Some friends of mine would definately say it infringes on their life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness.

Though I think that issue is trickier since most of the bans have come from citizen initiatives. Even so, I think it might fit.

As to its application to the abortion question however, we here in central SD (not east river, not west river !) point to the fiasco caused by the legislature a couple of years ago. The pols – many Republican, some Democrat – way over reached and the voters quickly reacted and corrected the misguided swerve into the ditch.

It just proves the point made by Socrates more than 2000 years ago – most politicians can’t be leaders; they are inherently followers, trying to discern and keep up with the whims, quirks and momentary impulses of a slim group of noisy voters.

Anonymous, I don’t have any basis to agree or disagree with you, but if you’re going to accuse Chet of being the first thing I redacted, you need to put your name to it and cite examples, please.

Excerpt from above link:

“Lakoff argues that the differences in opinions between liberals and conservatives follow from the fact that they subscribe with different strength to two different metaphors about the relationship of the state to its citizens. Both, he claims, see governance through metaphors of the family. Conservatives would subscribe more strongly and more often to a model that he calls the “strict father model” and has a family structured around a strong, dominant “father” (government), and assumes that the “children” (citizens) need to be disciplined to be made into responsible “adults” (financially and morally responsible beings). However, the “children” are “adults”, and so the “father” should not interfere with their lives: the government should stay out of the business of those in society who have proved their responsibility. In contrast, Lakoff argues that liberals place more support in a model of the family, which he calls the “nurturant parent model”, based on “nurturant values”, where both “mothers” and “fathers” work to keep the essentially good “children” away from “corrupting influences” (pollution, social injustice, poverty, etc.). Lakoff says that most people have a blend of both metaphors applied at different times, and that political speech works primarily by invoking these metaphors and urging the subscription of one over the other.[3]“

We need a Bill introduced to change SD to one of the intelligent states where the legislature meets every other year. It would slow the gradual loss of all individual rights by 50%.

How many issues we are dealing with this year couldn’t wait until 2009 to be dealt with?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

I’d argue that there are “nanny” ideas and “big daddy” (or big brother, if you prefer) ideas, both of which can lead to legislation that constitutes an overeach of Government authority.

To characterize it all as “nannyism” is actually pretty sexist framing on its face if you think about it (that is, unless you know a lot of male nannys.)

The upshot is, you might want to include a “big brother” pejorative in some of your rants from time to time. Perhaps such a little linguistic tweak might even help you clarify some of your own thoughts on the matter.

Steve Sibson is 100 percent wrong when he says that 3 and 4 year olds will be added to the state aid formula. That is not at all what the legislation attempts to do. The bill allows the state Board of Education to set up standards for pre-K operation and standards for pre-K staff.

This might be a foot in the door, but it doesn’t involve any state-aid money at this point.