutes and regulations it has at its disposal are both extremely specific and extremely vague, its agents often end up behaving more like cultural critics than government bureaucrats—parsing puns, interpreting illustrations, determining the artistic value of the occasional female breast. In theory, the agency is supposed to protect consumers by ensuring that product labels accurately convey a product’s identity and quality. In practice, it often disallows labels (and thus, at least temporarily, products) that it deems bad for the image of the alcoholic beverage industry, short-pouring the First Amendment in the process.

“What would you do if somebody handed you, I don’t know, Hannah Montana beer, and said, ‘Please approve this’?” asks Robert Lehrman, an attorney who specializes in beverage law and has been dealing with the TTB and its predecessor, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, for more than 20 years. “I don’t think they like making all these immensely subjective decisions on every cotton-picking label that comes down the pike. But that’s how the legislature set it up. The government decided that liquor’s taboo and therefore needs restrictions beyond those for food generally. ”

Thus, if Disney decided to market a Hannah Montana energy drink laced with enough caffeine to power the entire touring cast of High School Musical for a week’s worth of shows, it would not have to submit a proposed label to the FDA—and consequently, the FDA would not be faced with the embarrassing prospect of having to officially “approve” a product that might be considered objectionable.

If Disney decided to create a Hannah Montana pale ale, however, the TTB would either have to give an explicit endorsement or figure out some grounds on which to reject it. In such situations, the TTB resorts to nitpicking. Take the prohibition against “drug references.” While Congress grants agencies like the TTB the authority to create rules and regulations that more thoroughly interpret general statutes, the TTB’s “no drug references” edict isn’t even that official. It’s just a policy that someone decided the bureau should implement for some reason or other. In 1994 the agency published a brief notice in a newsletter outlining the new guidelines for socially acceptable labeling. “I don’t know the particular incident that brought that about,” says Art Resnick, the TTB’s director of public and media affairs, when asked about the origins of the policy. “I could look and see if anybody remembers.”

Being fuzzy on the rule’s history doesn’t prevent the TTB from enforcing it with gusto. In 2003 a Texas liquor importer named Dan Dotson began efforts to import absinthe from Kubler, a Swiss distillery that had been producing the fabled spirit since 1863. Because Kubler’s version contained less than 10 parts per million of thujone, the chemical in wormwood that had kept absinthe off the market in the U.S. since 1912, Dotson believed it was legal to sell here. After several years of discussion, the TTB agreed. But in a 2006 letter to Lehrman, whom Dotson had retained to facilitate the TTB label approval process, the agency insisted that while the beverage Kubler had produced was legal, the word absinthe (along with the variations absynthe, absente, and absinth) was an “illicit drug term” that could not be used on the labels.

Eventually, the TTB softened its stance. Now absinthe can appear on the packaging, but only as a “fanciful term” modifying some other word. One can sell “absinthe verte” or “absinthe superieure”—but not plain old “absinthe.” And probably not “absinthe weed” either. Because of absinthe’s reputation as an illegal, mind-altering substance, the TTB continues to make marketing difficult for anyone interested in selling it.

When Lance Winters, master distiller for St. George Spirits, submitted a label for his version of the spirit in 2007, it took him seven tries before he gained TTB approval. First, he says, the TTB told him the word absinthe appeared in too large a font. Then it told him his label looked too much like a British pound note. Then it said the label’s depiction of a monkey beating a human skull with a pair of femurs implied that the product had hallucinogenic properties—impermissible, since the Code of Federal Regulations does not allow labels that “create a misleading impression.”

This, alas, is government by Rorschach test. Who’s to say exactly what a cartoon monkey indicates about the properties of absinthe? Winters says he simply wanted to create a fun, light-hearted package. “Our distillery has been trying to steer people away from the idea that absinthe has hallucinogenic properties,” he explains. “I don’t want to sell a product based on promises that I can’t deliver. I want to sell this product based on the fact that it’s complex, it’s delicious, it’s something that poets and artists loved to drink because it was inspirational.”

According to Resnick, a basic tenet of the TTB’s approach is voluntary compliance. “We don’t want to take somebody’s permit,” he says. “We don’t want to put anybody out of business. So we work very hard with the businesses that we regulate to achieve voluntary compliance on their part.”

Unfortunately, the voluntary compliance the agency achieves doesn’t always feel so voluntary to those doing the complying. While Winters is happy with how his label turned out—the monkey now bangs, in unambiguously nonhallucinogenic fashion, on a cymbal, not a human skull—all that wrangling left him frustrated. “The product in the bottle had been approved,” he says. “They weren’t protecting anyone from absinthe. They were protecting people from how the absinthe had been presented. It’s wonderful that they offered solutions to help me get the label approved, but what their solutions amounted to was a dumbing down of the labels and a loss of a certain amount of freedom.”

By censoring small businessmen like Winters and Vaune Dillman over purported “drug references,” the government is enforcing the idea that it’s not just illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess certain drugs in America. It’s illegal even to possibly allude to them. Even when confined to the limited scope of alcoholic beverage labels, that’s enough to drive a man to drink.

Contributing Editor Greg Beato is a writer in San Francisco.

Defending Second Amendment Rights One Weapon at a Time

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:34:00 EDT

Alan Gura, Dick Heller's attorney, reports that the .22-caliber revolver his client began to register last week is the same weapon he tried to register in 2002 before suing the District of Columbia over its handgun ban. Therefore, Gura says, assuming Heller is allowed to register the revolver and keep it at home, "the city appears to be complying with the literal command of the [Supreme Court] judgment," which said "the District must permit [Heller] to register his handgun" as long as he is not "disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights" (i.e., has no criminal or psychiatric record that bars him from owning a firearm). Gura adds:

That does not mean that the rest of the D.C. Code with respect to firearms is constitutional. Much of it is not. But the entire code was not directly at issue in our case. It is our hope that Mayor Fenty and the City Council, or Congress, if the Mayor and City Council are unwilling to do so, sit down with their code books and the Supreme Court's opinion, and make a serious effort to conform the former to the latter. If the political branches do not make the city's firearm laws constitutional, then as we've seen, the courts will do it for them.

In particular, the remaining storage requirements (which say even a gun locked in a safe must also be kept unloaded) and the "machine gun" ban (which the city used to stop Heller from registering a .45-caliber pistol with a seven-round magazine, arguing that the ban covers most semiautomatics) seem ripe for challenge. I'll have more on this in my column on Wednesday.

Wardrobe Malfunctioned Without Warning

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit overturned the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commissions imposed on CBS for Janet Jackson's failure to keep her breasts in her bustier during the 2004 Superbowl halftime show. It ruled that the FCC's abrupt abandonment of a longstanding policy forgiving brief, unplanned bits of "indecency" was "arbitrary and capricious," violating the Administrative Procedure Act. Because of the change in policy, the court said, CBS did not have fair warning that it could be fined for an incident like this one. Last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reached a similar conclusion (PDF) regarding the FCC's suddenly strict treatment of fleeting profanities uttered by celebrities during live award shows. In March the Supreme Court agreed to review the latter decision, so it may soon decide the extent to which the FCC can make shit policy up as it goes along.

Here (PDF) is the 3rd Circuit decision. Here is my column about the 2nd Circuit case.

McGill Also Found That 90% of Congressmen Talk Out of Their Asses

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:39:00 EDT

Last month the House Financial Services Committee rejected a bill co-sponsored by Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) that would have blocked Treasury Department regulations aimed at preventing online gambling. Speaking against the bill, Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the committee's ranking Republican, explained that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the law that requires the regulations, is all about saving the youth of America from a potentially lethal addiction. "McGill University found that one-third of college students who gamble on the Internet ultimately attempted suicide," he averred. He added, "That is why the rate of suicide on our college campuses has doubled in the past 10 years."

In a belated response to Bachus' startling claim, the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, an industry group, cites McGill University gambling and addiction researcher Jeffrey L. Derevensky, who says:

This assertion, which is reportedly based upon our empirical research, is not predicated upon any factual evidence. None of the studies conducted with adolescents or college students, to the best of my knowledge, have looked at a connection between Internet wagering and suicide attempts.

In a June 25 press release, Bachus revised his claim, saying, "A study by McGill University found that nearly one-third of teenage compulsive gamblers attempted suicide" (emphasis added). That sounds a little more plausible, depending on how compulsive gambling is defined. But according to Derevensky, Bachus is still wrong to cite McGill research in support of his assertion. In any case, given that only 7 percent or so of online bettors qualify as "problem gamblers" (according to a 2007 survey by the British Gambling Commission), throwing everyone who has ever gambled online into that category is a pretty big mistake. Then, too, while Bachus said suicides on college campuses have doubled in the last decade, the CDC says suicides among 15-to-24-year-olds fell by 28 percent between 1990 and 2003, then rose by 8 percent in 2004 before falling by 3 percent in 2005, the latest year for which data are available (PDF).

You can watch Bachus rail against online gambling here. I explain why financial institutions are vexed by the proposed UIGEA regulations here.

Addendum: Several commenters wondered whether Bachus is conniving or clueless. Last summer, after Radley Balko testified at a hearing on Internet gambling before Frank's committee, he described an exchange with Bachus that supports the latter interpretation.

When the Government Does It, It's Not Fraud

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:39:00 EDT

The Federal Trade Commission has proposed (PDF) withdrawing its blessing from the tar and nicotine yields included in cigarette advertisements because these machine-generated numbers are not good indicators of what smokers actually absorb:

The current yields tend to be relatively poor predictors of tar and nicotine exposure. This is primarily due to smoker compensation, i.e., the tendency of smokers of lower-rated cigarettes to take bigger, deeper, or more frequent puffs, or to otherwise alter their smoking behavior [e.g., by subconsciously covering ventilation holes] in order to obtain the dosage of nicotine they need.

The differences between the way a machine smokes in a laboratory and the way people smoke in real life have been acknowledged since the FTC first approved the "FTC method" for measuring tar and nicotine yields in 1966. But the issue has received increasing attention during the last couple of decades. After studies confirmed that the official yields are unreliable indicators of individual exposure, anti-smoking activists and trial lawyers began to argue that the numbers are inherently fraudulent, part of a scam in which tobacco companies trick consumers into believing that "light" cigarettes are less dangerous than full-strength brands. Since the research indicates that "light" cigarette smokers only partially compensate for lower yields, they should still take in less tar than they otherwise would, but any health advantage is smaller than initially hoped. A better approach would have been to increase the nicotine-to-tar ratio, rather than reducing both yields.

In response to these concerns, the FTC now wants to "withdraw its guidance...indicating that factual statements of tar and nicotine yields based on the Cambridge Filter Method generally will not violate the FTC Act." Under its proposed rule, cigarette makers could not assert or imply FTC approval of the yields, and they probably would stop using them entirely, fearing that the commission would deem them misleading. This shift in policy is overdue, but the FTC is less than forthright about its own complicity in making tar and nicotine yields ubiquitous in cigarette ads. The commission says its "1966 guidance does not require companies to state the tar and nicotine yields of their cigarettes in their advertisements or on product labels." But as epidemiologist Ronald Davis and his colleagues noted in a 1990 American Journal of Public Health article (PDF), the story is a little more complicated:

Since 1971, all major cigarette manufacturers have voluntarily disclosed the tar and nicotine yields of cigarette brands in advertisements. The cigarette industry agreed to "voluntary" disclosure after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had proposed a regulation that would have required such disclosure. This agreement does not apply to cigarette packages.

So if advertising tar and nicotine yields amounts to fraud, it's a fraud that was not only endorsed but in effect required by the federal government. That did not stop the federal government from suing the tobacco companies over their "light" cigarette marketing. Nor did concerns about compensatory smoker behavior stop activists and legislators from trying to authorize the Food and Drug Administration to order reductions in nicotine content, a policy that would make cigarettes more hazardous by increasing the amount of toxins and carcinogens absorbed for a given dose of nicotine.

'I'm Not Going to Lie: I Used to Smoke Crack in There'

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:37:00 EDT

The City of Seattle had this great idea a while back: Let's invest millions of dollars in free public toilets that open up with the push of a button and self-clean after each use, so that people don't have to, er, patronize a store in order to relieve themselves. But Seattle residents trashed the toilets, and now the city is closing its dilapidated, techno-riffic outhouses and selling them on eBay:

[T]he restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city’s most destitute people refused to step inside them....
“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”

Why did the plan fail? For starters, the people who used the toilets—transients and druggies—didn't have to pay for them:

Seattle officials say the project here failed because the toilets...were placed in neighborhoods that already had many drug users and transients. Then there was the matter of cost: $1 million apiece over five years, which because of a local ordinance had to be borne entirely by taxpayers instead of advertisers.

I should probably check with reason's Ron Bailey on this, but I think Seattle scripted its own commons tragedy.

Jesus Christ's Savior Role Spurs Questions of Overreach

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:01:00 EDT

In a front-pager with the promising headline of "Fed's Crisis Role Spurs Questions of Overreach," the Washington Post casually tosses off this paragraph-two axiom:

In the past few months, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has burst through long-standing boundaries on what the Fed does. Bernanke's actions − many taken reluctantly − have repeatedly pulled the world from the brink of financial catastrophe[.]

Really? Bernanke has saved not just the United States but the world from multiple financial catastrophes? I wonder which ones in particular, and how a newspaper goes about confirming such a thing as incontrovertible fact?

When Bernanke took the reins at the Fed, Senior Editor Brian Doherty assembled a team of worthies to ask: Can we bank on the Federal Reserve?

What Are You Smiling At?

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Q: What are the eligibility requirements to legally receive dental care from a therapist with a two-year degree?
A: Native American ancestry.

Some 60,000 indigenous Alaskans living in villages accessible only by plane, boat, or snowmobile received little dental care until the Alaskan Native Tribal Health Consortium decided to break a few rules. Following a model that is popular in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, and 42 other countries, the consortium sent tribal members to an accredited two-year dental program in New Zealand, where they learned how to fill cavities and clean and pull teeth.

Upon completion of the program, the members returned to their villages as certified dental therapists, capable of providing basic dental services. The therapists have since helped to bring down a rate of tooth decay that is almost three times the national average. But their efforts were nearly undone by the American Dental Association (ADA), which objected to anyone other than a licensed dentist conducting "irreversible dental procedures," such as pulling teeth and filling cavities. By the ADA's standards, a licensed dentist is one that has completed an undergraduate degree, a doctorate of dental medicine, or a doctorate of dental surgery, and has passed a statewide exam.

The consortium spent over a year battling the ADA and the Alaskan Dental Society for the right to send dental therapists into tribal areas. Alaska's Superior Court ruled in favor of the tribes in June 2007, allowing the therapists to continue their work, but only in indigenous communities. In light of the ruling, the ADA altered its strategy and decided to support the tribes' efforts until it could send enough licensed dentists into remote tribal regions to render the therapists unnecessary.

The case received little national attention until the New York Times' Alex Berenson wrote in April that "dentists in private practice consider therapists low-cost competition" because they are only paid "one-half to one-third" as much as licensed dentists. Current ADA President Mark J. Feldman responded a month later in a letter to the Times, denying that the ADA objected to the Consortium's "experiments" out of its own "financial self-interest."

Yet the ADA's actions toward the University of Washington School of Dentistry, which backed the consortium, supports the financial self-interest angle. According to a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Washington branch of the ADA "intimidated university officials by threatening to block donations by their members" until the dentistry school withdrew its support for the consortium and abandoned its plans to cosponsor, along with the medical school, a dental therapy track in its physician's assistant program.

This wasn't the only time the ADA has attempted to block a newcomer to the dental market. In December 2007, another New York Times reporter, Ian Urbina, wrote about the work of denturists. Denturists develop and install dentures and replace teeth; their inexpensive services are changing lives for the better in Kentucky, where residents, like indigenous Alaskans, suffer from tooth decay at a rate that is much higher than the national average.

Unlike the Alaskan tribes, however, denturists have had no luck challenging the ADA. The association refuses to recognize denturism, even though denturists can practice legally in a number of states, including Idaho, Montana, Maine, Oregon, and Washington. Additionally, in Arizona and Colorado, denturists can work under the supervision of licensed dentists. The ADA officially "opposes denturism, the denturism movement, and all other similar activities," claiming that denturists are "educationally unqualified to practice dentistry in any form on the public." A 1985 study published in the American Journal of Public Health suggests the animosity stems more from the economic effects of legalizing denturism than anything else. In 1978, the year Oregon became the first state to allow denturism, "The major campaign issue" between those for denturism and those opposed, "was the effect denturism would have on the cost of dentures." Sure enough, the cost of dentures "had a much lower rate of increase after passage of the denturism initiative."

Since then, the ADA has combated denturists by attempting to block their access to supplies. The agency openly discourages manufacturers of dental equipment from selling products to unlicensed dental practitioners, the only exception being dentistry students enrolled in ADA-approved schools.

According to the association and other opponents of alternative dentistry, dental work done by anyone other than a licensed dentist equates to "substandard care," but their argument suffers when international comparisons are taken into account. Canada, for instance, created a regulatory board for dental therapy in 1974. The Australian goverment permits it as well, calling it dental prosthetics. In 1984, the United Kingdom amended its dentistry laws to make room for several types of alternative dentistry, among them the British equivalents to both denturism and dental therapy. And according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, some studies have shown that graduates of dental therapy programs "are better trained to provide care to children than dentists are."

Despite the ADA's best efforts at controlling the cost of dental care, the tide may be turning. In May, reports The Charleston Gazette, West Virginia (whose dental problems rival those of its neighbor, Kentucky) passed a bill that will allow dental hygienists—whose services cost a fraction of those of a licensed dentist—to practice outside of a dentist's office and without a dentist being present. Legislators passed the bill—in spite of loud ADA objections—after journalist Eric Eyre wrote a series of articles detailing the state's abysmal dental care.

Bills like the one in West Virginia create new jobs while lowering medical costs. And there is perhaps a bigger benefit: putting smiles on the faces of millions of Americans who, thanks in part to the monopolistic behavior of the ADA, are literally too embarrassed to open their mouths.

Mike Riggs is reason's 2008 Burton C. Gray Memorial intern.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Is a Peach

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:01:00 EDT

European Commission agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel of Denmark, wants to scrap most of the regulations governing the marketing of vegetables and fruits. The current regime is needlessly finicky, she says, causing grocers to discard slightly bent carrots and lumpy peaches in a time of rising food prices in Europe and famine abroad.

Consider the Class I cucumber, which must be "practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)." Translation: A six-inch cucumber cannot bend more than six-tenths of an inch. Following 16 pages of regulations on apples (Class I must be at least 60mm, or 2 1/3 inches, in diameter) come 19 pages of amendments outlining the approved colors for more than 250 kinds.
As for peaches, "to reach a satisfactory degree of ripeness . . . the refractometrix index of the flesh, measured at the middle point of the fruit pulp at the equatorial section must be greater than or equal to 8° Brix."

And if that doesn't convince that things have gotten out of hand in Europe's fruit stands, this will:

In January 2007, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture issued a report in which it took 29 pages to explain "quality standards for onions," complete with 43 photographs.

Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

America's own war for ugly tomatoes here.

Woo Hoo, a Sparkler!

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:07:00 EDT

The Portland Press Herald reports that the Maine Fire Marshal's Office prepared for Independence Day by staking out fireworks stores in neighboring New Hampshire:

Mainers suspected of buying fireworks may be stopped and arrested as they cross the border. Penalties range from a $50 fine for having less than $100 worth of fireworks to 10 years in prison for having more than $5,000 worth of fireworks.

While Mainers who want to explosively express their excitement on the Fourth are limited to sparklers and caps, New Hampshirites can legally purchase and use some pretty cool stuff (PDF), including not just multistage fountains but flying and exploding products such as the Aerial Super Seven Shell, the Wolfpack Missile Base, and the nine-shot 4th of July Spectacular. No wonder Mainers are tempted to smuggle.

Although New Hampshire does not allow "firecrackers, bottle rockets and reloadable type shells," its "permissible fireworks list" runs to 57 pages of tiny print. And unlike Pennsylvania, New Hampshire lets people not only buy mortars but use them. When I lived in Northern Virginia, I knew people who would go up to Gettysburg every year to get fireworks that were legal to sell in Pennsylvania, but only for use in other states. They were illegal to use in Virginia too, but police tended to look the other way on Independence Day and New Year's Eve.

I've been disappointed by the fireworks regime in Texas, which I imagined would be wide open. Although the state law is fairly permissive, there are many local restrictions. And Dallas, where I live, bans all unlicensed use of fireworks. If you happen to live in New Hampshire or some other firework-friendly place, please set off some mortars and rockets for me.

Greg Beato and Robert Stacy McCain defend real fireworks.

[Thanks to Michael Graham for the tip.]

Nick Burns, P.I.

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:12:00 EDT

I recently paid a service called Geeks on Site to figure out why my computer kept hanging and freezing. After poking around for a day or so, the technicians were able to reduce my CPU usage and improve the computer's performance. The name of the company turned out to be something of a misnomer, however, since the technicians did all their work remotely. If you ask me, Geeks off Site would be more like it. But if you ask the state of Texas, the name should be something like Geek Investigative Services. Under a 2007 statute that the brand-new Texas chapter of the Institute for Justice is challenging in state court, almost anyone who fiddles with computers for a living could be deemed a private investigator. The ramifications of falling into that category are serious, since a private investigator has to obtain a state-issued license, which requires a degree in criminal justice or a three-year apprenticeship.

I.J., which is challenging the law under the state constitution, represents three computer repair businesses whose owners worry that the state will decide they are offering private investigative services without a license, a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and financial penalties of up to $14,000. Since the same penalties apply to people who hire unlicensed investigators, I.J. also represents a businessman who uses computer repair services. "If I was required to get a P.I. license to run my business," says one plaintiff, "I'd have to shut my business down." Another adds:

This law is totally unfair. It requires using someone who is more expensive and may not be as good, and it uses government power to limit the number of competitors who are out there. It is bad for consumers, and it is bad for entrepreneurs.

The Private Security Bureau, which issues P.I. licenses, tries (PDF) to reassure computer technicians who don't want to be confused with private investigators:

The distinction between "computer forensics" and "data acquisition" is significant. We understand the term "computer forensics" to refer to the analysis of computer-based data, particularly hidden, temporary, deleted, protected or encrypted files, for the purpose of discovering information related (generally) to the causes of events or the conduct of persons. We would distinguish such a content-based analysis from the mere scanning, retrieval and reproduction of data associated with electronic discovery or litigation support services.

But the statute is broadly worded, defining an "investigations company" as a business that is paid to "obtain or furnish information related to," among other things, "the identity, habits, business, occupation, knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, movement, location, affiliations, associations, transactions, acts, reputation, or character of a person." I.J. argues that "the definition of 'investigation'...encompasses many common computer repair tasks."

[Thanks to Todd Wolf for the tip.]

We Are the World

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:59:00 EDT

Dan Mitchell and Richard Rahn write on the federal government's continuing efforts to assert U.S. jurisdiction all over the world.

The feds have moved beyond gambling to now pressuring Swiss bankers in Switzerland to break Swiss law in order to comply with U.S. law. Federal officials charge that the Swiss' famous secrecy is helping U.S. citizens skirt federal taxes.

Apparently, U.S. law now applies everywhere in the world except Guantanamo Bay.

The Indicators of Success in Iraq?

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:14:00 EDT

The Associated Press reported today that gas lines in Iraq are as long as two miles, but how could that be the case in a country that is on the cusp of signing oil contracts with potential revenues close to $100 billion? Irony of ironies, the very same "liberation" that freed Iraq's oil market also destabilized the country to the point that it can't even use its own resources:

[S]ectarian strife, rampant corruption, lack of adequate refineries and inefficient government institutions limit the positive impact that increased public revenues could have on average Iraqi citizens like Habib Hadi, who queued up for gas at 4 a.m. Tuesday.
After waiting more than four hours, he said he finally edged close to the gas station and "saw a catastrophe."
"The gas pump was not working because of the lack of electricity," Hadi said.

This bewildering anecdote follows yesterday's news that the no-bid contracts Iraq offered to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron are "under negotiation" until god knows when; not that it matters one way or another to the Iraqis waiting in gas lines. With no infrastructure to refine crude, they might as well be pumping chocolate pudding.

ICANN: Give Us .sex!

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:50:00 EDT

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) votes today on expanding domain name endings from .org, .net, .com, and a few others to include any combination of letters and numbers. Computerworld explains:

If ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, relaxes those rules, then companies will be able to buy generic top-level domain names ending in whatever they want...That means, for example, that eBay Inc. could add its company name to the end of its URL and become eBay.ebay and Microsoft Corp. could become Microsoft.microsoft...

According to the report, when asked about the possibility of an .xxx domain name, [ICANN CEO Paul Twomey] said the new system would be "open to anyone."

I hope that the forward thinking members of ICANN convince their squeamish peers to open up domain restrictions for the good of the world. Editor Jesse Walker listed the many advantages of myriad domain names in a 2001 reason article:

Surfing would be easier, with shorter addresses to remember; cybersquatting would be less of a problem, since it would be harder to buy up all the possible permutations of a person's or company's name; and domains themselves would be cheaper.

UPDATE: The ICANN conference is over, and I'm on the prowl for resolutions and whatnot. What I found thus far suggests that the attendees implemented (or are implementing) a system for the creation of new top-level domains (TLD)—.org, .net, .sex, etc., etc.

I Swear, Officer, It's Only Marijuana!

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:38:00 EDT

A Dutch ban on smoking in businesses open to the public takes effect on July 1, and owners of marijuana-selling "coffee shops" are worried. They're not worried because the ban will prevent their customers from smoking pot. Although the combustion products of any dried weed include toxins and carcinogens, cannabis is exempt from the law, which is ostensibly aimed at protecting employees. It's hard to see what purpose this disparate treatment serves, aside from horrifying American conservatives with the prospect of a topsy-turvy world in which you can smoke pot but not tobacco. But since European pot smokers often mix tobacco into their joints, The Independent reports, coffee shop operators are afraid the smoking ban will cut into their business:

"The new rule is nonsense," said Willem Panders, of the Dutch tobacco traders' union. "It will be almost impossible to enforce because how are you going to check if someone is smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco, or pure cannabis?"...
Marc Jacobsen, of BCD, a national association of coffee-shop owners which has been urging the government to give them special status, told the online version of Der Spiegel: "In a cafe you come to drink something. In a restaurant you come to eat. But when you come to a coffee shop you come to smoke, so smoking has to be allowed in a coffee shop."...
Sandy Lambrecht, the manager of the Bulldog coffee shop on the Leidseplein in the heart of Amsterdam, said: "The new rules are absurd. You come to a coffee shop to smoke, after all—it's ridiculous that we have to comply. The new rules are meant to protect employees like me, but the point is that we chose to work here."
Paul Wilhelm, the owner of De Tweede Kamer, one of Amsterdam's most famous coffee shops, founded in 1985, argued: "If the boys are old enough to be sent to Afghanistan, then you can't tell me that people want to protect them from smoke in the workplace. They're old enough to decide on their own. They can vote, they can go to war—but now they won't even be allowed to make this decision?"

These are not arguments for exempting coffee shops from the smoking ban; these are arguments for repealing the smoking ban.

[via the Drug War Chronicle]

Congress Tackles the Risky Loan Shortage

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:12:00 EDT

Here's the New York Times summary of the housing legislation Congress is on the verge of approving:

The centerpiece of the Senate package is a rescue-refinancing plan aimed at stemming the tide of more than 8,000 new foreclosures a day that lenders are filing across the country. The plan would allow distressed borrowers and their lenders to stem losses by allowing qualified owners to refinance into more affordable, 30-year fixed-rate loans with a federal guarantee.
The legislation would also provide benefits for first-time buyers, who would receive a refundable tax credit of up to $8,000, or 10 percent of the value of a home, on purchases of unoccupied housing.
As part of a regulatory overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, the bill would permanently increase to $625,000, from $417,000, the limit on loans they can purchase from lenders in expensive housing markets, making it easier for borrowers to obtain mortgages at discounted rates.

Problem: Lots of people took out loans they could not afford to buy houses that subsequently declined in value.

Solution: Bail out borrowers and lenders, putting taxpayers on the hook for the bad loans; increase subsidies for home purchases; and make it easier to take out big mortgages.

What could possibly go wrong?

There Was Music in the Cafes at Night and Re-Regulation in the Air

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:16:00 EDT

On the heels of last week's idiotic yet startlingly mainstream call to "re-regulate" the airline industry, comes this week's horror show of a congressional hearing, with the truth-in-advertising title of "Energy Speculation: Is Greater Regulation Necessary to Stop Price Manipulation?" Here's your moment of zen yesterday from Energy and Commerce Committe Chair John "Dingell" Dingell:

[T]he sharp rise in energy prices during the Bush Administration has been outpaced only by the rise in speculation. Energy speculation has become a growth industry and it is time for the Government to intervene.
We need to consider a full range of options to counter this rapacious speculation. For example, we should examine imposing 50 percent margin requirements for financial speculators; setting position limits on transactions across all futures exchanges; requiring full disclosure of all trading by investment banks in all markets; preventing pension funds from using the commodities markets as an investment vehicle; and prohibiting investment banks from owning energy assets. These and other ideas need to be debated, evaluated, and acted on, sooner rather than later.

It's easy to shrug this kind of stuff off, especially with a (newly veto-tastic) former oilman in the White House, but all that will change six months from now, and the Democrats are rubbing their hands at the prospect of unified government. In the meantime, the air is only getting thicker − on both sides of the aisle − with Mahatir/Larouche levels of hostility toward those shadowy bankster types who make money without even manufacturing widgets or tilling the land.

Seriously, did we kick communism to the curb only to suddenly discover, centuries after the French, that a free market will attract (and benefit from!) suspiciously smart people in pinstriped suits who are using their money to − wait for it − make more money? "Speculators" provide crucial liquidity (which is marketese for "money with which to buy the stuff you want to sell"), and perform a valuable function in helping locate assets that are under- or over-valued. Even those nassty speculatorsses at the end of the real estate boom (the evil "flippers" mom told you about) did some good stuff: They allowed people to sell their houses at a tidy profit, and fixed up old properties in preparation for resales that maybe never came. Many gambled and won (as did the people who sold to them), many others gambled and lost (freeing up "winners" who will buy those properties at firesale prices). That's all kind of the point.

Meanwhile, if you want to imagine what a unified Democratic federal government might look like, imagine this week's hearings paired with a sympathetic president:

On Tuesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), holds a hearing to discuss legislative options for "ending excessive speculation in commodity markets." I previewed the hearing here last week.
On Wednesday the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee will hold a hearing on home heating oil prices.
On Thursday, the topic of a hearing of Congress' Joint Economic Committee will be: "Oil Bubble or New Reality: How Will Skyrocketing Oil Prices Affect the U.S. Economy?"

The Difference Between Informing and Nagging

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:13:00 EDT

On Friday I attended a CDC-sponsored obesity conference where I participated in a panel discussion about laws requiring the conspicuous display of calorie counts in restauraunts, the topic of Steve Chapman's latest column. Chapman notes "there is little research to suggest that calorie alerts will make any difference in obesity rates," which is why a new study of fast food customers in New York City that was discussed at the conference is bound to be widely cited.

The researchers, all of whom work for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, surveyed about 7,300 customers at 275 randomly selected locations of 11 fast food chains before the city's new menu board requirement took effect. (The regulation, which requires calorie counts as big as prices, is still being contested in court, but some chains are already complying.) The health department researchers found that 32 percent of Subway customers said they had seen calorie information, compared to 4 percent of customers at other fast food restaurants. Since Subway promotes a subset of its menu as lower in calories and fat than its competitors' offerings, using a pitchman who lost hundreds of pounds while eating at the chain every day, this disparity is not surprising. But even at Subway, calorie information seemed to make a difference for a minority of customers. Of those who reported seeing the calorie information at Subway, 37 percent (i.e., 12 percent of all Subway customers) said it affected their purchases. Subway customers who said they used calorie information bought about 100 fewer calories (based on data from receipts and survey questions) than those who said they didn't see it and those who said they saw it but didn't use it.

Notably, "there was no significant difference in mean calories purchased by patrons reporting seeing but not using calorie information and patrons who reported not seeing calorie information." In other words, simply making people aware of calorie content is not enough to affect their food choices. It may be that the information's influence is limited to people who are predisposed to count calories, in which case the impact of regulations like New York's will depend on the extent to which those people are not already taking advantage of nutritional information available on fast food chains' websites and on posters, counter mats, tray liners, and brochures in restaurants.

Already supporters of New York-style menu rules are using this study, which is scheduled to be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health, to estimate how many lives can be saved by making calorie information more conspicuous. Given the uncertainty about who would lose how much weight and what the health consequences would be, this is a dubious exercise. Even if the health risks (or benefits) of extra pounds were well understood (they aren't), it's not clear that the Subway results can be applied to customers of other restaurants. Given its emphasis on healthier options, Subway probably is more likely than other chains to attract weight-conscious customers, the sort who seek calorie information and act on it.

Even so, only 12 percent of Subway customers in this study (i.e., 37 percent of 32 percent) said they noticed the calorie information and took it into account. This suggests that the vast majority of fast food customers are not very interested in nutritional information, as does the fact that most chains make it available without highlighting it in the way that the New York City health department thinks is appropriate. The restaurant business is highly competitive. If people are clamoring for impossible-to-ignore calorie counts, why don't more restaurants voluntarily provide them as a way of attracting customers? A legal requirement is necessary not because diners want conspicuous nutritional information but because, by and large, they don't want it. The information apparently does not enhance their dining experience and may even detract from it. Perhaps they prefer to enjoy their food without being reminded about what it may be adding to their waistlines.

Pretty soon, I suspect, customers of restaurant chains (the focus of the regulations, since it's hard for mom-and-pop restaurants to standardize dishes) will no longer be able to exercise their right not to know. In addition to New York City, jurisdictions requiring conspicuous nutritional information in restaurants include San Francisco; Santa Clara County, California; and King's County, Washington. California, New York state, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. are considering similar requirements. As the restaurant industry faces a multiplicity of demands from various jurisdictions (Santa Clara County, for example, requires fat, carbohydrate, and sodium information as well as calorie counts), it may start lobbying for a national law that establishes a uniform standard.

Radley Balko criticized menu regulations in his Fox News column last week.

Carlin Kicks the F*cking Bucket

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:28:00 EDT

The guy whose raunchy lines your prudish friends hated you for reciting in crowded restaurants, George Carlin, is dead of a heart attack at 71 years old.

CNN misses him so much that it's hosting an ever-so-lightly censored version of the “Seven Dirty Words” sketch on its site. The sketch (which grownups can view uncensored below) led to Carlin’s arrest and the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. Fortunately, the 5-4 ruling let Carlin off the hook on the grounds that his monologue was "indecent but not obscene"; unfortunately, it also gave the Federal Communications Commission some guidelines on how to censor the airwaves without violating the Constitution.

Carlin refused to vote, calling the electoral process the "delusion of choice." Ironically, one of the last times he publicly discussed politics was during an interview with the late Tim Russert.

For your pleasure, a compilation of reason-esque Carlin quotes:

"Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong."

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."

"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."

"Think off-center."

And of course, the video:

Nick Gillespie on Carlin's American Spirit, here. Jacob Sullum writes here on two decades of post-Seven censorship.

UPDATE: Check out Jay Dixit's thorough and fascinating interview with Carlin on the Psychology Today blog.

Leave Martha Alone!

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:54:00 EDT

Britain's Home Office has denied a visa to one of America's most notorious white collar criminals: Martha Stewart.

"We continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offenses abroad," he said.

Theodore Dalrymple's essay from the winter 2001 issue of City Journal offers some context for understanding the Home Office's decision:

The British attitude to immigration and immigrants has always been grudging, a mixture of xenophobia and socialist zero-sum economics. Britons have traditionally regarded the desire of foreigners to come to their shores as more of a threat than a compliment...

Despite the xenophobic, socialist snub, Martha responded as she always does to these little inconveniences—in good form:

"She has engagements with English companies and business leaders and hopes this can be resolved so that she will be able to visit soon," Charles Koppelman, chairman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, said in a statement.

If standard efforts at negotiations fail, she should send the Home Office some treats.

To read about how other government entities have tried to hurt sweet Martha, check out reason's "Why Martha Stewart should go to heaven and the SEC should go to hell."

Your Seeing-Eye Ferret Will Have to Wait at the Door, Sir

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:27:00 EDT

Under regulations proposed by the Bush administration, The New York Times reports, "the use of monkeys as 'service animals' for people with disabilities...would be forbidden." Well, not quite. The regulations would narrow the range of helper animals that businesses open to the public are required to allow on their property under the Americans With Disabilities Act:

When the existing rules were adopted in the early 1990s, the Justice Department said, few people anticipated the current trend toward "the use of wild, exotic or unusual species" as service animals.
The proposed rules define a service animal as "any dog or other common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks" for a person with a physical or mental disability.
Under this definition, the administration says, monkeys could not qualify as service animals, nor would reptiles; amphibians; rabbits, ferrets and rodents; or most farm animals.

Isn't a ferret or a hamster a "common domestic animal"? What about parrots or cats, which are now more common than dogs? Granted, these are hard questions. But if the federal government did not decide whether to allow pot-bellied pigs in your restaurant, who would?