Casey Mattox of Americans for Prosperity has a good weekend read for us at the New York Post titled Politicians Can’t Stop Passing Absurd Laws. This has long been a favorite topic in political circles and entire books have been published on the subject. You’re probably already familiar with some of the more famous old chestnuts and Mattox includes many of them. There’s the Arizona law that bans donkeys from sleeping in bathtubs and Utah doesn’t allow people to fish from horseback. Connecticut regulates the bounciness of pickles (somehow) and Californians can be fined for eating a frog that died during a frog jumping contest.
Yet as Mattox points out, these aren’t just colorful exceptions to the rules where lawmakers momentarily seemed to lose the thread. This is actually the norm in American politics, particularly at the state and local levels. The supply of bad ideas is…
