Wilmington Councilman To Waste Time, Money

Usually, when people really care about stupid shit, it’s confined to them and their supporters. Take, for example, these people planning on a boycott of stores that sell toy guns. I, for one, cannot imagine caring about what kind of water pistols KB Toys sells. (When I hear people angry over toy guns at stores, I mainly think about whether products such as, say, the Nintendo Zapper would trigger a boycott.)

NBC 10’s Tim Furlong reports that “despite a September resolution from City Council asking stores to remove the guns from their shelves, some stores like KB Toys in the Franklin Mills Mall sell guns in all colors, shapes and sizes, including a realistic-looking machine gun and handgun purchased by Furlong.” Ooh, a toy gun sting operation!

Okay, so Philadelphia City Council did pass a resolution, but those people waste time like it’s their job. (Because it is.) But it wasn’t binding and KB Toys was free to continuing selling Super Soakers and more realistic-looking toys, too. But that’s not the case in Wilmington, where a City Councilman is planning on banning saggy pants.

Much like the councilwoman in Trenton who proposed similar legislation, the proposed ordinance would fine people up to $250 for pants that this one councilman didn’t like the style of. His reasoning is not the weird saggy-pants-are-a-gateway-drug argument in some locales where this has popped up, but simply because… ah… well, let’s let the councilman, Mike Brown, explain:

Brown defended his stance by saying, “Listen, I know under the first amendment everybody has their rights, but i have rights too.”

Although the right to wear saggy pants (the 22nd Amendment) is being eroded, fortunately we still have a lot of other of our civil liberties. Well, okay, hmm. How’s this: Fortunately, I can still make fun of this dude proposing the law online. It’ll be debated next month, which I can only assume will be completely awesome.

A Nation In Crisis Needs You Now, Sisqo

In recent years, horrible columns with incessant whining of conservative commentators decrying the “nanny state” have risen in numbers that no graph could possibly contain. (Plus, I’m fairly sure conservative commentators are against functions, too, so there’s no point in plotting it anyway.) These columns have risen in such great amounts because commentators have run out of topics, yes. But they’ve also risen because, uh, lots and lots of people are telling us how to live our lives so we don’t manage to kill ourselves.

Some regulations by a government make sense. For example, we have building codes so we don’t all drive our cars into a new barn on Walnut Street. (Or something like that.) We have seatbelt laws because we’re too dumb to wear seatbelts. We have drug laws so the government can oppress us. But sometimes the laws seem to go too far, depriving us of our American right to eat ourselves into a 500-pound ball of fat and die of heart disease at 45. (I think that’s how Patrick Henry died.)

There is an interesting debate to be had, though; if making things like smoking a minor inconvenience actually saves peoples’ lives, does the government have a moral obligation (for lack of a better term) of enforcing these laws? Or does this encroach too much on our own liberty?

Yes, there is an interesting debate to be had, but not here. That’s because this new law is about banning thongs and baggy pants in Trenton.

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