The Defense Department is being urged to ban tobacco use by its personnel, Gregg Zoroya reports for USA Today.

Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property, a change that could dramatically alter a culture intertwined with smoking.

Jack Smith, head of the Pentagon’s office of clinical and program policy, says he will recommend that Gates adopt proposals by a federal study that cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs as reasons for the ban.

The study by the Institute of Medicine, requested by the VA and Pentagon, calls for a phased-in ban over a period of years, perhaps up to 20. “We’ll certainly be taking that recommendation forward,” Smith says.

A tobacco ban would confront a military culture, the report says, in which “the image of the battle-weary soldier in fatigues and helmet, fighting for his country, has frequently included his lit cigarette.”

Also, the report said, troops worn out by repeated deployments often rely on cigarettes as a “stress reliever.” The study found that tobacco use in the military increased after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began.

There are arguments to be made in favor of a ban, of course.  Not only in terms of the need to maintain a fit force but also the long-term health care costs that the federal government may incur.  Balanced against that is freedom, not something the military is known to care much about for its troops despite fighting for same as its mission statement.

Still, I think John Cole is correct in his prediction that “we will see the end of DADT and homosexuals will be openly serving in the military before a tobacco ban.”

The FDA now has the power to regulate what cigarettes taste like. For the children.

President Barack Obama cited his own long struggle to quit the cigarettes he got hooked on as a teenager as he signed the nation’s strongest-ever anti-smoking bill Monday and praised it for providing critically needed protections for kids. “The decades-long effort to protect our children from the harmful effects of tobacco has emerged victorious,” Obama said at a signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

[...]

Before dozens of invited guests, including children from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the president signed legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented authority to regulate tobacco. Obama accused the tobacco industry of targeting young people, exposing them to a “constant and insidious barrage of advertising where they live, where they learn and where they play. Most insidiously, they are offered products with flavorings that mask the taste of tobacco and make it even more tempting.” The new law bans candy and fruit flavors in tobacco products, and it limits advertising that could attract young people.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act also allows the FDA to lower the amount of addiction-causing nicotine in tobacco products and block misleading labels such “low tar” and “light.” Tobacco companies also will be required to cover their cartons with large graphic warnings. The law won’t let the FDA ban nicotine or tobacco outright.

Just think how far Obama might have gone had it not been for Joe Camel.

Do they still make those bubble gum cigarettes they had when I was a kid?  Presumably, they’re not banned by this action, since they’re not made of tobacco.  But they could theoretically encourage kids to smoke.

And couldn’t any advertising attract young people?

Photo by Flickr user Joan Thewlis under Creative Commons license.

We’re in Asheville, North Carolina for a couple of days, the first stop on a road trip to see friends and family. I awoke to find a copy of the Asheville Citizen-Times at the door with a headline I thought I’d never see: “NC approves ban on smoking.”

North Carolina, a state built on tobacco, will outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars starting next year. Citing the dangers of second-hand smoke, legislators gave their final stamp of approval to a smoking ban Tuesday with a tight vote in the House, 62-56.

Gov. Bev Perdue said she would sign the legislation, hailing “an important and historic day for North Carolina.”

The ban reflects the dwindling influence of tobacco companies in setting the state’s agenda. It presents a hassle to the owners of some diners and nightspots, and an affront to those who see it as an invasion of property rights.

But Lee Storrow, a 19-year-old UNC Chapel Hill student from Asheville, said most people his age will just be glad not to come home smelling like smoke. “They can choose to go out with friends and not have to choose between their health and having a good time on a Friday or Saturday night,” said Storrow, who pushed for the ban as a volunteer with the American Heart Association.

I’m with Storrow in preferring not to have to wade through a sea of cigarette smoke in order to dine out or grab a beer at the bar.  Still, I continue to believe that the proprietor of the establishment should have the right to decide what best serves his customers.  Tobacco is a legal product, after all.

I’m astounded, though, that North Carolina, a state so associated with tobacco that many brands of cigarettes are named after its cities, is taking this step.  I live in Virginia, the other major tobacco state, which passed a similar ban in March, effective 1 January 2010.

The original version of the post had Virginia still “contemplating” the ban but commenter Boyd noted that it had already passed.

One of Dave Schuler’s favorite statements in recent months is that “Anything too big to fail is too big to exist.”  If we’re not going to allow them to shoulder the negative consequences of failure because we deem it too dangerous to society, then their very existence is too dangerous for society.   Ezra Klein makes a similar argument with slightly different logic:

The main lesson of all this is that society cannot permit the existence of private institutions that are too large to fail. And that’s not only because they might eventually fail and then we are on the hook for their liabilities. It’s also because the lesson of the bailouts — both the auto and banking bailouts — is that you desperately want to become too big to fail. You get better terms from the government. You’re protected from bankruptcy and insolvency. You have tremendous access to the halls of power. You get a seat at the bargaining table rather than before the bankruptcy judge. Reaching “too big to fail” status is like being kinged in checkers. The rules give you special powers and subsidies. Now that those advantages have been exposed, companies will have much more obvious incentives to chase size. Unless, of course, we stop them.

My only problem with this is that the probability of bad behavior on the part of government is being used to justify government having more power.   It’s similar to the argument that we can’t allow private individuals the freedom to smoke cigarettes, ride motorcycles without a helmet, or drive without a seatbelt because, after all, they could get hurt and turn to the welfare state.  It makes sense only if you assume a too powerful, too intrusive government.

Frankly, I’d rather just let Bank of America and AIG and others fail and let the chips fall where they may.

Cartoon: Lex Lowther

The FDA has agreed to make the “morning-after pill” available to 17-year-olds without a prescription, pursuant to the order of a federal judge.

Plan B, also called the morning-after pill, is intended to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex.

On March 23, a federal court ordered that Plan B, an emergency contraception pill, be made available over the counter to those 17 and up, the agency said in a statement on its Web site. The agency will not appeal that order, the statement said.

In the order, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman also asked the agency to consider whether the pill should be available to women of all ages without a prescription, saying that such a determination is best left to the expertise of the FDA rather than a federal district judge.

So, law school gives one sufficient expertise to understand that 17-year-old girls should be allowed unsupervised access to abortificants but not enough to be clear on the status of 16-year-olds? That seems like a serious flaw in the curriculum!

Here’s the other weird thing:  Ordinary birth control pills, designed to prevent pregnancy before the fact, still require a doctor’s prescription even for adults.   By what logic is the federal government required by law to allow access to after-the-fact birth control to minors?

There is no such thing as a 17-year-old “woman,” let alone “women of all ages” defined as “girls 16 and younger.”  At least not in an era when those who look to be under 27 are required to show ID to purchase cigarettes and where 18-year-olds who haven’t yet graduated high school have restrictions on their drivers’ licenses.

And he rebuked the FDA for apparently departing from its own procedures with respect to making decisions on the pill’s over-the-counter status, noting the “unusual involvement of the White House in the Plan B decision-making process.”

The plaintiffs in the case presented “unrebutted evidence of the FDA’s lack of good faith” toward the application to switch Plan B from prescription to non-prescription use, the judge wrote. “This lack of good faith is evidenced by, among other things, (1) repeated and unreasonable delays, pressure emanating from the White House, and the obvious connection between the confirmation process of two FDA commissioners and the timing of the FDA’s decisions; and (2) significant departures from the FDA’s normal procedures and policies … as compared to the review of other switch applications in the past 10 years,” Korman wrote.

Now, this is an interesting issue. Presumably, Plan B is “safe” for even young girls — otherwise, given the variation in physiology in the population, no company would risk selling it to 18-year-olds. So, the issue of where to draw the line is based, not on health concerns, but rather on social judgments of maturity and the ability to make independent decisions. In other words, a political judgment has to be made. Why shouldn’t the White House be involved? (And I say that with the opposition party currently in control and slated to be there for at least another 1367 days.)

As to the practicalities, 16 would seem to be the cut-off, since that’s the age where kids can get a driver’s license and therefore have official ID. Otherwise, you might as well just declare open season.

Incidentally, I believe Plan B ought to be available and am not sure that it, along with ordinary birth control pills, prenatal vitamins, and a whole host of other things that now require a prescription shouldn’t be available over the counter.   But the age at which minor children get access to things strikes me as a public policy decision that ought to be left to the political process rather than the courts.

John McCain’s secret plan for Iran: kill them with cigarettes.

Presidential candidate John McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the country by saying it may be “a way of killing ‘em.”

McCain, known for acerbic comments and for sometimes firing verbally from the hip, was responding to a report that U.S. exports to Iran rose tenfold during President George W. Bush’s term in office despite hostility between the two states. A rise in cigarette sales was a big part of that, according to an Associated Press analysis of seven years of U.S. trade figures.

“Maybe that’s a way of killing ‘em,” McCain said to reporters during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. “I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn’t had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years,” he added, laughing.

It’s both rather weak as a joke and a stupid thing to say for a man who needs to assure moderates that he in fact does not shoot from the hip but is really a serious leader in foreign affairs, let alone a man who could be elected president and have to lead our diplomatic relations with Iran. Still, it’s probably not worth all the hubbub it’s generating.

Michelle Malkin gets it right: “I can hear it coming already: faux outrage, MSM feeding frenzy, Worst Person in the World designation, and a 24-hour cycle of cable TV teeth-gnashing over McCain’s off-handed joke about cigarette exports to Iran. ”

• Kathy @ Liberty Street: “That’s not the response of a U.S. president. That’s the response of a 6th grader who can’t answer the question in class because he hasn’t studied.”

• Matt Yglesias: “John McCain once again “jokes” about his desire to kill Iranians. This time, the joke is a little bit more of a real joke, but the targets of his lust for killing foreigners are clearly ordinary Iranian civilians. If a major Iranian political leader were to repeatedly joke about bombing the United States and killing Americans, you can just imagine the shit-storm about how Iran isn’t a normal country with normal interests, that it’s run by irrational fanatics, appeasement won’t work, etc.”

• David Knowles: “It’s one thing to declare that you’re not interested in public diplomacy with Iran. And another to continue with the macabre knee-slappers.”

• Satyam Khanna doesn’t really say anything in a post titled, “McCain jokes about ‘killing’ Iranians by getting them addicted to smoking.”

In the immortal words of Sergeant Hulka, “Lighten up, Francis.” Serious people in high visibility offices ought be careful about their jokes, to be sure, but it’s not as if the Iranian mullahs are going to suddenly become anti-American as a result of an off-the-cuff one-liner. For one thing, they’re already anti-American. For another, they’re grownups who aren’t going to let something like that get in the way of their larger interests.

Ronald Reagan famously joked, as president, about bombing the Soviets, whom he repeatedly referred to as the Evil Empire. He negotiated two major arms control deals with them and presided over the beginning of the collapse of that empire.

Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues for abolishing the minimum voting age and letting kids vote “when they decide they want the vote.” Matt Yglesias seconds the emotion.

Gobry’s argument is long and largely defies excerpting. It boils down to:

• Setting maturity at 18 is arbitrary.

• Kids will grow up and face the consequences of current policy decisions, so should have some say over them.

• It would diminish the ability of the elderly to succeed in rent seeking behavior.

• Any argument that justifies denying the vote to children could be applied to some class of people that is now allowed to vote.

These things are all true. But, really, this argument just illustrates reductio ad absurdum.

We have a representative democracy and believe that those who will have to pay for and abide by government policies should elect those who make said policies. We also believe that those who are voting should be educated, have a stake in society, and be mentally competent to make decisions.

These goals are, however, not fully mutually achievable.

We don’t want people who are seriously insane or otherwise truly incapable of understanding what they are doing to vote even though they are nonetheless subject to the laws of society; then again, we also limit their criminal liability. As a practical matter, though, there are few enough of these people that we can decide on a case-by-case basis.

Similarly, it would be absurd to allow infants to vote. They obviously can’t communicate their ideas in a manner comprehensible to us and they have limited ability to process information. How about a 5-year-old? They can walk and talk. But so few of them have even the slightest understanding of the workaday world that it would be silly to give them the vote. At best, they’d just reinforce their parents’ choice. And, as with mentally incompetent adults, they have far less culpability under our law. They can’t sign contracts and are seldom held accountable by the state for their actions.

But, of course, we can find individual 8-year-olds who are smarter and more mature than some 18-year-olds. And, certainly, nothing magically transforms a person who is 17 years, 364 days old into a responsible human being the next day.

So, 18 is arbitrary, right? Well, no. It’s an age where we expect most people to have the requisite maturity to be responsible enough to make certain decisions. They can sign contracts and be held accountable for them. They can join the military. They can get full-time jobs. The burden is on them to demonstrate that they’re not mentally competent to be responsible for violation of the criminal code.

Could we maybe lower the age to 16? Or 15? Maybe. Certainly, I was very interested in politics and had decided preferences that I could articulate as a 14-year-old. But, frankly, most people at that age aren’t paying attention. And, while that’s true of many adults, few 15-year-olds are paying taxes or otherwise contributing to society.

The last consideration, incidentally, is something that no one has mentioned in the comment sections of Gobry’s or Yglesias’ posts, despite some pretty interesting discussions taking place there. One of the fundamental ideas of our Republic is that the right to participate in government flows from the duty to fund it. “No taxation without representation” was one of the rallying cries of our war for independence. The two were always thought to be linked.

Indeed, suffrage was once restricted to landholders on the basis that only those who were paying for government had any right to have a say about it. We ultimately democratized, coming to see that disenfranchising the poor was wrong since they faced many of the burdens of citizenship, including military service. (And the passage of the income tax rendered the issue moot, regardless.) Eventually, attainment of majority was deemed enough to satisfy the “stake in society” principle. We even lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 because we came to believe that forcing people to go to war at 18 but not allowing them to have a say over whether we sent them was wrong. (Although, oddly, we’ve since decided that we can withhold their right to drink alcoholic beverages or smoke cigarettes.)

If rights and responsibility are linked, then the voting age must also be the age of accountability. If you’re mature enough to vote, you’re mature enough to be liable for you conduct. Consideration of lowering the voting age should be made with that in mind.

Two days ago, Rep. John McHugh (D R-NY), introduced legislation that would ban the mailing of cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and roll-your-own tobacco. The relevant portion of the legislation is as follows:

Sec. 3002b. Nonmailability of certain tobacco products

`(a) In General- Cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and roll-your-own-tobacco–

`(1) are nonmailable matter;

`(2) shall not be–

`(A) deposited in the mails; or

`(B) carried or delivered through the mails; and

`(3) shall be disposed of as the Postal Service directs.

`(b) Civil Penalty-

`(1) IN GENERAL- Any person who violates subsection (a)(2)(A) shall be liable to the United States for a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed $100,000 for each violation.

Jim Harper at Cato disapproves of the bill, but doesn’t think that it will affect too many people. I beg to differ–a quick Google search for “mail order cigarettes” unearthed quite a few internet mail order sites. And every single one of them will go out of business as a consequence.

Ostensibly, the reason for this legislation is to keep cigarettes out of the hands of minors. But surely this same goal could be accomplished by enacting mandatory ID checks–such as a driver’s license or other means. This legislation has been introduced before and failed to pass. Here’s hoping that it fails again. As long as cigarettes are a legal product, there is no reason to ban their use in the mail.

UPDATE: Commenter SDM informs me that McHugh is a Republican, not a Democrat as I previously noted.

Massive numbers of Palestinians are fleeing to Egypt.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah. The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed last week by Israel.

Jubilant men and women crossed unhindered by border controls over the toppled corrugated metal along sections of the barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions, car tires and cigarettes and one man even bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.

They were stocking up on goods made scarce by the Israeli blockade and within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of Rafah had run out of stock. The border fence had divided the Rafah into two halves, one on the Egyptian side and one in southern Gazan.

One imagines they were yelling “Rodney King!” as they did this. . . .

Aside from whatever impact this has on the never-ending Israel-Palestinian mess, one wonders how it will affect the border security debate in the United States. Suddenly, erecting walls doesn’t seem like such a great solution.

UPDATE: A video report from AP:

Bob Novak has a scathing attack on Mike Huckabee’s conservative credentials.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses and might make more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Novak portrays Huckabee as a big government guy who brings his religious fervor to forwarding a liberal agenda:

There is no doubt about Huckabee’s record during a decade in Little Rock. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax-and-spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he lost 100 pounds and decided to press his new lifestyle on the American people, he was hardly being a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax. More recently he signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit within normal boundaries of economic conservatism, such as when he criticized President Bush’s veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Calling global warming a “moral issue” mandating “a biblical duty” to prevent climate change, he has endorsed a cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

The modern conservative movement has always been an odd mixture.

Reagan successfully mobilized evangelical Christians but he was decidedly not one of them; he was a small government conservative who merely talked the talk on issues like abortion and school prayer while not actually doing much about them. He managed to expand the base to include social conservatives but hold on to the economic conservatives by promoting low taxes, free(ish) trade, devout anti-Communism, and a massive increase in defense spending.

The collapse of the Soviet Union weakened this coalition and helped make the election of Bill Clinton possible. The 9/11 attacks again made national security Priority One for conservatives and again made it necessary for evangelicals and the Chamber of Commerce crowd to band together.

Still, the bedfellows are no less strange. Evangelical leaders are endorsing the likes of Rudy Giuliani because counter-terrorism has taken on a quasi-messianic urgency. At the same time, we’ve got Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism makes him a “cultist” in the eyes of many evangelicals, leading the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Huckabee is making traditional Republicans very nervous while rallying strong support in Iowa — and drawing the endorsements of Chuck Norris and Ric Flair. And, of course, there’s the Ron Paul phenomenon.

Interesting times.

Photo credit: Mary Ann Chastain, AP

Several highly touted ballot initiatives were defeated in yesterday’s off-off-year elections.

Cost-conscious voters rejected school vouchers for Utah students, state-sponsored stem cell research in New Jersey and higher cigarette taxes in Oregon to fund health care for uninsured children. Texans, meanwhile, authorized up to $3 billion in bonds over 10 years to create a cancer research center, one of the few closely watched ballot measures across the nation that voters approved Tuesday.

New Jersey voters had not killed a statewide ballot measure since 1990. The rejection was a defeat for Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who campaigned heavily for the plan to borrow $450 million over 10 years to finance stem cell research. “The public understands the state has serious financial issues that must be addressed first,” Corzine spokeswoman Lili Stainton said.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski also blamed money after voters opted not to raise the cigarette tax by 84.5 cents a pack — to $2.02 — to fund health insurance for about 100,000 children lacking coverage. Tobacco companies opposing the measure outspent supporters by a 4-1 margin, contributing nearly $12 million. “What happened was, the tobacco industry bought the election,” the Democratic governor told The Associated Press.

Utah voters killed the nation’s first statewide school voucher program open to all children, not just those from low or middle-income families. It was the first voucher election in the U.S. since 2000, when voters in Michigan and California rejected efforts to subsidize private schools. There have been 11 state referendums on various voucher programs since 1972, all of them unsuccessful, according to the National School Boards Association.

Utah, with a conservative electorate, a Republican governor and GOP-controlled Legislature, was seen nationally as a key test of voter sentiment for vouchers. But opponents, with millions of dollars from a national teachers union, persuaded residents to say no. Experts had said a green light in Utah could have led to similar programs in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and elsewhere.

Ballot initiatives often wind up being dominated by interested minorities, who are more easily mobilized. That’s especially true when they’re run in low turnout special elections rather than on the ballot with presidential or gubernatorial races.

A few years ago, Alabama had a very controversial ballot measure to authorize a state-sponsored lottery, modeled on Georgia’s highly regarded Hope Scholarship program, to fund education improvements. It was overwhelmingly popular in the statewide polling running up to the election and expected to pass easily. Instead, the reverse happened because a coalition of Republican-leaning white evengalicals and Democratic-leading black churches mobilized their congregations to defeat the measure.

There’s no doubt, then, that tobacco and teachers union money would have been highly influential in the Oregon and Utah contests. Not only could they mobilize turnout, but they had more resources to flood the airwaves with persuasive advertising.

That said, both measures had tough hills to climb ideologically. Even devout non-smokers should be easy to persuade that a $2.02 per pack tax on cigarettes is onerous and that forcing these people — who are disproportionately poor, elderly, or uneducated — to pay for the general good is unfair. And the argument that vouchers could seriously harm the public schools while not providing enough money for the poor to afford private education is a powerful one.

Tennessee revenuers are waiting at the borders to arrest people with cigarettes.

Starting [Thursday], state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars.

Critics say the new “cigarette surveillance program” amounts to the use of “police state” tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate commerce. But state Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr says his department is simply doing its job, enforcing a valid state law while protecting Tennessee retailers who properly pay state taxes.

Agents have already been watching out-of-state stores that sell cigarettes near the Tennessee border to “get a feel where problem areas are,” Farr said. While declining to be specific, the commissioner said “problem areas” are generally along interstate highways with exits near the Tennessee border.

The idea is for the monitoring agent to spot a person buying cigarettes in volume at an out-of-state market, then departing in a vehicle with Tennessee license tags. Starting today, monitoring agents spotting such a suspect will call an arresting agent who will stop the car when it enters Tennessee, he said.

[...]

Tennessee’s cigarette tax went from 20 cents per pack to 62 cents per pack effective July 1. All eight states that border Tennessee have lower tax rates, meaning smokers can save up to 45 cents per pack — $4.50 for a 10-pack carton — by purchasing out of state. The border states with the lowest cigarette taxes are Missouri with 17 cents and Mississippi at 18 cents. The highest is Arkansas with 59 cents. Kentucky and Virginia both tax cigarettes at 30 cents a pack, North Carolina at 35 cents, Georgia at 37 cents and Alabama at 42.5 cents.

Under state law, bringing more than two cartons of cigarettes into the state without paying Tennessee taxes is a “Class B” misdemeanor, carrying punishment of up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine. Bringing 25 or more cartons is a “Class E” felony, with minimum penalty of one year in prison and a maximum of six years plus a fine of up to $3,000. In addition, the specific state statute dealing with untaxed cigarettes provides that vehicles used to transport more than two cartons “are considered contraband and are subject to seizure,” says a Department of Revenue statement.

Farr said that agents have been instructed to seize any vehicle carrying more than 25 cartons of cigarettes without Tennessee tax stamps. In cases where three to 24 cartons are involved, he said vehicle seizure is “at the officer’s discretion.”

How this can possibly be constitutional is beyond me. First, what gives Tennessee police officers the authority to operate across state lines? Second, surely seizing a vehicle potentially worth upwards of $40,000 for the “crime” of possessing more than two cartons of cigarettes amounts to excessive punishment under the 8th and 14th Amendments? [To say nothing, as Tennessean Don Sensing notes, of the Commerce Clause.]

When I lived in Chattanooga, I made it a point to fill up my tank in Georgia whenever I was there because that state’s much lower gasoline taxes saved me a substantial sum. Could Tennessee outlaw that? For that matter, when I lived in high sales tax states, I frequently bought expensive commodity items in neighboring municipalities that had lower local taxes. Could that be outlawed? (Technically, many states require people to pay them sales taxes for out-of-state purchases, whether online or in real space; they seldom try to enforce those laws, though.)

Ed Morrissey believes, “The notion that an American cannot cross a state border without risking arrest for purchasing a completely legal product for his own use should be anathema to everyone across the political spectrum.” Bruce McQuain, “Can’t wait for the court challenge on this one.”

John Cole doesn’t see what they’re so upset about, seeing as how both have supported the Bush administration’s use of Constitutionally dubious domestic surveillance methods to protect us from terrorists. Then again, there is a question of proportionality. One can support the death penalty for premeditated murder but not for failure to file one’s income taxes.

Creating an absurdly high set of penalties for non-criminal action and then assigning near-absolute discretion to agents on the enforcement side is a recipe for corruption. Like our speed limit laws, it turns honorable citizens into enemies of the police. Given that the state actually has legitimate laws that it can’t effectively enforce, and needs the cooperation of the citizenry to do so, it’s just incredibly dangerous.

This news is a couple of months old, but I stumbled across it and still think that it’s worth noting. Apparently, the National Health Service in England is considering a plan to bump patients of surgery waiting lists if they refuse to quit smoking one month prior to surgery.

SMOKERS are to be asked to give up their habit before they are put on the waiting list for routine operations such as hip replacements and heart surgery.

National Health Service managers say smokers take more time to recover from surgery, blocking beds for longer and costing more to treat.

[...]

NHS managers want patients not to have smoked any cigarettes for a full month before surgery. But as they would be expected to take about two months to stop, operations could be delayed by up to three months.

The managers do insist, however, that it is up to doctors to decide whether the surgery can still go ahead if the patient fails to give up.

Some doctors argue that the policy could deter smokers from attending appointments because they believed that they would not qualify for treatment.

I haven’t yet been able to determine if this policy will go through or not, but it’s a disturbing prospect nonetheless, and illustrates one real danger of government controlled health care. Namely, the fact that once the government controls the purse strings, they can manipulate freely chosen behavior in subtle and insidious ways. Once it’s acceptable for government to de-prioritize patients for one particular habit, how much longer until the next unhealthy habit causes an increase in your wait? Obese? To the back of the line! Enjoy beer drinking? Back of the line! Don’t exercise enough? Back of the line!

In a private health care system, I don’t have a problem with, say, smokers or obese people paying higher insurance premiums–much like driving a red Ferrari, you need to pay more as your risk goes up. But the difference between paying extra insurance for an unhealthy habit and having one’s medical needs marginalized for an unhealthy habit is enormous. If anything, what the NHS is doing is almost worse than an outright ban on unhealthy activities. In essence, what the government is doing here is punishing people for engaging in lawful activities. That’s just disgusting.

The Supreme Court yesterday denied Big Tobacco’s bid to take smoking lawsuits out of state courts.

In a major blow to tobacco companies, the US Supreme Court yesterday denied tobacco giant Philip Morris’ s request to shift all smokers’ lawsuits to federal courts, which generally give greater leeway to corporations and smaller damage awards to those claiming harm from years of exposure to tobacco smoke.

[...]

Attorneys for Philip Morris argued that, because the Federal Trade Commission is responsible for regulating the tobacco industry, federal courts should have jurisdiction over the case. The company also argued that because the US government has allowed tobacco companies such as Philip Morris to assume responsibility for tests to determine tar and nicotine levels in cigarettes, the federal court should decide the case.

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed, but the Supreme Court unanimously reversed that decision. In the opinion, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that the high court found no evidence that the federal government had delegated its legal authority allowing the tobacco companies to take over testing for tar and nicotine from the US government.

I have no real sense of the merits of Philip Morris’ argument and the fact that the opinion was unanimous would seem a pretty strong indication that they were on shaky legal ground.

What strikes me as odd, however, is that Big Tobacco ought to have the presumed right to have these cases heard in the federal courts on diversity grounds. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that, “The [federal government's] judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity. . . between Citizens of different States.” Corporations have long been deemed “citizens” and have enjoyed the right to diversity status since John Marshall was Chief Justice. Theoretically, then, Philip Morris should be entitled to have disputes brought by citizens of states other than where it is incorporated heard in federal court.

Any legal scholars out there know why they aren’t?

The Thinly Veiled Patriotism Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES)

The Winners:

First: Ator – Bush: “Damn these photo-ops, Mr Thumb hurts like hell…”

Second: Mister Biggs – “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

Third: CowBoy Blob – We’re on a Mission from God.

Honorable Mention:

brainy435 – Wait a minute… which one of us will be flying the cargo plane out of Hong Cong?

yetanotherjohn – Bush stated that if you thought his administration had been spending money like a drunken sailor before, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Wyatt Earp – “Mr. President, how was Tailhook?”

The ‘TOP GUN’ Award Winner

Kenny
Mr. Bush: “I think she’s lost that lovin’ feelin’.”
Cadet: “No she hasn’t, Mr. President … I hate it when she does that.”

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

“Hey there Chief, wanna be a rear admiral, if ya know what I mean?”

“Hey Pres, Let’s say we head down to the Blue Oyster after this photo Op.”

The has already hit the highway.