Slate’s got a new piece up about it now.

Allowing these guidelines to take effect would be like giving the government a no-knock warrant to investigate hundreds of thousands of blogs and hundreds of millions of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter users for … saying nice things about goods and services. [FTC spokesman Richard] Cleland tells Ad Age that a restaurant employee who gave his eatery a good review on Yelp would have to disclose. Given the billions of opinionated postings on the Web, there would be no end to FTC’s work.

Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don’t apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don’t apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow’s blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.

This is a federal power grab of epic proportions, folks.

One more reason we need to pass the Federalism Amendment.

He calls for states to take action against the Federal government’s out-of-control encroachment on our Constitutional liberties.

Best of all, he suggests actual concrete action: a Constitutional convention to repeal the 16th Amendment. That’s the one that established the income tax, btw.

“This single change,” Barnett writes, “would strike at the heart of unlimited federal power and end the costly and intrusive tax code.”

Congress could then replace the income tax with a “uniform” national sales or “excise” tax (as stated in Article I, section 8) that would be paid by everyone residing in the country as they consumed, and would automatically render savings and capital appreciation free of tax.

I am so in favor of this. Count me in.

$88,000 a year sound like a good figure?

Because–as I posted last summer–that’s what we spend annually to fluoridate our water in this county.

I’ve been fuming about that figure again lately, and not only because we’re facing the prospect of unprecedented tax hikes, thanks to the poor fiscal management of our pols.

There’s also, this, now: A new round-up, courtesy of the Fluoride Action Network, of 23 studies to that link fluoride consumption to lower IQ.

Much of this research was originally published in China, but the FAN is translating it.

Meanwhile, the National Research Council, which has reviewed a handful of these studies, says “the consistency of the collective results warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence.”

Yeah, well how about discontinuing mass fluoridation of our water until we know for sure, folks?

It’s almost enough to make you believe the conspiracy theorists who think the government is deliberately trying to make people stupid.

At the least, it’s a clear window into how these agencies view their responsibilities toward the American people. They’re not going to err on the side of protecting us from brain damage. What do they care if our kids’ IQ loses 5 or 10 points? They’re collecting their salaries, and seeing their names published in prestigious medical journals, and being invited to speak at all the right conferences.

Nice people. So glad they’re in charge.

E.g. adultery. You don’t have to believe adulterers burn in hell to recognize that there’s often a big pile o’ nasty fallout when someone cheats on a spouse.

Which is why the tenth commandment addresses covetousness.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Coveting is a destructive behavior. It shifts one’s focus to the wrong things.

First, and fundamentally, it shifts one’s frame of mind to an inner state of envy and frustration.

What good can come of that?

None.

Next, from this starting point of envy and frustration, a person has only two choices. Stew and be miserable. Or act out by stealing, or cheating, or tearing down the object of his envy.

Guess where I’m going with this, yet?

When our politicians propose that we tax “the rich” in order to pay for services for “the poor,” are they not encouraging covetousness?

Are they not — in fact — institutionalizing covetousness?

Welcome to the post post modern ethical wilderness. Where behaviors once regarded as destructive are now celebrated openly by our political leaders.

Think we aren’t going to reap what we sow?

“But, persisted the European, “what state would you choose?”

“The Brahmin answered, “The state where only the laws are obeyed.”

“That is an old answer,” said the councilor.

“It is none the worse for that,” said the Brahmin.

“Where is that country?” asked the councilor.

“We must look for it,” answered the Brahmin.

–Voltaire

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

– Frederic Bastiat, “The Law,” 1850

History, one may presume to say, affords no example of any nation, country or people long free, who did not take some care of themselves; and endeavour to guard and secure their own liberties. Power is of a grasping, encroaching nature, in all beings, except in him, to whom it emphatically “belongeth”; and who is the only King that, in a religious or moral sense, “can do no wrong.”

Power aims at extending itself, and operating according to mere will, where-ever it meets with no ballance, check, controul or opposition of any kind. For which reason it will always be necessary, as was said before, for those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. “Obsta principiis.”

After a while it will be too late.

For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose; That while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.

– Jonathan Mayhew, “The Snare Broken. A Thanksgiving Discourse Preached at the Desire of the West Church in Boston, N. E. Friday May 23, 1766. Occasioned by the Repeal of the Stamp-Act.” In Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730-1805, (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1990), p. 258

The article is titled “Most Presidents Ignore the Constitution.” It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s the bit I wish was front and center in the public discourse:

In virtually every generation and during virtually every presidency (Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland are exceptions that come to mind) the popular branches of government have expanded their power. The air you breathe, the water you drink, the size of your toilet tank, the water pressure in your shower, the words you can speak under oath and in private, how your physician treats your illness, what your children study in grade school, how fast you can drive your car, and what you can drink before you drive it are all regulated by federal law. Congress has enacted over 4,000 federal crimes and written or authorized over one million pages of laws and regulations. Worse, we are expected by law to understand all of it.

The truth is that the Constitution grants Congress 17 specific (or “delegated”) powers. And it commands in the Ninth and 10th Amendments that the powers not articulated and thus not delegated by the Constitution to Congress be reserved to the states and the people.

What’s more, Congress can only use its delegated powers to legislate for the general welfare, meaning it cannot spend tax dollars on individuals or selected entities, but only for all of us. That is, it must spend in such a manner — a post office, a military installation, a courthouse, for example — that directly enhances everyone’s welfare within the 17 delegated areas of congressional authority.

And Congress cannot deny the equal protection of the laws. Thus, it must treat similarly situated persons or entities in a similar manner. It cannot write laws that favor its political friends and burden its political enemies.

There is no power in the Constitution for the federal government to enter the marketplace since, when it does, it will favor itself over its competition. The Contracts Clause (the states cannot interfere with private contracts, like mortgages), the Takings Clause (no government can take away property, like real estate or shares of stock, without paying a fair market value for it and putting it to a public use), and the Due Process Clause (no government can take away a right or obligation, like collecting or paying a debt, or enforcing a contract, without a fair trial) together mandate a free market, regulated only to keep it fair and competitive.

It is clear that the Framers wrote a Constitution as a result of which contracts would be enforced, risk would be real, choices would be free and have consequences, and private property would be sacrosanct.

Napolitano goes on to decry the $700 billion bank bailout as running “afoul of virtually all these constitutional principles.”

We’re sitting by and letting our federal government run amok. And nobody even realizes it’s happening because we’re so POORLY educated about our Constitution, what it says, and how its words defined a society — our America, this, our own dear country — that is so unique in history.

If we want to become more like Europe — if we want to become more socialized — if we want a government that takes care of people instead of (“merely”) creating a space where we can look after ourselves — then so be it.

But in doing so, we’re creating a different country than our Founding Fathers envisioned. And we should be honest with ourselves about that. We should make that choice with our eyes open.

We’re not. We’re being led to it by liars who make base appeals to our fears and present issues as cartoons that have nothing to do with what truly matters about how we govern ourselves.

It breaks my heart . . .

I only hope it’s not too late for us.

She mentions it in this new Salon article on Sarah Palin.

Just so you know how unlikely a coincidence this is, the town numbered about 3000 when I was a kid.

Something else I have to wonder. Take a bright, observant, verbal post-WWII young girl with aspirations to be a writer and plunk her down in that setting and maybe some of what happens next is a bit inevitable. I mean, the passage where she mentions Oxford. This is exactly the kind of thing that I experienced as a kid, and I completely “get” how it shaped Paglia’s understanding of gender and feminism. I was shaped by the same sort of experiences.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was another version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”

I could Bideniarize that anecdote, use it in my own life story, and it wouldn’t even be a stretch.

Brilliant article, incidentally, a highly recommended read regardless of whether your initial impressions of Palin are from the right- or the left-hand side of the Proverbial Spectrum. Not that you’d expect less from Paglia. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my homey ;-)

And who should we thank for this brilliant idea?

Why, our government, of course! Because forbidding meat packagers from testing for mad cow and saying “hell yeah!” to irradiating our food isn’t mischief enough!

Be sure to tell them how happy you are that they keep The Peoples’ best interests foremost in their pure little hearts. Here’s your chance:

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, announced that EPW will have hearings on the disposal of sewage sludge on agricultural and other land. These hearings will be held on September 11, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

The September 11 hearing on sludge is currently scheduled for 10:30 AM.

The hearings are usually live streamed on the web. Check the EPW website the day of the hearing. Confirmation of the day and time are usually posted a few days beforehand on the EPW website.

That info comes courtesy of Sludge News. Because not everyone agrees it’s a good idea to eat our own waste. You go, Sludge News.