Carolina Politics Online

This is just incredible.

Spratt defended his support of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, a bill that has been debated by U.S. Congress for months. He champions the bill, as well as President Barack Obama’s involvement in trying to pass the bill in Congress.

“I would have liked to see the bill done a bit differently, but he’s (Obama) done a magnificent job on it,” Spratt said. “This is something Presidents Truman, Nixon, Ford and Clinton have tried to do before, and I give him credit for trying.”

The Lancaster News

Those are the words Congressman John Spratt used to describe ObamaCare while speaking at the Lancaster County 2010 Democratic Convention.  I think this man needs to stop puffing on the magic dragon.  The entire process of this health care plan has been carried out in a fashion of Mafia thuggery masquerading as the legislative process.  It’s been filled with backroom deals, bribes, and threats and intimidation.

If this is what Bubba thinks is magnificent then he has either been in Washington too long and/or senility is setting in.

Wilmington’s Juggling Gypsy hookah bar is the first establishment in the area fined for violating the state’s new indoor smoking ban.

The Castle Street bar received two violations from the New Hanover County Health Department carrying a total of $400 in administrative penalties, under the ban that went into effect Jan. 2.

Juggling Gypsy Manager Denny Best said the bar would appeal the fine and ask for a hearing with the health department.

If unsuccessful there, Best said this week the bar would appeal further to the court system and planned on holding a fundraiser later this month to raise money for legal fees if it gets that far.

The Star News

Gasp! Smoking? In a hookah bar?!?! Why… I’ve never heard of such a thing. Surely the benevolent busybodies of government can protect all us peons from the scourge of the dastardly people forcing customers into their bars and exposing them to second-hand smoke.
[/sarcasm]

Good luck to the Gypsy. I’ll keep my on this case and let you know how to donate to their defense fun if it gets that far.

That will be a cold day in Hell.  This man is becoming more incredible by the day.

I can say with the utmost certainty right now that I will not be fingerprinted by the Federal government and treated like a common criminal just so I can have a job and if Lindsey Graham thinks that the people of this state are going to stand for this he is sorely mistaken.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”

The Wall Street Journal

Damn right it will. That’s the same thing that happened with Social Security. Your Social Security number was only supposed to be used within the parameters of that program and it ended up turning into a national identifier for just about every aspect of our lives, credit, employment, loans, etc. This proposal is a back door to the National ID that people have been pushing back against.

We don’t need an Orwellian government tracking program to stop illegal immigration. We just need to enforce the existing laws on the books.

Lindsey Graham needs to be stopped.  He is morphing into an oppressive fascist who no longer has any respect for our Constitution nor the freedom of the American people.

Surely you’ve heard of the infamous “naked body scanners” that the TSA has just been licking its chops over for years to deploy at airports across our country.  There are already a few out there actually, but they will be making a debut at 11 more airports, including Charlotte Douglas International.

The effort, being spearheaded by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (D), is in response to the near tragedy involving the Fruit-of-Kaboom bomber on Christmas Day in Detroit.  This is despite the fact that had these scanners already been in place in Amsterdam where the would be bomber boarded the plane, they would not have detected nor prevented him from bringing his explosive syringe on with him.  In typical authoritarian form however, the Federal government never misses the opportunity to exploit a tragedy in order to push through their oppressive agenda.  Naturally, the ACLU and other privacy advocates are outraged over the deployment of these machine, as am I.

These scanners are optional (for now).  Nobody will be forced to walk through them, but if you are singled out in line to go through the scanner and you refuse, you’ll be subject to a pat down, so there is a slight intimidation factor present.

I will not at any time or any place walk through one of these machines as I am reminded by the words of Ben Franklin who reminded us in 1775 that, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior’s real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

Read more at The Washington Times

The Antiquities Act of 1906 was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt (R) initially to stop the raping of American Indian artifacts in the southwest.  It gave the President the power by executive order to declare any government owned public land as restricted.  The problem is that it’s since been used over 100 times since its conception and one person should not be allowed to have that kind of authority.  The Office of President was purposely made weak by the Founders for a reason.

I can see instances in which the Federal government may need to restrict public land use at times, but that should be done by a vote of the full Congress so that there is input from the American people.  The proposals shouldn’t be sealed away in a secret document and then carried forth through executive order by one man.  That’s simply not the way America was designed to work.

It always gives me a warm and fuzzy when the people defeat the political elite.  For those of you unfamiliar with Charlotte, Ballantyne is a very affluent neighborhood in the south part of the city near the South Carolina border.  It’s a safe neighborhood with good schools and nice homes, but for some reason Mayor Anthony Foxx (D) and some others on the city council were in favor of flushing it down the crapper.  The proposal was to build a low income public housing apartment complex right smack dab in the middle of suburbia in the city and well, that didn’t fly too well with the residents.

From what is reported at the public hearing last night there were fireworks being thrown by the residents.  The Charlotte Observer was keeping a live update of the meeting on their Web site and of all the comments spoken, they naturally chose this one to put up for all to see.

6:25 p.m.: Said one speaker: “My house is over $1 million. I don’t want that crap next to me.”

Why Steve Harrison chose that comment is quite obvious, to paint this as some struggle between “poor impoverished victims” and those “evil country club snobs” who don’t want them in their backyard.  Well you know what?  I’m on the millionaire’s side.  I wouldn’t want that crap in my neighborhood either and he and every other affluent person in Ballantyne who worked hard their entire lives to reach that standard of living has the right to feel the same way.  Public housing destroys neighborhoods and I’ve seen it first hand.

Years ago I lived in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh called Sheraden.  At one time Sheraden was one of the safest, nicest middle class neighborhoods in the city.  That all started changing in the mid 1990s when a public housing complex over the hill was shut down and all the drug addicts and welfare trash started infiltrating Sheraden with their Section 8 vouchers.  Within ten years the neighborhood went through a complete metamorphosis.  Crime shot up, property values declined and blight was everywhere.  I was fortunate enough to live in the one part of Sheraden that hadn’t decayed like the rest, but the effect was in its infancy of taking hold just as I sold my home and moved down here to South Carolina.  Public housing destroyed Sheraden and it would do the same thing to Ballantyne if Mayor Foxx had his way.

The developers who were working with the public housing authority decided today to abandon the proposal.  Hey, I don’t blame people for not wanting to live in the ghetto and they don’t have to if they get their asses in gear and set their lives straight.  I work for a living and I can’t afford to live in Ballantyne.  There is no way those people deserve to live there on my tax dollars.

Welcome to George Bush’s third term. It seems Obama has warmed up quite nicely to the neocon policies of the previous administration.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department’s request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans’ privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

Feds push for tracking cell phones | Politics and Law – CNET News

I some how doubt the signers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence would have agreed there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

As reported on WRAL.com today, Chapel Hill wants to be your Nanny.  Despite the findings of the Highway Data Loss Institute, C.H. is in favor of  banning any hand held device. This would be mainly cell phones.

The Highway Loss Data Institute released a study last month examining insurance claims from crashes before and after cell-phone bans took effect in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

The organization found that insurance claim rates did not go down after the laws were enacted. It also found no change in patterns compared with nearby states without such bans.

The National Safety Council, meanwhile, supports a total ban on cell phone use while driving, including the use of hands free devices.

Does this ban also apply to eating a cheesburger or taking a sip of soda? Will they ban cup holders next? Sorry sir we have to write you a ticket because we saw you changing your radio station.  Does anyone else see the need to punish the innocent for the sins of a very small few?

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R) is taking some flack this weekend over some comments he made at a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn in which he compared welfare recipients to the feeding of stray animals.  Harsh words?  Yeah, perhaps.  True?  Absolutely.  Bauer is correct and while his words may be ugly they’re appropriately descriptive of the ugly truth a lot of Americans don’t want to hear.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply.

“They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is, you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Bauer’s remarks came during a speech in which he said government should take away assistance if those receiving help didn’t pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings if their children were receiving free and reduced-price lunches.

Charlotte Observer

I’ll bet if you did a poll across South Carolina of what people thought of the point Bauer was making you’d find a majority in agreement with him.  The only people horrified by his analogy are the wusses in the not so mainstream media and of course, the Democrats are whining about it because they know Bauer’s right too, but the stray animals are their constituency.  I’m not opposed to some kind of limited government safety net for people who fall on hard times, but the use of our welfare system, not just in South Carolina, but all across the country is way beyond that threshold.  When 58% of South Carolina school children are getting free lunch it’s time to tighten up the qualifications.  This is a state that has absolutely gutted our state budget the last two years due to the Bush/Obama recession and it is unconscionable that we have cut back on needed resources in our prison system and other legitimate state government duties while perpetuating a welfare state of parents who aren’t fulfilling their obligation of providing for their families.  That responsibility shouldn’t be on my back or anyone else’s who have lead responsible lives.  As long as you continue the hand out, there is no motivation for self dependence.

Bauer didn’t make a mistake by saying this.  His mistake is capitulating to those criticizing him by admitting some guilt in what he said.  He’s not guilty of anything other than telling the truth and instead he should have told the media that he stands firmly by his comments.  By even giving a half apology it makes him look guilty and he loses respect.

Concerned that his sales have plummeted during the first week of the statewide ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, the owner of a Chapel Hill hookah bar is encouraging people to snitch to government officials that he’s defying the ban. Adam Bliss, owner of Hookah Bliss, says he needs an official violation notice from Orange County in order to proceed with his plan to fight the law in court.

Bliss hasn’t stopped selling hookahs and beer at his Franklin Street establishment that caters to the college crowd. Even so, he hasn’t received a notice from the county. Bliss may even file a complaint himself to speed the process. “I’ve never had so much trouble getting in trouble,” he says.

The Carolina Journal

If you live in or near Chapel Hill, please visit this guy and give him your support: www.hookahbliss.com.

Don’t make the hookah bar owners angry. You won’t like them when they’re angry.

On Jan. 2, a law extinguishing smoking in bars and restaurants statewide takes effect. There are a few exceptions, but none for bars that offer hookahs, the water pipes for smoking fruit-flavored tobacco that originated in the Middle East and are growing in popularity among young Americans.

Hookah Joe’s, the four-year-old lounge in downtown Asheville, plans to defy the smoking ban and carry on into the new year.

“Honestly, we don’t really know what to expect,” co-owner James Tsakonas said. “But we will definitely be serving.”

Local health directors can fine violators $200 a day after giving them two warnings.

Legislators who passed the law this year called it an effort to save lives of workers and customers that are put at risk by secondhand smoke. Customers at Hookah Joe’s this week said anyone who would enter a hookah bar wouldn’t be bothered by the smoke.

The Asheville Citizen Times

That last line is the key to this whole debate. If you don’t want to breathe in second-hand hookah smoke… don’t go to a freakin’ hookah bar! If you do want to smoke hookah, who the hell is Hugh Holliman or anyone else to tell you that you can’t? Oh wait… they’re elected. That makes them waaaay smarter than your or me.

Good for Hookah Joe’s and anyone else who chooses to defy this junior-grade fascism. I hope our Asheville readers will stop in and have a few puffs in honor of freedom.

The owner of a Chapel Hill hookah bar says he will defy the state’s new smoking ban that has ensnared his business but exempted other types of smoking establishments. Adam Bliss, owner of Hookah Bliss, believes the ban is discriminatory. He will continue to sell hookahs and alcohol beginning Jan. 2, the day it becomes illegal to smoke in most North Carolina bars and restaurants.

The Carolina Journal

Good for you, Mr. Bliss. I hope many other private business owners follow your lead and tell the nanny-state assholes in Raleigh to take their bill and shove it.

Failure to comply may bring penalties. Tom Konsler, Orange County’s environmental health director, expects enforcement to be complaint-driven.  “We’re hoping not to test that,” Konsler said. Konsler said the county is aware of Bliss and that a representative will visit him in the next week or two to discuss his plans.

I hope Mr. Bliss takes a hookah pipe and shoves it up up Mr. Konsler’s ass when he shows up. Mr. Bliss is a private business owner with private customers who make their own decisions to buy his legal product.

Are you a supporter of this bill? Well, here’s what you’ve done:

Bliss said he faced three choices: continue operating as usual, stop selling alcohol to fit the definition of a tobacco shop rather than a bar, or close his doors altogether.

Since alcohol accounts for 20 to 25 percent of his sales, eliminating beer would send the bar into a nosedive it might not survive. Closing the doors of his 2 ½-year-old business would devastate Bliss. At risk is roughly $70,000 in cash invested or still owed. Giving up would also put him on the unemployment line. Half a dozen part-time employees would join him there.

Wow! Nice job government! You’ve done it again. Thank God you’re here to protect us from the scourge of free enterprise and hookahs!

And you know who else gets a shout out? One of this page’s favorite politicians, St. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird. We love Ellie here at CPO, and this is one of the reasons why:

Bliss thought he’d won the support of Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange. He said he worked with her assistant to create an exemption [for hookah bars]. On the evening the bill passed the Senate, Kinnaird called and told him she had not introduced the exemption at the request of a sponsor.

Bliss was stunned. He told her she was, in effect, closing down a viable business. Kinnaird’s response wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “This is as close to a quote as I can [recall] — ‘I know it will be difficult.’

“I said, ma’am, you don’t know anything. You’re sitting in an office paid for by people like me and you’re telling me you’re going to take my business away — tough noogies?”

Kinnaird stands by her support of the smoking ban. She said she tried hard to help Bliss, knowing he’d put his life savings and vision into the business. “But when I went to the sponsor of the bill, Dr. [William] Purcell [D-Anson], he asked me not to put it in because he said it would weaken the bill.”

Aren’t you all glad smart people like Ellie Kinaird are in Raleigh making decisions for you? Don’t you wish you could turn over more of your life choices to her? After all, she’s been elected to stuff- that makes her super smart. Way smarter than you and some lame business owner trying to make a living.

The next time I’m in Chapel Hill I’m stopping in at Hookah Bliss to give Mr. Bliss some of my business. Please do the same.

Just a few hours ago the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, House Bill 4173, which if passed by the U.S. Senate will do the following:

The House voted 223 to 202 today to approve the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations since the Great Depression, a sprawling measure that would create a new agency to protect consumers and give the government broad new powers to dismantle large firms that pose risks to the economy.

Los Angeles Times

So two things are happening here.  One, we will be creating yet another bloated Federal government bureaucracy with unconstitutional powers.  Second, the Federal government will now have the right to seize and liquidate a firm that it feels is “risky” to the economy.  Well who the hell makes that determination, the people in Congress?  Most of them have never operated a business in their lives.  What the hell would they know about what poses a risk to the economy?  Take a look at the state of the American economy today and tell me that these people are qualified to make this determination.

The potential for corruption of course is huge.  For example, what if the Feds wanted to force another industry to take government funds like they did to the banks with TARP and one firm pushes back saying no?  Under this new power all the Feds have to do then is lean on them and threaten to find them too “risky” to stay in business if they don’t play ball.

When we give the Feds the power to seize private businesses we take another step closer to becoming an oppressive Socialist state like Venezuela, Cuba, or North Korea.  This is incredibly dangerous, but your average American won’t even know this happened today and many that do will think it’s a fine idea to stick it to those Wall Street goons.  Let’s not forget that it was the Federal government that opened the door to this economic crisis in the first place.

Every Republican in North and South Carolina voted against this swipe of freedom.  They were joined by Democrat Mike McIntyre (NC-07).  All other Democrats in our two states voted for despotism today.

I needn’t remind you of the necessity to kill this health care bill so that in the future true reform can be done. This bill will bankrupt the country by creating a whole new entitlement program we can’t afford, will oppress the freedom of the American people by imposing an unconstitutional Federal mandate on you and your family to buy health insurance or face jail time, and put your medical records in a national database, a clear violation of privacy.

Tonight the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on whether or not to begin debate on the Senate’s version of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The name itself is a lie because it’s not affordable and every American who currently has health insurance, which is 85% of us, will see a drastic increase in their premiums if this passes, making it more expensive and eventually forcing more of the people onto the government public option, which is the ultimate goal of the socialist Democrats in D.C.

Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) is allegedly on the fence about this bill. If the Senate cannot reach 60 votes for cloture they cannot begin debate and the health care theft act cannot go forward any further. If you live in North Carolina and care about your freedom as an American, call Kay Hagan’s office and demand that she vote NO to cloture! Her D.C. office number is 202-224-6342.

The big news out today in Charlotte are the record level of students enrolled in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system living in “poverty.”  Around 68,000 students in the school district, or roughly 51% of the school population, get taxpayer funded lunch aid, according to the Charlotte Observer.

First off, I want to verbalize my disgust at how we so loosely throw around the word poverty in this country.  I get incredibly annoyed as to whom we refer to as living in “poverty.”  Go to a third world country where people are living in mud huts and eating flies and rice and then come back and tell me that there are Americans living in poverty.  It isn’t happening.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, how many of these children getting subsidized meal are from families who are truly at the “poverty” level?  According to the same article, not all of them.  CMS has a higher income threshold than the federal “poverty” level they use to determine which kids get a free ride on your dime so the school district is spending more of your money on this than they need to in the first place.  I also wonder how many of these students would still be living in “poverty” if the school district quit subsidizing the lifestyle with your tax dollars and the parents of these kids would instead actually have to be responsible for them.

Here are some facts about America’s so called “poor”.  This is an excerpt of a publication from The Heritage Foundation using data straight from the Census Bureau.

The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov­ernment reports:

• Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
• Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
• Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Still interested in subsidizing those “starving” children in Mecklenburg County with that multi-million dollar price tag each year?

Calling the health care bill approved by House lawmakers “a long way from perfect,” U.S. Rep. John Spratt defended his vote and vowed to work for more changes.

“I voted to send it to the Senate in the hope that a conference will iron out the differences and make the bill better,” the York Democrat said.

“Though it is not without problems, ‘Affordable Health Care for America’ is not the ‘monstrosity’ Mick Mulvaney portrays,” Spratt said.

The Herald

There you go, straight from the horse’s mouth.  The Affordable Health Care for America act is not a monstrosity.  Throwing you in jail for the failure to purchase health insurance either because you cannot afford to or you exercise the freedom to choose not to, is not a monstrosity.  For the first time in American history the Federal government may pass a bill that will jail you for not purchasing a product and that is not a monstrosity.

Is this what voters in the Fifth District sent Jack Spratt to Washington for?

If this doesn’t get your blood boiling…

The challenge ahead for conservatives is to tap into this clear support for freedom by illustrating what happens to real people when their lives and dreams get in the way of government tentacles that stifle personal and professional liberty.

That brings me to Adam Bliss, who owns Hookah Bliss in Chapel Hill. Thanks to North Carolina’s ban on smoking (pdf link) in most bars and restaurants, which takes effect Jan. 2, Bliss may lose his business and life savings. Why? Because hookah bars fall outside the exemptions state legislators wrote into the smoking ban to protect cigar bars and some clubs. As Bliss told The Daily Tar Heel, “If you look at the exemptions, they’re generally all places that rich, older white men like to smoke. If our representatives liked to smoke in hookah bars, hookah bars would have been exempt as well.”

Bliss is a real-world example of what happens when government policy — even when it’s well-intentioned — collides with the freedom to operate a business and sell a legal product.

The Carolina Journal

There’s only one reason someone would voluntarily walk into a hookah bar. Yet, the conceited anointed in our government think they have an obligation to protect us all from unwittingly inhaling the scourge of second-hand hookah smoke.

Adam Bliss is the face of freedom lost. Today it’s hookah bars. The question is, which industry — and which one of us — is the next Adam Bliss?

Town officials pressured David Bowden on Thursday, saying they will levy fines against the Cary man if he doesn’t remove or tone down a bright protest sign painted in huge, orange letters on the front of his house.

He has seven days.

In a statement, town officials say attempts to negotiate with Bowden have failed to resolve an impasse that started in July, when he had “Screwed By The Town of Cary” painted on his home at 305 SW Maynard Road.

The N&O

I’ve driven past this house. Honestly, I think the sign provides a nice contrast from the suburban monotony along Maynard.

Bowden, who says his house was damaged by runoff caused by town road construction, refuses to budge. The slogan is a free speech issue, he says, a stance that has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

Like the odd comet or the government voluntarily making itself smaller, sometimes incredibly rare things happen that you didn’t ever imagine seeing in your lifetime, and this is one of them. I am actually going to agree with the ACLU. I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Town officials offered to install a trench drain and new drainage pipe to re-route water away from Bowden’s home. Bowden declined the offer and issued his own ultimatum: The sign wouldn’t come down until the town buys his house. Bowden also declined third-party mediation, according to a town statement issued Thursday.

Is this guy being a stubborn jerk? You bet. Can he and should he work with the town to resolve this? Probably. Should the government force him? Nope, no, and Hell No. His house, his paint, his complaint. If he had a blaring bullhorn that would be one thing, but a bad paint job is another.

Sorry neighbors. If this is really getting to you, plant a hedge or something.