SELECTED GOVERNMENTAL IDIOCY

Government idiocy at its finest: "Last year Sandy Meadows, who supervises the floral department at an Albertson's supermarket in Baton Rouge, was filling in at another Albertson's store that had lost its florist when she was visited by an inspector from the Louisiana Horticulture Commission. He told her she'd have to throw out the seven arrangements she had produced that morning if she wanted to avoid a $250 citation for practicing floristry without a license. Louisiana appears to be the only state in the nation that treats unlicensed florists making unauthorized arrangements as a public menace.

And this idiocy is nearly as bad: ""Is the war on terrorism over? Have we stopped drug trafficking? Has corruption in corporate America ended? We must have cured these problems. Why else would federal officials spend their time prosecuting people for importing lobster tails in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes?

But 40 years of trying has not made this one work: "In his State of the Union address forty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an 'unconditional war on poverty in America.' Since then, the federal government has created vast new bureaucracies and raised taxes to a staggering level not seen since World War Two. L.B.J. helped create welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), Medicare, Head Start, the Job Corps, and Medicaid. Worst of all, most of L.B.J.'s War on Poverty was a failure."

The British contribution: "The Government has announced it is to scrap an obscure law after shop staff refused to serve a police officer a sausage roll. Constable Dougie Brown was on duty in the village of Nettleham, near Lincoln, last month when he tried to buy the snack in his local Co-op store. It turned out that the staff had acted according to the letter of the law which bans the sale of 'any liquor or refreshment' to an on-duty policeman without the permission of a senior officer."

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