After an exhaustive three year study involving 21 experts, an agency of the European Union determined that drink manufacturers should be banned from claiming that water can prevent dehydration. “Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.” Critics said the decision was a perfect example of bureaucratic waste.
Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.
“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.
Advertisement“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”
But other experts said that that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water. Therefore in the strictest sense, drinking water did not in and of itself dehydration.
Martin Robbins of the Guardian says “Firstly, “regular consumption” of water doesn’t reduce the risk of dehydration any more than eating a pork pie a day reduces the risk of starvation. … Secondly, dehydration doesn’t just mean a lack of water, or ‘being thirsty’; electrolytes like sodium are important too. If salt levels fall too far, the body struggles to regulate fluid levels in the first place.”
So the ruling seems pretty sensible to me, or at least as sensible as a ruling can be when the claim being tested is vexatious in the first place. It’s accurate advice, and it prevents companies selling bottled water from making exaggerated claims for their products, which is a good thing.
But Robbins misses the point. The government should properly intervene only when there is a compelling public interest to do so. Human beings have consumed water when thirsty for as long as the human race has existed. It seems self-evident that most people, even those who don’t read the Guardian or live within the protection of the European Union, know what water is good for. There is no public interest in involving a supra-national bureaucracy in the regulation of the wisdom of drinking water. It is pointless, a waste of money and regulatory overreaching. It is senseless and not all of the Guardian’s arguments to the contrary will provide it with sense.
The whole thing is a total waste of time and I feel sorry for even having written this post, as it tells the reader nothing he didn’t know already about water or anything he may have not yet suspected about the European Union.
Read the Guardian Gasim. Water does not necessarily prevent dehydration.
Einer Elhauge of the New York Times argues that the US government, like the European Government should not be limited by anything as mechanical as scope. He says that under the Commerce Clause, the Federal Government has the power to compel citizens to buy broccoli if it sees it as wise. Therefore people may be compelled to buy health insurance. And if people didn’t want to be forced to buy health insurance they wouldn’t have elected Barack Obama.
Opponents of the new mandate complain that if Congress can force us to buy health insurance, it can force us to buy anything. They frequently raise the specter that Congress might require us to buy broccoli in order to make us healthier. However, that fear would remain even if you accepted their constitutional argument, because their argument would allow Congress to force us to buy broccoli as long as it was careful to phrase the law to say that “anyone who has ever engaged in any activity affecting commerce must buy broccoli.”
That certainly sounds like a stupid law. But our Constitution has no provision banning stupid laws. The protection against stupid laws that our Constitution provides is the political process, which allows us to toss out of office elected officials who enact them.
Without the Commerce Clause government would be unable to enforce “wise policy”. “It is not stupid to require us to buy air bags for our cars and pensions for our retirements. Nor would it be stupid to require us to buy life and disability insurance to make sure we have provided for our children. Whether the law should is up to our political process, not judicial second-guessing.”
But perhaps Elhauge is wrong. The Constitution wouldn’t have provisions for limiting the Federal Government if it hadn’t intended to limit it. And unless the effect of the Commerce Clause is to abolish all limitations, it cannot have the consequence of extending power in a limitless way. Circumscribing the Federal Government’s powers might seem foolish to Elhauge, but the Constitution was also adopted by a political process and allows the country to amend it. The very same logic that Elhauge marshals can be used against him. If the ultimate remedy for Obamacare is to repeal the act, surely the remedy for eliminating restrictions is to amend the Constitution.
But Elhauge is correct to say the problem is fundamentally political. It is not about whether water or broccoli is good for you. It is a question of who decides, not what policy should be. Things come down to whether Government is restricted in any meaningful sense by the Constitution; if there is any basis left for citizens to say, “I decide”. The objection to limits cannot be brushed aside by saying “if you don’t like it then why did you vote for Obama or join the EU”? The question is whether voting for Obama or the EU made you a slave to its whims or whether there are some limits beyond which government cannot go. It is on this fundamental question of limits that question turns, not policy. If the government has the power to pronounce on the wisdom of drinking water and compel the purchase of broccoli then that itself is the issue. It will not do to simply say, “we have the power to pass any law provided we mean well”. The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.
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>>The whole thing is a total waste of time and I feel sorry for even having written this post, as it tells the reader nothing he didn’t know already about water or anything he may have not yet suspected about the European Union.<<
It's a seriuos and ongoing risk when thinking about liberalism. A lot of it is so stupid you can't quite describe how stupid it is, and you can easily go crazy in the process. I think it's part of its self-defense or immune system.
Why does this remind me of Lionel Mandrake talking to the mad colonel in Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKR32ImWYzw&feature=related
Purity of Essence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr2bSL5VQgM&feature=related
Water Fluoridation
‘Mandrake — have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUAK7t3Lf8s&feature=related
‘You’ll answer to the Coca Cola Company!’
Just who are these ‘experts? But other experts said that that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water. Therefore in the strictest sense, drinking water did not in and of itself dehydration.
It is impossible to stay hydrated without drinking water – one has obligatory H2O losses of around 1 liter per day, depending on temperature, and the only way this can be compensated is by H2O intake!
What they should have said is that one must remain adequately hydrated by drinking drinks that contain water. But that’s not the same, politically, is it?
So just who are these other experts? Are they medical experts? Or woodsmen with axes to grind?
The Lilliputians continue to deliberate. Can’t help themselves. It’s what they do.
“you can lead a man to water but you can’t make him think.”
I’m just waiting for the Yurps, in another desperate attempt to raise money, to legalize prostitution across all the EU so they can tax it. Can you imagine how many Eurocrats will suddenly be fighting to be put on the commissions to regulate and standardize the profession? Of course, they will need to do a great deal of field research to make sure the EU consumer will get only the finest product. It goes without saying there will be lots of subsidies to make sure the legacy employees will not be put out of work by cheap imports.
fta: A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.
betcha it wasn’t water them scientists were drinking in Parma, Italy, neither.
but really, when there are so many global warming scientists looking for new subjects on which to apply their expertise, we can only wait for what’s next.
any more than eating a pork pie a day reduces the risk of starvation.
they have statistics on people who HAVE starved to death when eating a pork pie per day?
The re-emergence of fascist tyranny in the West has been so incremental, so soft, and so unlike the blatant malice we were trained to expect from the likes of a Hitler or a Stalin, that many have not yet noticed its gargantuan dimensions.
A radical fringe of socialist oligarchs has captured the mechanisms of Western republicanism – in the US we see its apotheosis in that subtle monster Obama, but the Right has also been captured by an only slightly less radical group of fascists aristocratic oligarchs. And with alternative sights like PJM and other outlets abusing their position and regularly parroting the meaningless, petty character assassinations of the MSM by repeating their every smear against the Cains, and the Gingriches, et al,( and pushing the candidacy of RINO Romney to boot), it is doubtful a real opponent to the tyrannical Fascist State will be found. We’ll get another fake conservative deemed palatable. If he wins, he would deliver an only slightly slowed down march towards tyranny, but of course he may lose, and I think an Obama re-election would represent the death knell of American freedom as we’re subsumed into the monstrous maw of the New World Order under the auspices of the New World Aristocracy.
You’ll notice for example, that Perry only started talking about Fast and Furious TODAY, when his campaign may already be going down in flames. Not that much about Solyandro, and hardly a peep about MF Global simply looting gold speculators and whether Zerohedge is right that this was a deliberate liquidation of anti-Fed statist kulaks.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-mf-global-was-it-hit
Here here Morton. The media wants Romney, and failing that, Perry or Cain. They know all three would find a way to lose to Obama, the former due to his oligarchy connections and the latter by making spectacular flubs on the campaign trail. Gingrich might narrowly win Iowa, but Ron Paul is going to be right on his heels and might even embarass Romney in New Hampshire if Gingrich keeps taking the hits. Gingrich not coincidentally agreed with most of what Ron Paul said during the Bloomberg debate about auditing the Fed even though he’s probably too compromised to be able to pull it off — i.e. the banksters have more dirt on him.
There has definitely been a noticeable uptick in anti-Ron Paul trolling at PJM in the last week, whether paid or unpaid I do not know. But he’s been accused over at Spengler’s blog of hating Israel and being a racist, among other things, which have no basis in fact. Agree or disagree, call his foreign policy views naive if you want, but stop with the lies already.
Keeping throwing those straws on the camel’s back of voters tolerance.
The little things can trigger the unrestrained rage when it lands on top of the simmer resentment of the mismanaged economies and foreign policies. If the left is lucky they’ll just lose political offices in a cold civil war. If they are not…..
I’d like to see a debate between Christopher Hitchens and President Obama on whether dirt is dirty.
Congratulations E.U., but you forgot to address the issue of whether water is wet in the strict sense of the term considering molecules and comets in the Oort Cloud and that kind of stuff.
Can one have a rational debate with an irrational opponent? No.
Can one reason with an unreasonable person? No.
When a man tells you he is going to kill you, do you take him at his word? Yes.
To do otherwise is irrational and unreasonable.
When that same man tells you he is going to kill you over the course of years, do you still take him at his word? YES.
So quit lying to yourself about these statists, oligarchs, and do gooders. They are not here to do you any way other than dead.
Be ready and work very hard in all legal ways to defeat them in their insane rush to oblivion. Do not get blindsided.
Former Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has been arrested on charges of election fraud.
Not too big (or politically connected) to fail. Important lesson for the next President. Move more money off-shore for the required payoffs when it’s time to get your own ass out of the country.
The BBC reports:
What an interesting storyline. Could make the backdrop for a novel.
How about Americans and Filipino expats stashing gold in Singapore vaults? Seems like a safe place, according to Simon Black. Hell, maybe you should put a Simon Black character in your next novel Wretchard.
And are there any Orthodox Churches in Manila, either Greek or Russian?
Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom. Spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem “tempting” and order her to cover them immediately.
Olivia Wilde better stay the hell out of the Magic Kingdom.
This water law is not unlike the efforts to ban dihydrogen monoxide. Multiple politicians have been fooled because they want to control things they don’t understand:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax#Public_efforts_involving_DHMO
I wonder what the Occupy Wall Street crowd feels about this dangerous chemical?
wretchard: The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.
The issue is who decides who gets to decide, just as the issue has always been who polices the police?
In the past, in this country, the Washington pols “played nice.” Depending on circumstances, sometimes the Democrats would decide and sometimes the Republicans would decide. It worked for awhile – until it didn’t. Institutional balance is a delicate thing – as the Founders well knew. Externalities from globalization, and massive intent to defraud, courtesy of the money changers, are now pressuring the American mechanisms. Whether or not they break, remains to be seen.
It has been observed as well if you breathe oxygen for 80-90 years it will eventually kill you.
On the other hand dihydrogen monoxide when taken in small quantities orally is not harmful, but when inhaled in large quantities it is usually fatal.
Most politicians wouldn’t know this! I rest my case.
Re Mr X
http://orthodoxwiki.org/File:Manila_orthodox_cathedral.jpg
From the Wiki above:
In 1989, Adamopoulos saw the need to establish the first true Greek Orthodox church in the Philippines and thus established the Hellenic Orthodox Foundation Inc. Although he died in 1993 before the church was completed, the Orthodox Cathedral was finished in 1996 and is constructed in true Byzantine style, with all the interior furnishings imported from Greece, and is home to approximately 520 Filipino Orthodox and 40 expats[3]in Metro Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. This cathedral was consecrated by His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on March 5, 2000.
On April 20, 1990, a Filipino hieromonk, Fr. Vincentius Escarcha (a former Benedictine Abbot and a Roman Catholic priest for more than 20 years in Bajada, Cataingan, Masbate island), together with four nuns and faithful members of his community, were received into the Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Dionysios of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Zealand and assisted by Bishop Sotirios of Zelon. On January 19, 1994, Metropolitan Dionysios, assisted by Bishop Sotirios, received by Holy Chrismation several Filipino Christians in Manila.
In 1996, the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia was created for the needs of the faithful under the Church of Constantinople. In 2004, the Theotokos Orthodox Church in Bajada, Masbate was consecrated by His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas of Hong Kong and South East Asia. At present, the nuns of the Theotokos Orthodox Monastery in Bajada run a kindergarten.
The EUniks did not read the MSDS on dihydrogen monoxide. Not a very rigorous report.
Here it is. It is a dangerous chemical and should be treated with great respect.
http://www.dhmo.org/msdsdhmo.html
Here’s what I wrote to one Houston-based blogger with whom Senor Equis has often clashed with over U.S. foreign policy and our policies towards Russia in particular. He’s constantly posting about Russian kleptocracy, without realizing that the kleptocracy is now here.
http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=5760#comment-84710
I’ll close out my comments on this thread with this — the kleptocracy the good Professor has been decrying in the Kremlin is now here, breathing down our necks. Sometimes the Devil isn’t strolling down Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa (anyone who picks up the reference gets a cookie) with a fat black cat in tow headed for Tverskaya straight to the Kremlin. Sometimes he’s right there behind you, or even cackling maniacally as he humiliates SWP’s friends and acquaintences. My sincere thoughts are with the person SWP dined with who lost their money in the MF Global collapse, and I pray that this was not a deliberate take-down of gold speculators like Celente as the new kulaks targeted by a gangster government for liquidation.
Bureaucracies create more and more complicated rules–that is how they make their money and power.
Lawyers claim to help citizens negotiate those complicated rules — that is how their money and power.
It has been the same since ancient China.
A mutually reinforcing cottage industry.
English Common Law attempted to put a stop to this value destruction by introducing Common Sense.
It worked for a while.
In the US we have complicated tax codes that provides employment for millions of CPAs and tax lawyers-who lobby and pay politicians to create more complicated tax laws.
The merry go round of wealth destruction will nor end until we introduce common sense and a simple flat tax.
The question is why was this even an issue that the EU felt they needed to waste 3 years of time and ever-scarcer money to “investigate”? Everybody knows if you don’t drink enough, you may get dehydrated. Why is it necessary to determine if drinking “cures” dehydration when dehydration is largely related to insufficient water? Has the EU become so querelous that they will go back and try to re-think everything everybody already understands like the law of gravity?
The high thinkers of the medieval church sat around and debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. That was a major indicator of its corruption and decadence, the beginning of its decline in power and influence. History is about to repeat again.
“After an exhaustive three year study involving 21 experts, an agency of the European Union determined that drink manufacturers should be banned from claiming that water can prevent dehydration.”
The definition of dehydration is a deficit of water in the cells, interstitium and vascular spaces of the body. It is self-evident that drinking water is necessary to prevent dehydration – that is to say drinking water maintains hydration. It is also self-evident that drinking water cures dehydration. We don’t need European experts to explain that which has been self-evident from the dawn of the human race.
Electrolyte deficiency or excess is a separate issue – although it could have a bearing on the state of body hydration – but neither electrolyte excess nor electrolyte deficiency is defined as dehydration. For example, sudden sodium excess (from salt) will lead to thirst and increased drinking of water, but at the same time the kidneys quickly begin eliminating excess sodium in the urine – so increased thirst and drinking is brief and self-limited.
When European experts tell us that water does not prevent dehydration we should understand that they are lying to us, and expect us to swallow the lie through the insanity of Orwellian Doublethink.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [drinking water does not prevent dehydration (the lie) - and - drinking water prevents dehydration (the truth)], and accepting both of them [Insanity]… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” George Orwell – 1984
I think I may have mentioned here before the case where the fact that an interstate railroad ran parallel to a streetcar line in one Texas town was determined to allow the Fed Govt to set the streetcar fares in the town. The argument was that the streetacr was in competition with the railroad for its 2 mile length, even though it did not cross any state lines.
But take this same line of reasoning and apply it to the 2nd Amendment. If you do so you will conclude that every adult in the US should be compelled to not only possess a firearm but also to use as required it to defend the Constitution against all enemies “foreign and domestic.” And that clearly would include those who would abuse the Commerce Clause.
Smart guys, those founders. Y’all keep your powder dry….
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary
Hydrate: to cause to take up or combine with water or the elements of water
I guess these dirty rotten scoundrels with their false dictionary deserve a two year jail sentence somewhere in the UK.
Furthermore, whatever heretic wrote the lyrics to this song should be burned at the stake with a truckload of Euros.
All day I’ve faced the barren waste,
Without the taste of water:
Cool water. (Water.)
Old Dan and I, with throats burned dry,
An’ souls that cry for water: (Water.)
Cool, (Water.)
Clear, (Water.)
Water. (Water.)
I hear that lettuces, who are 98% water are outraged. They are threatening to leaf the European Union.
http://www.masterandmargarita.eu/en/04mappen/bolsjaja.html
Got to many cookies already, if I’m correct about your reference. “Master and Margirita” ( I think I spelled that wrong) was a primer used back in the day at the U S Navy language school. One of several, IIRC. Our instructors were usually former KGB types Hiding from their former comrades on a military base in San Diego. They seemed to like the anti-Soviet novels. I never did get it. The humor and oblique references were too subtle for me.
I was in SigInt at that time and didn’t need to know Russian to read my O-scope.
US foreign policy needs to evolve. Either we stop playing footsies and conquer the world or we pull back and stop playing cops and robbers. The Oligarchy that the establishment represents wants things to go on just as they are, which is impossible, of course.
We need a national dialogue, maybe even an international one. I cannot see teh won starting such a dialogue nor Mitt, Next, et. al.
Paul and Perry are perhaps the only ones with the sand to start such an idea. Perry is not articulate enough to explain either side, while Paul has the problem of being a nutter because he lacks the courage to explain that his foreign policy is good old fashioned isolationism.
One thing the EU has proven is that 3 to 4 hundred million people cannot be ruled by a small cluster fook in Brussels. They will drink water anyway. Regardless of the label on the bottle.
Terreista @ 16
Oh my God, I agree.
I consider the current interpretation of the Commerce Clause to be illegitimate. The Constitution clearly defines relationships between several entities, notably the Federal Government, States and Persons. There are many parts of the Constitution that define the relationship between Persons and the Federal Government; the word is used some 22 times, but this relationship is not found in the Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause does not read:
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes, and among persons;
It certainly could have. If the Framers had intended the Federal Government have the power to regulate commerce among Persons, they would have put it in the Commerce Clause. They didn’t specify Persons because they didn’t intend the Federal Government to have that power. That is a state power. It is just that simple. The interpretation of the Commerce Clause is so complex and confusing because that is the nature of lies.
#27 westerncanadian
Furthermore, whatever heretic wrote the lyrics to this song should be burned at the stake with a truckload of Euros.
Ditto Coleridge:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
And Kipling:
‘E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
‘E put me safe inside,
An’ just before ‘e died,
“I ‘ope you liked your drink”, sez Gunga Din.
So I’ll meet ‘im later on
At the place where ‘e is gone –
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen;
‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Will the Eurocrats get a swig in hell, I wonder?
Yes, Teresita, we can agree on that.
I didn’t vote for Obama. Does that mean that I’m not bound by all the laws and executive orders passed in the last three years?
Certainly these deniers of the need for dihydrogen monoxide are funded by Big BEER!
24. Buck O’Fama
Has the EU become so querelous that they will go back and try to re-think everything everybody already understands like the law of gravity?
Is it really a “law”? Was it passed by a legislative body and duly signed by an executive? No? Well, there’s your answer.
Politics colludes with academia, which is filled with neurotics and… you know the type. Even if we defeat the nannys, it’s still a victory for nerds to dictate right and wrong.
They’ve done Lewis Carroll proud.
Of course eating meat went out long ago. And, driven by the hauntingly silent screams of the asparagus, the EU has already weighed in on the dignity of plants:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2931685/The-Dignity-of-Living-Beings-with-Regards-to-Plants
So plants are out, too. Now we find out water has been a fraud all along.
When we held a glimpse of our human potential before, we were acting from a stance of delusion, of inauthenticity.
The sacred groves house the animals, and all plants. Meanwhile the waters are remaindered as treasonous, changeable, reflecting outwardly the inner fraud, radiating monstrosity.
The only remedy left is to dine on each other. Only cannibalism unites us. I reccommend the vegans, they provide a healthy alternative and one cannot be too careful.
There’s a lot to be said for vegan cannibalism when you think about it.
On a Friday which seems to be a festival of lunacy, Kate at small dead animals is having a perfectly sane day.
She has a link to this Italian who I am promoting as a very suitable immigrant to Canada. Too late American cousins, we have already dispatched a secret envoy to Milan.
Robbins is just masturbating with words. Product claims should not require an explanation of the entire universe. It is trivially true that “water keeps you from getting dehydrated”. And, It is not misleading. It is not a half truth.
It is not a lecture on physiology, nor is it a physician’s advice after taking an extensive history and conducting a through examination. But, something printed on the side of a bottle cannot be either of those things, nor should anyone ever expect them to be.
Claiming that any communication which does not contain a complete specification of its context (i.e. in this case the physiology of water consumption, electrolyte balances, etc. & etc.) is misleading, is nonsensical. Having to take the time and energy to respecify context with every new communication would quickly render the communication channel hopelessly clogged, and the recipient of the communication completely overloaded, trying to sort out the important information he needs from the respecified context that he doesn’t need.
I spent years trying to create documents that by law had to specify all of their context, the prospectuses and proxy statements that companies must file with the SEC. The SEC rules produce documents that meet the context requirement, but which are unreadable and unread. (When I get one from a company whose stock I own, it flies into the recycling bin so fast).
1. Arguing about whether Ron Paul is or is not personally an antisemite is a mugs game. All across the internet antisemites and cranks flock to his standard. If he is innocent then he is guilty of extraordinary incompetence over years in failing to clean house. This is like absolving Obama of responsibility for the sly winks and thug supporters encouraging hate and confrontation. Paulbots are not Republicans but retreads from the Lyndon Larouche wing of the Democratic Party.
2. Politicians are often allergic to water. They subscribe to WC Fields dictum that “fish **** in it.”
3. Why should the government get to order seat belt use? It is said that they do so because if you do not wear one then the risk of injury to others is increased, or that if you go to a hospital then society will incur costs to care for you. The medical cost argument should be rejected. It shows the slippery slope of having the state offer a benefit available elsewhere, through the market and charity, and then using it’s entry to justify encroaching on the people’s liberty.
The argument that makes sense to me is that the government may control your actions when they impact on others. The only action that the government traditionally prohibited that did not overtly effect others was the prohibition on suicide. That could be justified by declaring the potential suicide non compos mentis. The power of the government to suddenly reduce a citizen to such a status must be carefully controlled. It should demand a formal hearing before a Judge in every instance to determine if the Authorities acted properly if they claim that it was urgent that they restrain the individual preemptively. If they have advance warning of persons being a danger to themselves or others then they should use the normal processes to bring the subject before a Court for examination, where they may defend against the action. In “Judgement at Nuremberg” it was noted that even in the kangaroo courts of the 3rd Reich a pretense of judicial authorization of an act that degraded a citizen into a subject was offered.
4. Didn’t India have a Prime Minister who drank his own urine?
5. What is Dr. Peter Venkman up to?
6. The Romans, no slouches at asserting State authority, said caveat emptor. If anyone had the temerity to suggest such a claim they would have thrown them out of court, and possibly tossed the lawyer off a cliff.
@40. You are right about Paul, Larouche, and Obama. But consider that each of them simply takes orders – none of them can escape the lies they embraced years ago. Although they probably dream of a day when they’re allowed to explain everything, it’s more likely they’ll be remembered just as they presented themselves.
40. Blast From the Past: The only action that the government traditionally prohibited that did not overtly effect others was the prohibition on suicide. That could be justified by declaring the potential suicide non compos mentis.
This has always bothered me since the Constitution says we have ownership of our own life granted to us by our creator. To me that means we also have the right to end that life if we so desire. I have never been suicidal myself but I can imagine a situation where I faced long and painful suffering leading to death ultimately where I would prefer to go painlessly and quickly. As far as the medical community is concerned that makes me mentally incompetent. The only justification I come up with is they would lose money if people chose to simply end their lives than spend their life savings trying to stave off the inevitable. How sick is that?
Wretchard: But other experts said that that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water
Bill K (3): Just who are these experts?
Me: Mark Twain and W. C. Fields, obviously.
Civilizations rise, civilizations fall, victim to their own sclerosis. It has ever been thus, and there will be no Caeser for Europe. But will there for America?
I would like to invite those scientists to spend a week with me next July or August to hike and camp in Death Valley, CA. I shall have plenty of water and maybe even a pork pie or two. By day three, when their death is imminent from dehydration, I will not offer them some of my water on the grounds it won’t help hold off the Grim Reaper lurking in the 120 degree dessert heat. Perhaps I will offer them a copy of their study and remind them that if we were in the UK, to offer them my water for their dehydration would land me in jail.
To think, the United Kingdom went from a major force around the world to being reduced to the land of the terminally stupid and in less than a hundred years. A lesson for us to learn. We are so headed in the same direction because afterall, “if people didn’t want to be forced to buy health insurance they wouldn’t have elected Barack Obama.”
I have never been suicidal myself but I can imagine a situation where I faced long and painful suffering leading to death ultimately where I would prefer to go painlessly and quickly. As far as the medical community is concerned that makes me mentally incompetent.
Ah, but you could leave a Directive to Physicians that if you become unable to live without life support, they are directed to withhold nourishment and/or hydration, either of which will kill you in due course if withheld. As dehydration sets in, you will become mentally incompetent anyway.
“Ah, but you could leave a Directive to Physicians that if you become unable to live without life support, they are directed to withhold nourishment and/or hydration, either of which will kill you in due course if withheld”
My Father had such a ‘living will’. He fell and broke his leg at the hip joint. He died on the operating table so the plugged him into several machines and feed him thru a tube. Since he recognised none of his children or any of his life long friends, we told the hospital we wanted to exercise the living will. They said “No”. It took 14 months of legal bills to get it done. Twice they moved him the day before the Judge signed the order.
The fine print in a living wills is something to behold.
I am astounded by the angels-on-a-pin sophistry of some of these responses. Mr. Fernandez nails the key point of this or any other discussion of political philosophy in his final paragraph: Who Decides? This lies at the crux of the concept of liberty within a social context (for which, for humans, there is no other). The drinking-water bit was simple prelude, and warrants no comment from readers. The conclusive point…Who Decides…lies at the heart of the crises that Western Civilization now faces. A bravuro performance, Wretchard, one of your best.
An honest interpretation of the commerce clause is the closest thing to a “magic bullet” that could save our nation from bankruptcy.
The drinking-water bit was simple prelude, and warrants no comment from readers.
Oh lighten up. Have some fun with stupidity. I doubt anyone reading at Belmont had a problem understanding Richard’s point, but why does everything HAVE to be an object lesson when there is so much fodder for humor? One can understand and even agree with the point and still find the humor in the stupidity of British law and those morons who did the study.
“Warrants no comment from readers.” Really, it isn’t an authorized or justified object of mockery? Who made you supreme decision maker and emperor for the day?
@Sara “…there is so much fodder for humor?” The problem is the instigators of this insanity are not laughing.
If only they would say on Monday “Gotcha, lol, lol.”
wretchard: The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.
NARAL would agree.
(Interesting Fact: 90% of all abortions in USA are performed during first trimester.)
Next study–Air: Breathing Does Not Prevent The Risk of Suffocation.
“Dumb and Dumber” revisited
The battle against common sense continues apace.
I could say that this is just another episode of deck chair movement on the Titanic. But that would understate the case. Now they are reduced to deliberating whether or not to put deck chair position on the agenda. “twinkles up”
Khutch @ 48: “The drinking-water bit was simple prelude, and warrants no comment from readers.”
Speak for yourself! For myself, we all have a responsibility – nay, a sacred duty – to mock the EUnuchs at every chance they provide us. And they provide so many examples of stupidity inbred with hypocrisy that it can be a heavy burden to keep up.
Remember the Euros were the ones who set out to rescue Jerusalem from the Muslims, and attacked Christian Constantinople instead. They perfected instruments of torture which have never been equalled. They exported slaves to the New World. They wantonly burned down the Chinese emperor’s Heavenly Palace, just to make him agree to let them sell hard drugs to poor Chinese. They exploited most of the world with their colonialism, and then burned up the stolen treasure by starting two world wars. Those peace-loving Norwegians have only just returned from bombing Libyan civilians for reasons that don’t stand scrutiny. And now the EuroCrats are going to bring down the global economy with their profligate government spending.
Please don’t deny us the simple pleasure of laughing at misplaced EuroTrash airs & graces as they slide down into the pit – ahead of us.
The problem is the instigators of this insanity are not laughing.
Oh I’m sure they aren’t. LOL. The p.c. world is very serious about what is “warranted” as proper and must be adhered to and that is why it is so delicious. I mean what else are you going to do but laugh at them? Stop drinking water? I don’t think so. And isn’t that really Richard’s point? Who gets to decide? Khutch apparently thinks he is an authorized decider, even though he doesn’t want the government to be for water. Since the whole idea is too silly for anything but mockery and since I have no intention of submitting to either Khutch or the government deciding for me what “warrants” being discussed, and since this is a blog and not the halls of the legislature, I have two choices, ring my hands and quake that we’re next or laugh. I choose to laugh (this time) because c’mon, this study, that took 3 years and God knows how many dollars is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing to come down the pike in awhile. If one of our Congresscritters proposed such a bill with a penalty of jail attached, which do you think would be more effective? Wringing hands and moaning, “Oh my God, oh my God, the gov’t is overreaching,” or a couple million people pointing at that Congresscritter and laughing in his/her face at the insanity?” I vote for laughing at anyone who would participate in such a dumb study, in the first place, and anyone dumb enough to try to advance the idea embodied by the study through the media or the legislature. These bottom dwellers only succeed when we take them seriously.
The Constitution concerns the relationship of persons, individuals, with their government. It both establishes the form of that government and the protections from that government.
Liberty can only exist when the activities of government are adequately constrained, because of the innate proclivity of mankind, especially that fraction that seeks political power, to desire control over others.
It is incumbent on the Judicial branch to constrain the activities of Executive and Legislative branches when the Commerce Clause is exploited to undermine the primary thesis of limitation of powers and the express enumeration of powers.
Who decides? If the continued patronage of commercial air travel despite the abusive infringement of personal rights and dignity is any indication, the people have decided.
“The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.”
Can a democracy vote to abolish democracy???
It almost seems like we already have, what with the over-reaching and extra-judicial powers that this administration has decided to wield and the seeming passiveness with which the populace has responded.
The Zeitgeist for our age is Bad Science, with Algore the poster-boy.
Science is hard, and the difficulties it faces in every age are probably misunderstood by those who aren’t students of the art – even most practicing scientists tend not to understand the process anymore than a fish understands water. But science always makes a wonderful flag for anyone wanting to make an argument, as we see with global warming most of all, the term “scientism” is generally derogatory for the practice of non-scientists arguing scientific arguments, but there’s no good term for a scientist practicing outside of their expertise, as ANY political or social application of science must qualify.
But the incompetent masquarading as competent, hoping that the use of the words alone carry the magic, seems to me utterly rampant these days. “Clean and articulate” was enough to get Obambus elected presidunce, but the path was paved by Algore’s same lack of qualifications regarding global warming. Seems to be a case of those who can, do, those who can’t, get Nobel prizes. The road to ________ is paved with good intentions?
I’ve put this up a few times past, seems to fit here, I wonder if liberty is important in this day and age, or are the people looking for a hand to feed them?
********************
“”What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”"
Learned Hand, “The Spirit of Liberty” – speech at “I Am an American Day” ceremony, Central Park, New York City (21 May 1944).
********************
The news these days is mostly grim, but every now and then something comes along that makes me smile. Looks like Corzine may have lost the bulk of his wealth.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/11/08/corzines-wealth-is-eroding-with-his-reputation/#ixzz1du8Pvgmt
Another giant, another one of the sacred elite telling us what to think and do, the smartest guy in the room insisting that water doesn’t cure thirst, or whatever. Now if he just got sent to jail for the rest of his life I would REALLY feel good.
“Things come down to whether Government is restricted in any meaningful sense by the Constitution; if there is any basis left for citizens to say, ‘I decide’.”
Or, in other words: Does Elhauge acknowledge any inalienable rights, and if so, do these rights exist in a vacuum or are there knock-on consequences? That is what the Constitution is about; it says so explicitly. It is in that context that the Commerce Clause exists. The clause can not be read as extending to Congress unlimited power without coming into conflict with document’s expressed intent to secure liberty as an inalienable right.
YBR@52: “wretchard: The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.
NARAL would agree.”
I personally want the baby to decide…since it’s their life that’s at issue and all.
“(Interesting Fact: 90% of all abortions in USA are performed during first trimester.)”
If true (and I have no reason to believe it isn’t), that certainly raises my eyebrows at the amount of sweat, blood and tears the pro-abortion lobby has put into defending partial-birth abortions.
I’m a social moderate on most issues, but not on abortion. It’s a barbaric, ugly practice on the face of it that should never, ever be allowed to be used by anyone as a method of birth control. Rape? Incest? Life of the mother? I can see those. I can’t see any other legitimate reason for them. Roe v. Wade is, pardon the expression, a total abortion of a legal decision and even the orinal Roe has repudiated it.
Interesting fact: 90% of all abortions in USA are performed during first trimester
Meaning 10% are not. With about 1.2 million abortions per year (2008 stat), that’s 120,000 a year NOT in the first trimester. That, too, is an interesting fact.
24. Buck O’Fama claimed…
The high thinkers of the medieval church sat around and debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Wrong.
Here’s a hint: Monty Python flicks are humour, not documentaries and snark from the “high thinkers” of the so-called Enlightenment is not history, but lame attacks on their scholastic betters.
Try again.
(Go ahead, find an honest citation for a treatise that documents any such debate; original sources only, no hand-waving in the fashion of “Voltaire said some unnamed person heard from somewhere that…”)
peterlike #63
If there is justice the $600 million Corizine stole from his clients should be repaid from his remaining assets.
This will make him a pauper while he sits in prison.
47.stoichelon
My Father had such a ‘living will’. He fell and broke his leg at the hip joint. He died on the operating table so the plugged him into several machines and feed him thru a tube. Since he recognised none of his children or any of his life long friends, we told the hospital we wanted to exercise the living will. They said “No”. It took 14 months of legal bills to get it done. Twice they moved him the day before the Judge signed the order.
The fine print in a living wills is something to behold.”
Sorry for that. My dad died 2 years after a critical event resulting in prolonged recucitation. Won’t go into details here.
Living wills are helpful but there is no way to cover every circumstance. People come to the hospital in critical condition every day. The medical ethic of consent is still pretty much intact in US hospitals.
It is difficult when the individual is in no position to make anything like an informed decision. Sometimes treatment will result in enough improvement so those choices can be made. Those lines, the risks and balances, conferences in the family waiting area…this is where medicine failed your family and caused you to revert to the legal system.
One silver lining in medicine is that it does not rest on dogma. Anything you thought true yesterday may change tomorrow. It is also a very human endeavor with all that entails. I have spent my whole adult working life there with no regrets.
Anyway on the issue of water.
It is good for you.
Breathing and eating are also encouraged.
My Mother had a Directive to Physicians and a Power of Attorney for Health Care. Two separate documents. Copies of the DtP were given to her doctor, to the hospital of record and to me and her grandson, as well as her next door neighbor, who would most likely have been the first on scene.
However, even with all that, you are right, you can’t control all circumstances. For instance, even though I was there, with the emergency and everyone sort of running in a dozen different directions, no one thought to tell the EMTs that she had a DNR, so when she stopped breathing they tried to revive her and then the emergency room doctors took over. I was happy they did, and she was happy to still be alive, but madder than a hatter that all her careful planning was for naught. My Mother was not a woman who liked to be defied. It was a very odd place to be, happy to be alive and mad that the hospital violated her wishes at the same time. And when she was transferred from Chino Hospital to Pomona Valley, we went thru it again. It finally dawned on me that the sight of the EMTs was sending her into a panic attack as she was convinced they were taking her away to dump her somewhere and the panic attack was what was causing her erratic breathing. I never did figure out what trauma she was reliving that caused her so much fear of an EMT. She made another ambulance trip a few years later, but that time, I kept reassuring her that I would be with her and no one was going to dump her anywhere without going over me. She wouldn’t let go of my hand, so they let me ride with her.
And to stay on topic, her Power of Attorney for Health Care defined what care should be given if she became completely incapacitated. She was okay with withholding nourishment, but it said in very explicit terms that they should not withhold hydration. Her other directive was that I should not agree to pull the plug for at least two weeks after at least two doctors recommended that course of action. She said she was doing that for me, not herself, so that I could be entirely sure that there would be no recovery before having to live with the horrible thoughts of having killed my own Mother. I’m an only child and my Mother was a widow, so she knew I would be entirely alone in that decision. Thankfully I never even had to come close. She died peacefully, sitting up regally in her chair, with what little family we have around her. She was 94 and it was 7 1/2 years after they told me to let her go, the stroke was so severe she wouldn’t last for 48 hours.
me @ 67: (Go ahead, find an honest citation for a treatise that documents any such debate; original sources only, no hand-waving in the fashion of “Voltaire said some unnamed person heard from somewhere that…”)
I followed that path a couple of years ago, and IIRC the closest anybody came was a question of whether things in general, in order to exist, had to be material, in which case angels, if they should exist, could NOT all dance on the head of a pin, so even the schoolmen were making fun of the idea at the very start, but the debate in which it was brought up was actually rather interesting.
Equally interesting would be a trackback on when it first became a standard item of criticism of those same schoolmen.
At the least, it’s an example of how things can get turned around, like the meaning of the term “liberal” in the US over three hundred years.
s @ 69: how long ago did your father pass on? when my father was in the hospital for his last days three years ago I had to go through this process as well, and as it was explained to me the doctors have a LOT more “freedom”, if that’s the word, to disconnect things now, compared to even ten years previously when it was still all new and in flux. I won’t recite the horrible details, actually all in all my father’s last days were not nearly as bad as many, and of course at some point none of the options is good.
71. Josh—
You’re correct about doctors’ ”freedom”. In fact, such horror stories were always rare thankfully and due to circumstances that were usually particular to the specific situation or simply, in the earlier years, overdue legalism and fear of liability.
In fact, in a case I know of first hand, the doctor had a frank discussion with the patient in the presence of her family, in which she stated (again) she didn’t want to go on living plugged into all the technology. He came back the next day, she repeated this, she was heavily sedated with narcotics, and life support discontinued.
I can guarantee, from my whole career in medicine, that conflicts over end-of-life issues do not come about from evil intent. The desire to do the ”right thing” is intense, as is the stress and fear of doing the wrong thing. Sadly, families in the grip of shock and grief can say exactly the wrong thing and make it harder. Please, please, try to recognize this and thank them for their efforts—it’s a very tough job.
Warning: being alive results in eventual death. The more assertively one lives one’s life, the greater the sorrow at death.
RE: The issue is who has the competence to decide, not what the policy is.
Whether the subject is regulation, abortion, or end-of-life decisions, the “decider” shares the stage with context. It could be policy. It could be religion, or it could be the will of the individual acting as a bridge between medical and legal issues. A “proper” resolution will vary in each case, depending. A “proper” deconstruction of the “who decides” problem must consider situational specificity rather than rely on top-down absolutism.
Spindok@69: The medical ethic of consent is still pretty much intact in US hospitals.
Moot@72: The desire to do the ”right thing” is intense, as is the stress and fear of doing the wrong thing.
Both statements reinforce my sense that, at the individual level (in this country), critical thought is well and “intact”, an assessment supported by the very sober first trimester statistic I cited above.
Not across the board, but the trend lines and the weights are positively directed and positioned.
Never can tell what those crazy you-rows will get up to next;
http://www.aol.com/2011/11/17/german-woman-animal-crushing-fetish_n_1101365.html
I’ve always considered mice vermin, not animals but then again, I’m an American.
Have pepper spray, will travel.
The vermin had it comin’. Justice ain’t always fair.
Or …
The perps in question were practicing for higher-order vermin.
Or …
The old “humanity is fatally nuts in need of a keeper who somehow escaped the affliction” explanation.
Or …
The old college roommate working SigIntel out of AOL who always wanted to be a writer but Bertolt Brecht had already written everything he wanted to say.
Or …
Waiting for Gotterdammerung.
Politics aside, I believe the EU ruling on the medical claim about drinking water was correct. By far the most common occurrence of dehydration is from extended physical exertion in extremely hot conditions, leading to fluid loss from sweat, and not drinking enough water during and immediately after that exposure. It is true that drinking water — bottled or not, flavoured or not — reduces the risk of dehydration during that exposure. But — this is the important part — regular consumption of bottled water does not reduce the risk of dehydration. It does not give some sort of extra protection. The body regulates hydration as finely as anything. Drinking extra water simply leads to greater urine output, as the body rids itself of the unneeded fluid. Drinking bottled water every day for a year does not reduce the risk of dehydration on a Saturday afternoon of extreme exertion in the heat. Manufacturers of Vitamin C should not be allowed to claim that their product reduces the risk of colds, because it does not. Similarly, bottled water should not be sold with the claim that it reduces the risk of dehydration. I care nothing for the nanny state, but I do recognize the need to regulate some things, and the safety of food and drugs is one of those things. A key part of those regulations is that any medical claims must be substantiated by research. “Dehydration” is a severe medical condition that can lead to death. Drinking bottled water — other that when dehydration has onset — does not reduce the risk of it. The Eurocrats were correct.
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