Obamacare's Fate in State Hands, Shooting Range Boots Gun-Grabbing Cops, Government Data-Sniffing Invites Spies: P.M. Links
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The fate of Obamacare is now largely in the hands of state officials. So, have at it, folks.
- Paul Chabot, former drug czar advisor in the Clinton and Bush administrations, defends the criminalization of marijuana because it's … just like child pornography?
- When Burlington, Vermont, officials pushed for a ban on "assault weapons" and larger magazines, the managers at the Lamoille Valley Fish and Game Club had a short, sharp response: They told Burlington cops, who had been training there, for free, to get lost. Background checks for national gun sales, by the way, hit the highest level in 14 years.
- The hike in payroll taxes with which Americans were gifted at the beginning of the year came after 17 straight months of slumping real wages. That may be why the government's growing bite took such a big chunk out of consumer confidence.
- World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee warns that governments' current mania for sniffing up data and building dossiers on their citizens creates a target-rich environment for spies and other swipers of information.
- California's version of pension reform exempts thousands of state workers, at the behest of the Teamsters union.
- An Indiana couple faces jail for rescuing a baby deer — apparently because "somebody" set it free instead of letting state officials euthanize the animal.
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