They touch our lives in so many ways, and Reason.tv kicks off awards season by acknowledging those who have devoted their lives to minding other people’s business.

Live (to tape) from the fourth floor of the Sepulveda Center in Los Angeles, it’s the third annual 2011 Nanny of the Year Awards!

These United States have produced many worthy nominees in 2011. Who could forget the city planner who threatened a woman with 93 days behind bars for growing vegetables or the state senator who did his best to outlaw crossing the street while listening to an iPod (shortly before pleading guilty to federal corruption charges).

But this year the golden Nanny goes to the Wolverine state pol who’s bent on making most any kind of teacher-student sex–not just a fireable offense, but a felony, even if the student is older than age 18 or even if teacher and student are middle-aged. (And, in an apparent attempt to secure nanny gold, our winner is also fighting to force school kids to recite the pledge in front of genuine made-in-America flags.)

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It was supposed to be a “slice of Americana and of childhood dreams,” says U.S. Army Specialist Mark Grapin, who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia. He’s talking about the treehouse he built for his two sons after returning from his latest tour of duty in Iraq.

What Grapin didn’t expect was that Fairfax County’s zoning board would demand he tear down the treehouse after an anonymous complaint, thus launching the family into an eight-month legal battle.

Grapin went to the local media for help and public outcry turned into an online petition. A neighbor donated trees to cover the treehouse, and the family even received a pro bono lawyer to help win over board members.

Just days before the treehouse was to be torn down, Grapin was able to convince the board to let him keep it on the condition it be removed after five years. Plenty of time, he says, for his sons to enjoy it.

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This month’s nannies include drug warriors who are hyping fears about “digital” drugs (i.e. not actual physical substances) and fat warriors who are using a talking plate (introducing Mandometer!) to pester chubby folks into eat properly.

But this month’s top dishonors go to the Wolverine State pol whose so-called “Hot for Teacher” bill could end up criminalizing sex between consenting adults of legal age.

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for November 2011: Michigan State Sentator Roger Kahn!

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“A smoking ban in bars is saying that adult citizens are not allowed to use a legal substance even though they’re very highly taxed for doing so in a place that is private property,” explains Joe Jackson, the hitmeister behind indelible tunes such as ”Look Sharp!,” “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” and, yes, “(Everything Gives You) Cancer.”

Jackson’s not a smoker himself but he insists that smoking bans and other for-your-own-good restrictions infantalize us all and challenge basic concepts of freedom. “You’re throwing out the window the property right of the owner of that establishment, freedom of choice, a lot of things, compared to a health risk [from second- and third-hand smoke] that is really unproven.”

Jackson’s antipathy for the creeping nanny state in his native England and his longtime home of New York City led him to write a meticulously researched essay called “Smoking, Lies and The Nanny State.” It also led him to finally flee New York and London, setting up residence in Berlin because there he at least feels like he is relatively “free” and “treated like an adult.”

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Nanny of the Month turns two-years-old this October, and the busybodies who mind your own business show no signs of letting up.

Take formerly dog-friendly New York City which has banished man’s best friend from any establishment that serves food or alcohol (and that includes outdoor patios!). Then there’s Michigan Gov. Rick Snyner who’s tackling childhood obesity by introducing a statewide database to keep anonymous tabs on kiddies’ weight.

But the this very special nanny comes to us from a California city that is fighting (and fining) a couple that hosts Bible studies at home. Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for September 2011: San Juan Capistrano City Attorney Omar Sandoval!

The city slapped Chuck and Stephanie Fromm with fines totalling $300 for violating a municipal code which prohibits religious, fraternal, or nonprofit organizations from meeting on residential property without a conditional use permit (CUP). The Fromm’s gatherings can attract as many as 50 people and the city says that causes parking problems, but the Fromm’s disagree saying there is plenty of parking in their semi-rural neighborhood where large homes sit on even larger lots (the Fromm’s lot includes a corral, barn, and large lawn). The Fromms have held their gatherings since 1994 and say their neighbors support them, except for one woman whose recent complaint sparked city action.

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Smoking in bars and restaurants has been banned in New York City since 2003 but Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently added beaches, parks, and pedestrian plazas to the long and growing list of places where smoking is verboten in the Big Apple. “Sin taxes” on cigarettes have driven the average price of a pack to more than $11.

Yet in a city renowned for its innovation and drive, smokers have found ways to work around government attempts at social engineering. These include the booming “loosie” trade, where street entreprenuers risk arrest to sell loose cigarettes for a dollar each on the streets of Manhattan; tobacco crops blooming in Brooklyn; and a thriving Soho bar/restaurant that survived the smoking ban thanks to an obscure grandfather clause.

With so much tax revenue being lost to the black market, and even the green market, perhaps it’s time for a mayor who made billions in the free market to consider allowing business owners to set their own policies, and let the marketplace sort out the demand for smoking and smoke-free establishments.

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They’re banning pet pigs in St, Charles, Missouri (even small, hypoallergenic ones like Pepper!) and Nice Cream in Illinois (even though it’s packed with natural ingredients and the owner says its bacterial levels are well below state-approved levels!), but neither can claim the top slot because, well, this time Nanny of the Month is doing something different…

For the first time ever Nanny of the Month is cheering a ban.

That’s right, starting September 1 , more than 500 Michigan restaurant and bar owners will begin turning state lawmakers away from their establishments. State Senator So-and-so wants a brew? Too bad. Politicians won’t be served until they revisit the state’s 2010 smoking ban, which, owners say, has devastated business, and left bars like Sporty O’Tooles on the verge of collapse.

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By now, you likely have heard of Dr. David Ludwig, Harvard professor and child obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He and attorney and research partner Lindsey Murtagh authored a piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that severely obese children might require the government to remove them from custody of their parents.

If this doesn’t convince you that liberals support a nanny state, nothing will.

As a child psychologist with over 20 years of experience, I can say with supreme confidence that taking a child from his or her parents is almost always traumatic. Sometimes it is justified, of course; in cases of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, the child is sometimes far better off living without the offending parent. Similarly, when a parent evidences a profound inability to provide the basic needs of a child, the child might be safer with a relative or, rarely, with a foster parent. But removing a child from the home because the parent doesn’t adequately assist the child in losing weight? This is nothing short of ridiculous.

Such a proposal includes several dangerous messages. First, the messages to children: your parents are so screwed up that they can’t take care of you. They aren’t good enough for you and you aren’t good enough to stay with them. Second, the messages to parents:  ultimately, you do not control the destiny of your child; the government does.  Also, the state has the right to take your children away if you don’t get their weight (or other variables) under control. Third, the message to departments of child protective services: now you have more power to control parents and children. Finally, the message to taxpayers: you will now bear the burden of paying for a state-run juvenile weight-loss program.

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Glenn Reynolds in today’s Washington Examiner:

While Independence Day is about independence from Great Britain, today it’s also associated with more general notions of freedom — individual independence, not just political independence.

Unfortunately, America’s political class doesn’t want you independent. It wants you as dependent as possible. As the Rainmakers sang back in the 1980s, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

So what can you do? Everybody focuses on the 2012 elections, and those are important. But why wait? Here are three things you can do now.

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This Fourth of July weekend think about what truly represents freedom: Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, and an ice-cold glass of lemonade.

This month’s lineup of busybodies includes two regulars: the FDA, which is slapping new, more graphic, possibly counterproductive, warning labels on cigarette packs and the goldfish grabbers on San Francisco’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission.

But top dishonors go to the sour bureaucrat who put the squeeze on a group of kids for running a lemonade stand. Sure they were raising money for a worthy cause (pediatric cancer research), but they were doing it without a permit, and that’s why they got slapped with a $500 fine.

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for June 2011: Jennifer Hughes of Montgomery County, Maryland’s Department of Permitting Services!

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The Supreme Court of the United States today struck down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the 7-2 majority, with Justices Breyer and Thomas dissenting.

One can just see the headline now: “Supreme Court Determines Violent Video Games Are Great for Kids!” Or, “Justice Scalia’s Children Must Be Embarrassed by His Utter Disregard for Parents’ Rights.”

Superficially, this appears to be a failure of government to support parents in their quest to protect children. Shouldn’t we applaud governmental restrictions on games that depict violent rape, dismemberment, and sickeningly graphic murder? Shouldn’t the Supreme Court want to help parents protect their children from this satanic drivel?

Well, not really. Scalia wrote that the gaming industry already does assist parents in this regard by providing useful rating systems for games—a system that experts consider far superior to our current movie rating system. The Court argued that states cannot create laws to deny children access to objectionable material.

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently complained about the food trucks lining the streets of his city.

“The little [food] stand is now getting to be these enormous trucks with generators . . . and they take up parking places and they block traffic,” Wall Street Journal recorded the mayor as saying.

It’s hard to believe Mayor Bloomberg’s tiff with food trucks has anything to do with the lack of parking spaces available in New York City.  His record for new laws and regulations affecting the eating habits of his constituents precedes him—and it would come as no surprise if New York’s food trucks were his next victims.

The trucks would only add to the long list of imposed dietary guidelines Americans must now follow.

Call it the rise of the nanny state.

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To the Honorable Jose Longoria,

Recently, you sentenced a mother, Rosalina Gonzales, to five years probation, a fine, and parenting classes after being convicted of a felony charge. The heinous crime? Spanking her own child.

As you recall, the prosecution admitted that Ms. Gonzales did not use a belt, a switch, or anything else other than her hand. She didn’t hit her child in the face, head, chest, or anywhere but her rear end. She didn’t draw blood, break any bones, or even leave bruises—only some red marks. There was no injury.

This decision is manifestly absurd.

First, it represents an egregious judicial overreach. You should know the law: in Texas, spanking is not against the law. Your state’s Attorney General has even stated that disciplinary spanking confined to the buttocks, done with an open hand, and not resulting in injury should not be considered abusive. Ms. Gonzales evidenced self-control with all of these variables.

Before sentencing Ms. Gonzales, you chided her, “You don’t spank children today. In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don’t spank children. You understand?”

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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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The Obama administration has planned a new $500 million early learning initiative, designed to deal with children as young as five who can’t sit still in a kindergarten classroom.

As a clinical psychologist with 20 years of experience evaluating and treating children, I am expert at understanding five-year-olds who can’t sit still. I am also a parent of a Kindergarten student. I am here to inform taxpayers that this program is a colossal waste of money. I can save the government—meaning you, the taxpayer—a half billion dollars by solving this profound problem right here.

Spending $500 million to get five-year-olds to sit still is like getting a Democrat to stop spending other people’s money. In theory it sounds good—really good—but it simply goes against nature. The natural inclination for most five-year-olds is to be extremely active. Normal pre-schoolers spend much of their day practicing their gross and fine-motor skills, with boys being especially active learners. They are not inclined to sit still, shut up, and listen to a teacher for anything but short periods of time.

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It’s quite possible that, for all of their “Mediscare” tactics, like ads depicting a Paul Ryan look-alike throwing a wheelchair-bound senior off a cliff, the left has not done nearly as much damage to Congressman Ryan’s budget and Medicare plan as some of his own colleagues on the Republican side.

We have seen former House Speaker, and newly announced presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, begin his campaign by criticizing Congressman Ryan’s proposal as “right wing social engineering.”

Now, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has announced, in an op-ed in Politico, that he will vote to defeat Ryan’s proposal to overhaul Medicare. Despite the fact that Senator Brown has had weeks to review his Republican colleague’s plan, he just now takes issue with the House Budget chairman on several curious points.

First, Senator Brown has adopted the position that Medicare, as it is now, needs to remain as is for those who have been counting on it. That’s an odd conclusion to draw when Medicare’s own trustees announced, last week, that the program will likely go broke about five years sooner than previously thought. According to the trustees, many seniors currently using Medicare as their health insurance plan, and those approaching the age of eligibility, will find themselves out of funds in about 12 years.

Second, Senator Brown asserts that a plan to change Medicare should “phase changes in over time.” But, isn’t that what Congressman Ryan’s plan does? Those currently over age 55 would be able to keep the current Medicare program in Mr. Ryan’s budget.

Third, the senator expresses concern that inflation will erode the “premium support” sums that Mr. Ryan’s proposal would provide to future seniors who are currently under age 55. However, doesn’t the senator acknowledge that most current younger and middle-aged Americans would be planning ahead for their healthcare, if they knew they had responsibility for their futures, and not simply waiting to turn 65 to have the government move in on their lives?

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Almost nine months after a Missouri dairy was ordered to stop selling cheese made from raw milk, I share details of another hare-raising story from the Show-Me State: John Dollarhite and his wife Judy of tiny Nixa, Mo., have been told by the USDA that, by Monday, they must pay a fine exceeding $90,000. If they don’t pay that fine, they could face additional fines of almost $4 million. Why? Because they sold more than $500 worth of bunnies — $4,600 worth to be exact — in a single calendar year.

About six years ago, the Dollarhites wanted to teach their young teenage son responsibility and the value of the dollar. So they rescued a pair of rabbits — one male and one female — and those rabbits did what rabbits do; they reproduced. Before long, things were literally hopping on the three-acre homestead 30 miles south of Springfield, and Dollarvalue Rabbitry was launched as more of a hobby than a business.

“We’d sell ‘em for 10 or 15 dollars a piece,” John said during a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, comparing the venture to a kid running a lemonade stand. In addition, they set up a web site and posted a “Rabbits for Sale” sign in their front yard. Most customers, however, came via word of mouth.

In the early stages, some of the bunnies were raised and sold for their meat. Much further down the road, John said, they determined it more profitable to sell live bunnies at four weeks old than to feed bunnies for 12 weeks and then sell them as meat.

“We started becoming the go-to people” for rabbits in the Springfield area, John said. “If you wanted a rabbit, you’d go to Dollarvalue Rabbitry.” He added that the family even made the local television news just before Easter in 2008 for a report about the care and feeding of “Easter bunnies.”

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This month’s slate of busybodies includes the FDA whose agents embarked on a year-long sting operation to bust an Amish company for selling raw milk. And then there are the killjoys at New York’s Department of Health who were poised to crack down on “dangerous” activities like wiffle ball and freeze tag.

But this time around no one out-nannied the Chicago public school principal who banned students from eating homemade lunches.

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