It's come to this: State inspectors crack down on ... little girl's lemonade stand

Alternate headline: “Blogger posts greatest anti-statist story ever.” No foolin’. You don’t even need to read it; just look at the photo. Dude. Dude.

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New midterms plan: Buy the pic, slap it on every piece of GOP campaign literature that’s sent out from now until November, net 100 seats.

The girl worked on a sign, coloring in the letters and decorating it with a drawing of a person saying “Yummy.” She made a list of supplies…

Julie was careful about making the lemonade, cleaning her hands with hand sanitizer, using a scoop for the bagged ice and keeping everything covered when it wasn’t in use, Fife said.

After 20 minutes, a “lady with a clipboard” came over and asked for their license. When Fife explained they didn’t have one, the woman told them they would need to leave or possibly face a $500 fine.

Surprised, Fife started to pack up. The people staffing the booths next to them encouraged the two to stay, telling them the inspectors had no right to kick them out of the neighborhood gathering. They also suggested that they give away the lemonade and accept donations instead and one of them made an announcement to the crowd to support the lemonade stand.

That’s when business really picked up — and two inspectors came back, Fife said. Julie started crying, while her mother packed up and others confronted the inspectors. “It was a very big scene,” Fife said.

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Supposedly the inspectors only cracked down because she was at a street fair, not in her own front yard, and therefore she was, according to an inspector, “suddenly engaging in commerce.” Which is both depressing and refreshing, insofar as his definition of “commerce” is actually more credible than the Supreme Court’s. Says the girl’s mom, uttering a line destined to be crocheted on pillows in many a tea-partier’s rec room, “It’s gotten to the point where they need to be in all of our decisions. They don’t trust us to make good choices on our own.” Exit question: Is this the most insane licensing-related story of the day? Exit answer: No.

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