The stench of corruption, socialism and elitism carries far more dangers to our children then the strongest tobacco ever could!!!!!!

JellyToast on January 29, 2009 at 7:02 PM

Amen.

No one loses their rights. They give them up in a manner reminiscent of sheep being led to the slaughter.

You are a coward. And a piece of HUMAN DEBRIS who couldn’t make an INTELECTUALLY HONEST argument if your “unviable” life depended on it.Piss off.

seejanemom on January 30, 2009 at 11:36 AM

Slam dunk.

Just curious, would you all be for or against a law preventing a pregnant mother from smoking?

In other words, where is the outrage for the poor kids sitting in the back seat?

mycowardice on January 29, 2009

What is a greater risk to the life and safety of a child???
Second had smoke or a Marxist/police state?

Conservatism is about personal responsibility. Personal responsibility in parenting and personal responsibility in conceiving too. Is everyone perfect? hell no. but you can’t pass laws to force people to be perfect. All that does is reduce everyone’s liberty. first smoking and then what? criminalize caffeine, red meat, alcohol, fast food. do you do anything at all that you probably shouldn’t be doing? how about big brother pass a law to force you to quit?

as far as your comment that no liberal says it’s OK to kill a child….sheesh….fetus, embryo, whatever you want to call it, its not a medical inconvenience, its a child.

Keli on January 30, 2009 at 11:21 AM

I don’t understand how far you want to go. Should I be allowed to give my child cigarettes? Should I be allowed to give alcohol to my kids? Should all drugs be legalized? Etc.

What kind of limits do you put over this concept we shouldn’t pass laws that ask anyone to be “perfect”?

The study that showed any risk from “second hand smoke” has been completely debunked but everyone still takes it as truth. There has to date not been any study that shows any significant risk from second hand smoke. And we didn’t exactly have front-end loaders scooping up all the dead people from second hand smoke in the 20th century. Look at the video of Mission Control during the moon landings. Everyone was smoking cigarettes during the mission and cigars after a landing.

Here is some info. In any case, the study everyone seems to remember (though nobody remembers any of the studies that came to a different conclusion) estimated that second hand smoke causes 3000 deaths a year (about 1/6 as many as caused by drunk drivers). Of the 30 studies looked at by EPA, 24 of them showed no increased risk of second hand smoke. Only 5 of them showed any increase in risk.

Fact: Even after excluding most of the studies, the EPA couldn’t come up with 3,000 deaths, but they had already announced the results. So they changed the CI to 90%, which, in effect, doubled their margin of error.

Fact Worth Repeating: Instead of using the 95% confidence interval, the statistical standard that has been used for decades, the EPA doubled their margin of error to achieve their pre-announced results.

Would any legitimate epidemiologist keep their job if they were caught doubling their margin of error to support a pre-announced conclusion?

Fact: After juggling the numbers, The EPA came up with an RR (Relative Risk) of ETS causing lung cancer 1.19. In layman’s terms that means:

• Exposure to the ETS from a spouse increases the risk of getting lung cancer by 19%.
• Where you’d usually see 100 cases of cancer you’d see 119.

Fact: A RR of less than 2.0 is usually written off as an unimportant result. An RR of 3.0 or higher is considered desirable. (See Statistics 101 for more details.)

So the EPA announced what the results were going to be before they even completed the study. Then they eliminated the vast majority of the studies that disagreed with their result. Then when they still couldn’t get the numbers to agree with them, they juggled the error bars so that their announced number fell within the “margin of error”.

And to this day there has still not been any conclusive evidence that second hand smoke is harmful. Sure, it stinks, and it can aggravate things like asthma in people, but it isn’t going to kill you.

Also, no liberal says it’s OK to kill a child.

mycowardice on January 30, 2009 at 10:41 AM

I suppose that the “unviable tissue mass” kicking its feet outside the birth canal with its “unviable” head being sucked clean of its brain is “OK to kill”.

GOT IT.

You are a coward. And a piece of HUMAN DEBRIS who couldn’t make an INTELECTUALLY HONEST argument if your “unviable” life depended on it.Piss off.

Well, that explains a lot. Yikes.

Actually I think it would be conservatives that would criminalize such behavior (if smoking isn’t bad enough, substitute that with taking drugs).

I think it’s a fascinating question, but my expectation from someone saying “protect the unborn and the defenseless” would be to see that message stretch beyond the delivery and into the actual child life. Somehow on this issue the message seems broken.

Also, no liberal says it’s OK to kill a child.

mycowardice on January 30, 2009 at 10:41 AM

Conservatism is about personal responsibility. Personal responsibility in parenting and personal responsibility in conceiving too. Is everyone perfect? hell no. but you can’t pass laws to force people to be perfect. All that does is reduce everyone’s liberty. first smoking and then what? criminalize caffeine, red meat, alcohol, fast food. do you do anything at all that you probably shouldn’t be doing? how about big brother pass a law to force you to quit?

as far as your comment that no liberal says it’s OK to kill a child….sheesh….fetus, embryo, whatever you want to call it, its not a medical inconvenience, its a child.

Exactly. We are not arguing over what is good or bad behavior, we are merely telling do gooders to mind their own business.

Vashta.Nerada on January 30, 2009 at 10:43 AM

So should parents let their kids smoke or drink? Can parents do anything they want to their kids simply because do gooders need to mind their own business?

But where does that lead to..

Keli on January 30, 2009 at 10:33 AM

Exactly. We are not arguing over what is good or bad behavior, we are merely telling do gooders to mind their own business.

what’s interesting is how many liberals who would criminalize them for smoking also seem to support abortion. So its ok to kill a child but its not ok to expose them to smokers?

Keli on January 30, 2009 at 10:33 AM

Actually I think it would be conservatives that would criminalize such behavior (if smoking isn’t bad enough, substitute that with taking drugs).

I think it’s a fascinating question, but my expectation from someone saying “protect the unborn and the defenseless” would be to see that message stretch beyond the delivery and into the actual child life. Somehow on this issue the message seems broken.

Also, no liberal says it’s OK to kill a child.

Just curious, would you all be for or against a law preventing a pregnant mother from smoking?

In other words, where is the outrage for the poor kids sitting in the back seat?

mycowardice on January 29, 2009 at 7:20 PM

But where does that lead to.. when I was pregnant i got plenty of ‘advise’ from well meaning strangers. I shouldn’t be drinking that diet coke, don’t eat oysters, don’t drink coffee, no hot dogs, no aspirin, one friend even told me i needed to get rid of my cat. Should there be a law against pregnant women having cats? Amazingly, miraculously i white knuckle it and managed to have a healthy 7 lb 6 oz baby boy, but according to all the advice i got i was lucky not to have the 2 headed bat boy. Of course pregnant women shouldn’t smoke, but in answer to your question I would be completely against a law criminalizing them.
what’s interesting is how many liberals who would criminalize them for smoking also seem to support abortion. So its ok to kill a child but its not ok to expose them to smokers?

Nanny government cannot control bad behavior with laws, only temporarily put restrictions on it.

abcurtis on January 30, 2009 at 9:19 AM

I agree that if all adults wanted to act irresponsibly, there is little the government could do.

But this case is different because you are talking about minors that are under the control of an adult. Just because a parent can be abusive towards a child (ignore the laws), it doesn’t mean that society should sit back and watch while kids get abused.

Same here. Just because parents can act irresponsibly, I don’t think it means we should just close our eyes and let kids get destroyed in the process.

Now that is my baseline. After that, we need to look at each type of issue individually. I think in the smoking case it’s clear to me this goes above a certain threshold where the state needs to intervene. But say something not as clear: giving soft drinks to your kids… Should the state intervene there?

I just don’t like the knee-jerk reaction that as soon as we say the word “nanny state”, everyone starts thinking it’s a bad thing without looking a the details and the interests at stake.

mycowardice on January 29, 2009 at 7:20 PM

You make a very good point. However, adults need to act responsibly, and personal responsibility has been indoctrinated out of many adults because of the “me” generation school of thought. Everybody has rights but nobody exercises responsibility. Therefore the government, the most irresponsible behemoth of all, assumes responsibility for you, forcing you to make decisions your common sense ought to be making for you.
Nanny government cannot control bad behavior with laws, only temporarily put restrictions on it.

For my particular situation, those cigarettes were definitely the life-extending choice. When Poppa nods off at the wheel and runs his kids into a telephone pole because he couldn’t light up a cigarette, you think the State of Minnesota is going to care?

What is the most dangerous sentence in America?

“It’s for the children.”

Pelayo on January 29, 2009 at 10:14 PM

It’s actually one of the more dangerous sentences in human history.

If you get bored, do a little research. It’s relatively easy to find a couple thousand years of abuses of liberty committed by governments based solely on that very sentence.

It was an explicit part of Goebbels propaganda efforts. After WWII, the question most people had when the horrors came to light was – how could the average citizen allow such things?

But the truth was – they didn’t think they were condoning evil. Most citizens truly thought they were doing GOOD. They thought their government was – wait for it – protecting the future of their children.

While we are obviously nowhere near that far gone, if you’ve noticed, the far left has begun to target ideas now. Where once the book burners were on the far right, now its the left that’s targeting books like “Huckleberry Finn.”

And its all to protect your children. From smoke. From the gun in your home. From dangerous ideas. From literature of the wrong political angle.

What? You disagree? What’s the matter – don’t you love your children?

It’s a very, very powerful political tool. In fact, I can’t think of an example when it has not worked.

Be careful, America. This path is an ancient one and its well traveled.

AND ON A WHIM I DECIDE TO JAM A HORSE NEEDLE INTO THE BASE OF MY CROWNING INFANT’S SKULL…..just curious……

………WHO’S ON FIRST?

seejanemom on January 29, 2009 at 8:02 PM

That’s different, you see. That’s a guaranteed constitutional liberty.

Suck your newborns brains out? Fight for that freedom!

Puffing on a Montecristo with the window rolled down on a warm spring day while junior is in the back with his hand-held Nintendo?

Not so much. That, we should ban.

It’s a fun old world, ain’t it?

This all makes me want to smoke two cigs at a time. And fwiw, my kids have never in their lives had an ear infection or asthma.

Now when I see someone smoking. I just wanna run up to them, give them a big open mouth kiss and suck all the smoke out of them.

Kini on January 30, 2009 at 1:02 AM

This doesn’t sound like a smoking habit…….

Indeed. So we should legalize drug use, drug trafficking, prostitution, etc.

mycowardice on January 29, 2009 at 9:07 PM

I don’t understand your comment…what’s the weather like in London? What’s the price of wheat in Calcutta?