What choice did they have? If you’re in the park and someone next to you lights up, your options are limited. You could, I suppose, step two feet away and solve the problem, but then that poor bastard with a cancer stick in his mouth will still keep puffing away, ruining his lungs.

And why should he be allowed to do that?

A unusually divided City Council has passed a total ban on smoking in parks, beaches and public plazas.

The vote was 36 to 12, our Erin Einhorn reports…

[Some councilmen] said they were torn, including Queens Councilman Leroy Comrie — who even invoked Kristallnacht, saying if “we start going after individual personal liberties,” we’ll end up with tyranny. But Comrie ended up voting for the bill, he said, because his teenage kids told him he should.

The ban on smorking in parks is the latest proposal from Mayor Bloomberg to curtail New Yorkers’ bad habits (or, some say, create a nanny state).

And that’s my hometown in a nutshell. A bill supported by “only” 75 percent of the City Council qualifies as unusually divisive, and the imbeciles we elect cast their vote based on what their kids tell them — even in matters that remind them of Kristallnacht. I’m honestly amazed that I’m still allowed to drink in my own apartment. They’ve come for the cigarettes and they’ll eventually come for the Happy Meals, but what happens when they come for the Heineken? They’ll make a Texan out of me yet, my friends.

To see what else Mayor McCheese has been up to lately, read Howard Portnoy’s Greenroom post. Oh, and have a look at your photo of the day. Governing New York is fairly low on his list of priorities these days. Which, admittedly, isn’t altogether a bad thing.