Because you didn’t get your “Morning Links” today, and because I have browser tabs that need closing . . .

• Angry moms want to ban ice cream trucks from playgrounds.

• U.S. life expectancy hits all-time high, deaths from cancer, heart disease, HIV all down. You’d never know it from the health care debate. Or the obesity debate. I opine on our world life expectancy ranking here.

• The blog Classically Liberal has more difficult details on the Bernard Baran case I wrote about earlier this week, as well as some general observations on the spate of child care sex abuse cases from the 1980s.

• MSNBC shows tight shot of Town Hall protester packing heat, suggests racism against Obama might why people are carrying guns to these events. Problem is, they needed the tight shot, because the guy with the gun was black.

• Declan McCullagh is a heading up a new civil liberties section with the CBS News website. We need more of this.

• Giant robot cage fish farms may soon roam the seas.

• PayPal continues to be evil. My article on how the once-great company fell from grace, or rather was pushed from grace by government, here.

Aaron Rochester, a city councilman in Sioux City, Iowa, who led an effort to get pit bulls banned in the city is now appealing to prevent his own dog from being euthanized after it apparently bit a neighbor. His dog? A Labrador.

It’s just an anecdote, but it’s illustrative of the problems with breed-specific legislation. Bad owners create bad dogs, regardless of the dog’s lineage. Bans on pit bulls don’t prevent dog fighting, nor do they prevent people from raising vicious dogs. They just ensure that dogs fitting the pit bull description will be vicious, because the well-bred lines will be discontinued and good owners will stop raising them. Meanwhile, people who raise dogs for fighting will simply move on to another breed.

Moreover, the term pit bull isn’t really a breed at all. It’s a generic term that can and has been applied to just about any dog with bulldog and/or terrier traits (take the pit bull test here). The American Kennel Club-recognized breed that’s generally associated with the term is the American Staffordshire Terrier. And the vast, vast majority of staffies are harmless (they’re actually considered a child-friendly breed).

I hope Rochester’s dog isn’t put down, and instead sent to a trainer. But Rochester ought pay the approriate damages to his neighbor and perhaps take a couple of dog-rearing classes before he’s allowed to own another dog. Maybe he’ll even learn from all of this why specific breeds aren’t the problem.

A few years ago, Virginia’s power-tripping alcohol control board cracked down on state bars and pubs that sponsored drinking games like beer pong. Naturally, young bargoers in Northern Virginia started playing the games in their backyards. So naturally, the city of Arlington may now ban them on private property, too.

Bluemont resident James Thorne said that, since the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board banned drinking games (such as “beer pong”) from bars and eateries, they have gravitated toward outdoor areas, such as outside local homes.

“It affects our quality of life,” Thorne said of the resulting noise.

Thorne asked board members to consider an ordinance change that would give county police the ability to request that such drinking games be moved indoors.

Board members said the matter should be investigated.

“What people do in the privacy of their own homes is their business,” board member Walter Tejada said. “When it spills out and affects the quality of the neighborhood . . . we have to take a look.”

County Manager Ron Carlee said his staff would look into the matter, coordinate with police and come back with a report to board members.

Reader Patrick Semmens sent the story, and adds via email:

As far as I can tell, this is being pushed by just one person, my next door neighbor, who is the sole proponent quoted in the Sun Gazette’s article.

For the past two years he has called the cops on my well-attended annual St.Patrick’s Day party (and last year also the Virginia Alcohol Bureau), but much to his dismay drinking beer outside during the middle of the day (and playing drinking games) is not against the law.  So he is trying to change that by imposing a law on the 200,000 citizens of Arlington County.

Now an elected member of the Arlington County Board says they are looking into it, and the county manager is wasting time and money having his staff “investigate.” A police captain was even dispatched to my house to talk about the proposed law.

The city already has noise ordinances to deal with any disturbance Semmens’ parties may have caused Thorne. Banning drinking games on private property seems a bit ridiculous. Then again, so does the idea of banning them in bars.

Semmens has set up a website to prevent the idea from gaining momentum.

The UK is proposing a new law stating that any sex with a prostitute later shown to be working in the sex trade involuntarily is per se rape, possibly punishable by life in prison. Johns will be prohibited from claiming ignorance of the prostitute’s status in their defense.

In a society where prostitution were legal, open, and market regulated, this sort of law would make some sense. Under such a regime, most (or nearly all) advertised prostitutes and brothels would, in all likelihood, be legit. Few people trafficking in sex slaves would want the attention that comes with openly advertising their services.

But black markets by definition obscure information from consumers. When prostitution is illegal (or quasi-legal, as it is Britain), it’s hard to distinguish voluntary sex workers from involuntary ones, because they’re all illegal. They all operate underground. There’s undoubtedly a clear moral distinction between patronizing a sex worker who chooses to sell her body, and one who’s forced to do perform under the threat of harm by a pimp or a mama-san. The problem is that under a prohibition on prostitution, it becomes more difficult for Johns to make that distinction.

The other sad irony here is that I would guess that all else being equal, most Johns don’t want to have sex with a woman against her will. Yes, I’m sure many Johns today practice some willful ignorance about the status of the prostitutes they patronize. But in a society where sex for money were open and legal, the sex slave trade would almost certainly lose a huge chunk of its market share (whatever that may be). Given the option between legal sex with an advertised prostitute or brothel or risking arrest by having sex with a prostitute in a shady, unadvertised, unregulated, underground brothel that may be using sex slaves, I don’t think it’s wildly speculative to say that most Johns would choose the former.

In any case, under such a scenario, you could certainly make a stronger case for throwing the book at those who choose the latter.