This week, Los Angeles County okayed a new regulation banning the throwing of Frisbees or footballs on the beaches – which, of course, destroys the purpose of living in Southern California in the first place.  The first offense will earn you a hefty $100 fine; the second, $200; the third and beyond, $500.  You can, of course, apply for a permit.  For parents with industrious children, holes deeper than 18 inches are also banned – so get your kids the cheap plastic shovels or pay a fine.

What’s the point of this law?  Unless it’s to prevent horrific incidents like this, the only point is to raise cash for the state.  This has become the MO for California law enforcement: higher ticket costs, more tickets written.  California is now a police state – except when it comes to policing actual crime in hard-hit areas.  The state, counties, and cities task police officers with going after soccer moms going 45 in a 35 zone rather than monitoring drug-ridden precincts.

The trend is obvious, and California motorists know it: as McClatchy reported back in August 2011, “As the state and cities wrestled with shrinking revenue and growing budget gaps, the California Highway Patrol issued about 200,000 more traffic citations in 2009 than it did two years before.  Sacramento Superior Court, meanwhile, processed about 37,000 more traffic filings last year than in 2006 – a 16 percent increase.”  The size of the fines has escalated dramatically, too: “With the average fine costing as much as $250 and rising, the increase in CHP tickets produced as much as $50 million over two years. That money went to state and local courts, crime labs and other purposes.”

(more…)

The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), a group of angry, feminist lawyers are intimidating high school districts throughout the nation.  They want schools to offer exactly equal opportunities to girls as to boys in high school sports by establishing a strict quota system.  To some, this may sound fair on its surface, but in reality, its execution has meant the closure of popular varsity sports for men throughout the nation in favor of female sport teams where coaches can hardly muster a team or find a league to play in and which generates even less public interest.

When very small girls are given toy trucks to play with, they naturally reject them; boys don’t.  These behaviors have been well documented in studies of six month old children by researchers. This is way before gender stereo types are inculcated into the children. Boys like to wrestle, girls don’t. Shall we force girls to have wrestling teams or just abandon boy’s teams if we can’t have an equal girl’s team?   Yet, this is the precisely the scenario being played out throughout the nation.   There are differences between genders and throughout history, and in disparate civilizations, men were the warriors and the athletes well before federal Title IX programs which tried to artificially level the playing field.

Title IX of the Federal Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits intentional gender-based discrimination in most educational programs that receive federal funds.  The debate that has been shadowing Title IX is not due to the law itself, which on its face is reasonable.  The debate has been about defining “discrimination” and then identifying the remedies for this discrimination if and when discovered.

Title IX actually outlaws reaching these goals by the use of quotas.

(more…)

Reason.tv presents the Bud Bowl of a new generation!

Two drinks, one field, and numerous mixtures of alcohol and caffeine that “cause” young people to engage in risky behavior.

It’s The Battle of the Binge: Buzz Bowl I

Who will come out on top? Four Loko? Joose? Or will it be Senator Schumer (D-NY) and the FDA?

(more…)

I hate football. Not as much as I detest baseball and basketball and NASCAR, but the mere thought of sitting in a stadium watching a football match or game or whatever it’s called makes me dream of the sweet release of death. So when I heard that Rush Limbaugh wanted to buy one of these teams or crews or squadrons or whatever they are called, I shook my head. If I had a couple hundred loose mil to spend, it would be on a tropical island, not a bunch of ‘roided-up dudes bashing into each other and preempting my favorite shows. But its Rush’s money and this is America.

Well, it was America. Apparently, that’s changed in the last few days because now it appears that Rush cannot be allowed to spend his own money as he wants to because his political views are unsatisfactory. He’s conservative, and therefore the rights, privileges and immunities or any other American citizen no longer appear apply to him. Just ask Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who urged the NFL not to allow Rush’s bid to buy some team (The Rams? The Raiders? The Yankees? I really don’t follow this stuff).

Let me get this straight, because this is more disturbing than the thought of having to attend a hockey doubleheader: An American political leader is demanding that a private business not do business with an American citizen because she does not approve of his politics.

(more…)