May’s biggest busybodies are taking it to poker players and teen tanners, but the nation’s top nag has lovers of pink-in-the-middle burgers seeing red.

In a stunning blow to all that is juicy and delicious, the Tar Heel state actually prohibits restaurants from serving rare or medium-rare hamburgers. (And if this crime against meat freedom seems especially un-American, keep in mind that it comes from the same state that once banned Old Glory at public rallies.)

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Recently Illinois Senator Ed Maloney (D) introduced SB136 which would require “the parents or legal guardians of children attending non-public schools, a defined term, or private or parochial schools to annually register their children with the State Board of Education, in conformance with procedures prescribed by the State Board of Education.”

Basically homeschoolers and anyone else who has deemed the public education system a failure would have to register their children with the State, since apparently Senator Maloney believes “that since the State was responsible for the education of our children, the State should know who was being homeschooled,” according to Pastor James McDonald who met with the Senator along with several homeschooling advocates.

I hate to burst the Senator’s progressive utopian bubble, but as Pastor McDonald points out “in the eyes of most home educators, the responsibility to ensure our children receive a competent education belonged to parents, not the State.”  I don’t think registering children, like licensing a dog, was exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he envisioned public education.

,Jefferson trusted the people closest to the issue to care most for the outcomes.  Regarding education he stated in a letter to Joseph Cabell, “But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.”

Hardly a resounding endorsement of the power of the State, which he was extremely wary of, when he stated in the same letter, “What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.”  Or even the Illinois Senate.

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Feature story in the alternative newspaper SF Weekly:

In recent years, San Francisco government has passed numerous laws to make us healthier, greener, and — in the city’s eyes — all-around better people. Whether we like it or not. This includes banning the sale of cigarettes in drugstores, and, later, supermarkets; banning plastic bags in large chain stores; banning bottled water in City Hall, and the sale of soft drinks on government property; banning the declawing of cats; making composting mandatory; and forbidding city departments from doing business with companies that were involved in the (pre–Civil War) slave trade, yet haven’t publicly atoned.

The city may yet ban the sale of any pets except fish, and the sale of bottled water during events on public property. Banning foie gras, meanwhile, didn’t catch on, even here. Neither did allowing the city to prosecute anyone who depicts images of animal cruelty if they set foot in San Francisco — essentially the same niche Belgium has carved out for itself with accused war criminals.

San Francisco’s acumen for imposing bans has grown so pronounced that when an anticircumcision zealot began disseminating a petition to criminalize the practice within city limits, observers nationwide didn’t write it off as fringe lunacy but, instead, saw it as just another day at the office in San Francisco.

That ban didn’t make the cut. And San Francisco does not have a monopoly on banning things. But nowhere else can you ban so much with such ease and so little political blowback.

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Last month the food police sued a North Carolina man for growing fresh vegetables, and this month San Francisco’s food cops have committed a different kind of atrocity by making the City by the Bay the first major metropolis to ban toys in happy meals.

This month’s top busybody is the pol who sponsored the ordinance to make happy meals sad, the one who hopes his “food justice” agenda goes nationwide.

Presenting the Nanny of the Month for October 2010: San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar!

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Greece is the fiscally-dysfunctional member of the European Union. On this side of the pond we have California. Illustrating just how bleak the situation is on the Left coast, it was recently reported in the London Telegraph that at JP Morgan Chase’s annual meeting, the banking behemoth’s chairman Jamie Dimon warned that investors should be more concerned about California defaulting than Greece.

In the face of such dire warnings, a $20 billion budget deficit, and the lowest credit rating among all states, one might think righting the state’s financial ship would be the primary focus of legislators in Sacramento, and one would be very wrong to think so.

For a concrete example of just how Golden State legislators are fiddling while Rome burns, take Assembly Bill 1998, now sitting in the California Assembly Committee on Appropriations and scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday. Introduced by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Santa Monica, AB 1998 would ban all plastic and paper bags currently provided to customers at grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, and other retailers statewide.

Not only is such legislation a distraction from the real issues facing the state, all evidence indicates that a bag ban is unnecessary, would be ineffective, and may have unintended consequences that create new problems. Legislative language claims that a bag prohibition is necessary to address the environmental burdens imposed by plastic bags. If that is the case, it should be incumbent upon the committee to first prove that a bag ban will not simply reduce plastic bag usage, but will actually reduce litter and improve the environment. Proponents of the bag ban have yet to provide any such evidence. In fact, evidence that a bag ban will provide zero benefit to the environment can be found right in the district of AB 1998 co-author Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

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In 2009, America’s meddlers worked overtime minding other people’s business.

Nanny of the Month winners have targeted everything from fish pedicures to feeding the homeless.  But there can be only one Nanny of the Year.

Who took home top honors as the year’s biggest buttinsky? Click the video to find out.

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