Binge Drinking, Water Safety and Home Schooling
1. LEGAL
A new report finds that changes to bar closing times in Britain have done nothing to reduce binge drinking problems.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on the predictable results:
“The United Kingdom has a culture of heavy drinking, one that goes back hundreds of years at the very least. This has been an object of concern for social engineers of every stripe for some time now, from the Methodists to the current Labour government. While the Methodists preached teetotalism, Labour decided that the binge-drinking culture and its associated violence would be best dealt with by turning Britain into a continental-style cafe society, which they decided to engineer by allowing 24-hour drinking… [Now we find that] a centuries-old culture has proved resilient to legislative attempts to change it. Funny, that.”
2. HEALTH
A middle school science project garners national attention for finding that public water fountains contain more bacteria than toilet water.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Environment & Risk Policy Angela Logomasini on the controversy over bottled water:
“Environmental activists want to regulate bottled water out of existence because they say that it is a waste of resources because the alternatives–such as filtered tap water placed in refillable containers–are just as good. What they don’t consider is where people will be forced to fill those refillable bottles when they are in public places. Most of us don’t tote around Britta filters, so when in public places, we are left to consider drinking from a public faucet, like a water fountain and public bathroom tap. No thanks! Even a child can tell you that those places are full of unappetizing germs.”
3. EDUCATION
A California court rules that parents without official teaching credentials cannot home school their own children.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the double standards applied in education law:
“When parents object to political indoctrination and sexually intrusive questions aimed at their children by public school officials, the courts insist that they have no right to object because they supposedly ‘voluntarily’ sent their kids to the public schools, and parents’ constitutional rights to direct the upbringing of their children supposedly stop at the ‘threshold of the school door,’ according to a California case called Fields v. Palmdale School District. But when parents respond to such rulings by exercising their choice not to send their kids to a public school, but rather home-school them, the courts then switch arguments to claim that there really is no such choice, claiming that the State can prevent anyone who lacks State-approved teaching ‘credentials’ from teaching children, and that ‘parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,’ according to the California Court of Appeal’s disturbing ruling in another case, In re Rachel L. (2008).”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To contact a CEI expert for comment or interviews, please call the CEI communications department at 202-331-2273 or email to [email protected].