But you can’t really make a reductio argument for too long before someone embraces it.

Many women love wearing perfume, but have you ever gotten a headache from someone who has sprayed on way too much of a scent you don’t like? Back in 2008, Susan McBride, sued Detroit under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming a co-worker’s fragrance made it hard for her to breathe and do her job. She was eventually awarded $100,000, and the city warned workers to avoid using scented products like perfume, cologne, deodorant, lotion, and aftershave. Now New Hampshire is looking to do the same.

State representative Michele Peckham is sponsoring House Bill 1444 which hopes to ban state employees who work with the public from wearing perfume. Apparently a constituent with extreme allergies approached Peckham with the proposal. “It may seem silly, but it’s a health issue,” Peckham told the Union Leader. “Many people have violent reactions to strong scents.”

The author then poses an honest question that puts this nonsense into the proper perspective:

Allergies and annoyances aside, should the government be able to regulate what we smell like?

The bans at the moment are just for state employees. But that’s merely where these ideas start. Just to hammer the point home, this, from  a tweet from Stacy Malkan, head of an organization called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

Fragrance is the new secondhand smoke.

Of course, body odor is fairly offensive to the senses as well. Don’t we deserve protection from that? Clearly the proper balance here is for the federal government to require regular showers and the application of deodorant, but ban all but the unscented varieties. All of this would be proper under the authority  of the Commerce Clause, of course.

We fight them with ridicule. Conan O’Brien got into the act last night, too. See the video below. (Probably SFW, but not safe for your dreams.)

Meanwhile, a Louisiana parish wants to ban the wearing of pajamas in public.

The way the Justice Department wants to interpret a current law, lying on the Internet would amount to a crime.

Richard Downing, deputy chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice, argued that in order to properly protect the country, the part of the CFAA that says a person must exceed their “authorized access” to break the law should include a violation of the terms of service.

This is how DOJ went after Lori Drew, the woman who used a MySpace account to pose as a teenage boy in order to torment a girl who was bullying her daughter. The girl later committed suicide, which led to calls for Drew’s prosecution, even though it wasn’t clear that she had committed any crime. The charges were tossed by a judge, so Congress and DOJ want to give prosecutors more power. But in the name of protecting intellectual property and national security.  Here’s how Downing put it in his testimony.

“These are just a few cases, but this tool is used routinely. The plain meaning of the term ‘exceeds authorized access,’ as used in the CFAA, prohibits insiders from using their otherwise legitimate access to a computer system to engage in improper and often malicious activities. We believe that Congress intended to criminalize such conduct, and we believe that deterring it continues to be important. Because of this, we are highly concerned about the effects of restricting the definition of ‘exceeds authorized access’ in the CFAA to disallow prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider.”

The Volokh Conspriacy’s Orin Kerr also testified.

“In the Justice Department’s view, the CFAA criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake name on Facebook or lying about your weight in an online dating profile. That situation is intolerable. Routine computer use should not be a crime. Any cybersecurity legislation that this Congress passes should reject the extraordinarily broad interpretations endorsed by the United States Department of Justice.”

I think we should just bar Congress from passing any law related to the Internet.

Truck Accident That Killed Rafters in Canyon Sparks Truck-Canyon-Rafter Reform Debate

MORE: The bear story is a bit dated. Via the comments, it looks like the bear shooter was fined $1,000. Also, the father was initially charged with a misdemeanor, not a felony, though it was punishable by up to a year in jail and a $50,000 fine.

Now: Tests show accused killer had no bath salts in his system.

• Another ignorant, ill-informed rant against libertarians. Good responses here and here. Lind’s rant is so riddled with errors, it both isn’t really worthy of a thorough response, and would take a book-length response to address them all.
• Bullying prevention as an unfunded mandate.
• Law enforcement and the “Holy Shit!” rule.
• Tim Carney has more on how Warren Buffet has benefited financially from the big government programs he supports. (Note: I don’t doubt that Buffet earnestly supports these programs and is sincere in his political beliefs, anyway. But free market people who get involved in politics and policy certainly don’t get the same benefit of the doubt.)
• Good question for libertarian discussion. At what point do claims like those made by homeopathy become fraud?
• California bill, among other things, would mandate breaks for babysitters.
• Controversial claim!: Americans should be free to sell things without a permit.
• Anti-abortion activist says cops beat him, arrested him, and accused him of terrorism for handing out pamphlets.