What I'm Thankful for Today

Not being a Muslim-to-Christian convert.

Around the Web

-- The New York Times is no johnny-come-lately on climate change. One of its first distress signals was printed way back in '95 -- 1895, that is!

-- Here's something as rare as a "smoking permitted" sign: The Wall Street Journal's Hugo Restall spends an entire column waxing rhapsodic on the joys of smoking.

-- The birthplace of Ebenezer Scrooge moves to ban Santa Claus.

-- Be proud: Your tax dollars are financing post-Thanksgiving congressional vacations to Brazil.

-- Councilman James Oddo, fresh from his long, lonely and hard-fought battle to ban metal baseball bats, has another big idea.

Hello, I'm Tom Elliott, and I Smoke While Driving

I have a confession. Sometimes, when I'm all alone, when I'm relaxing in the privacy of my car, when I'm at one with myself and the open road, I smoke a cigarette. I enjoy it. I find it helps train the mind. When it's been a long trip and I'm starting to fade, nicotine reliably refocuses to the task at hand. Cigarettes, in my mind, help make the trip safer. Not only by boosting energy, but by bringing a sense of pleasure to driving. While others react frantically to an onset of traffic, cutting others off in road-rage inspired mania, I'll reach for a Camel Light, turn up the music, and relax.

So lucky for me, then, that this seemingly personal recreation is now being targeted by the health fanatics of the world. The Guardian reports on an effort to ban Smoking While Driving in Britain:

Britain's senior road safety campaigners are calling for a ban on smoking while driving, in an attempt to cut the number of crashes.

The Department of Health said last night that it would seriously consider a ban, which is also being looked at in Germany, Australia and America. The move was backed by anti-smoking campaigners but drew criticism from others as an attack on personal freedom. From 1 July, England will join the rest of the UK by introducing a ban on smoking in enclosed public places and at work.

How is Smoking While Driving dangerous?

The association claims that drivers are in danger when they take their hands off the wheel to find, light and smoke cigarettes, and are particularly at risk if a lit cigarette or ash falls in the car or is blown back through the window. The organisation, which represents 180 of Britain's 200 local roads authorities, fears that once people who drive are stopped from lighting up in other places from 1 July, they will smoke more while in their own cars.

The Guardian goes on to helpfully note that "Last year there were 3,201 deaths on Britain's roads." How many of these deaths were caused by Smoking While Driving is unclear. I'd guess somewhere near zero. Sure, smoking can be distracting -- though I somehow doubt I'm the only one who's able to retrieve a cigarette, use the car lighter, push the window-down button, all without taking my eyes off the road. The reality is that Smoking While Driving can be perfectly safe.

A spokesman for the association, Simon Ettinghausen, said: "In this country, we're libertarians, we like to give people freedoms, but if you are distracted unfortunately your freedom to do these things can affect other people's lives."

We like to give people freedoms. Ettinghausen's high opinion of himself notwithstanding, public officials don't "give people freedoms." People are born free. It is only upon first confronting government, with its monopoly hold on coercive power, that an individual's naturally-endowed liberty is curtailed.

Universally limiting liberty should only be done under the most dire of circumstances. The apparently empirically baseless notion that banning Smoking While Driving enhances safety is anything but.

(H/t: Karol)

Un-Effing-Believable

From The Corner:

Oh, Yes, That's What Bothers Me So About This Whole Spectacle [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From the Telegraph:

The only wry smile to be derived from the humiliating circumstances in which our 15 sailors and Royal Marines were captured by just six Iranians came from the comment by Patricia Hewitt. "It was deplorable," pronounced our tight-lipped Health Secretary, "that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people."

(h/t: Karol)

Smoking Bans' Unintended Consequences

Mom Dukes sends along this story, via Rush Limbaugh:

I have to share this with you. I always check websites during the break here. Some online website called the Dunfermline Press -- it's gotta be some wacko little cult paper in the UK --has a story that has a really great lesson on the unintended consequences of actions taken by those who want to save us from ourselves. In this case, the unintended consequences of the smoking ban. Now, in order for you to appreciate this, and you'll be able to see it because we'll link to it on the website later, but for those of you watching on the Dittocam, I want to zoom in because you have to see this guy. He's the focus of the story.

I'm not going to be able to hold it here steadily while I do the story but just get a look at that guy and keep the memory of that face in your mind as we tell you what the story is about. He is a regular at a pub, and he goes in, and he has his adult beverages or whatever. He has been barred. He has been thrown out of this pub because he breaks wind. The guy cannot stop breaking wind. The guy's name is Stewart Laidlaw, and they say that "his bouts of flatulence" are so over the top that people in the bar "have almost been sick after exposure to the foul smells." (interruption) It won't work to tell 'em it's termites. He's 35 years old. He's furious. The name of the pub is Thirsty Kirsty's, and the guy is livid.

He's the first person to be barred from the pub for breaking wind. Now, the owner says he's been in there for years breaking wind and nobody knew it because you were able to smoke. But now that they've banned smoking, people who have been taking in the guy's wind all these years are for the first time in their lives able to smell it, and so he's been banned and so, see? The unintended consequences of banning smoking has caused this guy public humiliation. People had no clue it was happening because of the cigarette smoke that used to be in there. The title of the story is -- well, we're going to title this on the website -- "Gone with his Wind." (Laughing.) The picture! I wouldn't let the guy in if he smelled like Drakkar Noir cologne, just on the basis of his looks. He's bright-eyed. This guy looks like he's on something from the moment he gets in.

A World Without America?

Our British friends imagine what such a world might look like.