This is just crazy.  From Britain’s Daily Mail:

Every adult should be forced to use a ‘carbon ration card’ when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.

The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain’s CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.

Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.

Anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven’t used up their allowance. The amount paid would be driven by market forces and the deal done through a specialist company.

As usual, the Cato Institute has some sage analysis of yet another harebrained government idea.

Britain’s parliamentary proposal to require all adults to carry a ‘carbon ration card’ would result in the absolute destruction of personal privacy with no detectable impact on global climate. The proposed card would track virtually all personal movements and purchases (including food), reporting them to the government. The cost of the loss of privacy is outweighed by absolutely no climatic benefit. The United Kingdom is a minor emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for a tiny fraction compared to the emissions of China, now the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide, where there is certainly no attempt to reduce personal use of energy.

Further, for such a program to be effective, the cost of energy would have to be so high that the British economy would grind to a halt. Stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide requires 60-80% reductions in emissions worldwide. Here in the United States, $4.00 per gallon gasoline is cutting use by a few percent. What price is required for an 80% reduction, and is this worth surrendering virtually all of one’s privacy to the government?

From Openmarket.org:

[E]arlier this week, a measure creating a federal fingerprint registry totally unrelated to national security passed a U.S. Senate committee almost without notice. The legislation would require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real estate industries — and not suspected of anything — to send their prints to the feds. The database and fingerprint mandates were tucked into housing and foreclosure assistance bills that on Tuesday passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 19-2.

The measure the committee passed states that “an indvidual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first … obtaining a unique identifier.” To obtain this “identifier,” an individual is requiredto [sic] “furnish” to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry “information concerning the applicant’s identity, including fingerprints for submission” to the FBI and other government agencies.

I would love for someone to explain to me why, in a country that purports to be a bastion of freedom, someone who is willing to lend his money to another must provide the federal government with a fingerprint.

From the Star Tribune:

Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge of Allegiance, violating a district policy that the principal now says may soon be reworded to protect free speech rights.

As an arm of the government, schools cheapen the pledge by requiring pupils to recite it or stand during it.  Any government that forces its subjects to pledge loyalty doesn’t deserve any loyalty.  One thing that makes our country great is that people have fought and died to protect our right to speak freely without government recourse.

From AL.com:

Ninety-two percent of Alabama voters agree that people should not be exposed to secondhand smoke in the workplace, according to a poll released Monday by the American Cancer Society.

The results of the poll, conducted among 503 randomly selected registered voters across the state from Dec. 14-18, was released Monday during a news conference at the Statehouse.

The poll also showed 78 percent of the respondents favored a law making all Alabama workplaces smoke-free.

I wonder what percentage of respondents actually work at a place where smoking is allowed.  I would not be one bit surprised if the 78% in favor of a workplace smoking ban already work in a smoke free workplace and simply want their preference imposed on the other 22%, some of which may have chosen to work in such an environment of their own free will and do not support a law to stop it.

Maybe I’ll try to obtain and look through the poll numbers if I get the time.

From the Wall Street Journal: Dancing Spychief Wants to Tap Into Cyberspace

The content of the article is quite disturbing, to say the least.

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse. Congressional aides tell The Journal that they, too, are also anticipating a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Oh no, the FISA battles will seem like a fond dream compared to this fight.

The dancing part?  You have to wait until the end of the article.

McConnell, a South Carolina native, also reveals that he fancies himself a fabulous dancer.

Well, isn’t that special?!