Since Dennis is talking about smoking...

...and the hysterical over-reactions to it, I thought this recent post from a Bostonian known as "The Snob" was particularly apropos. He provides his interpretation of the Mayor Menino's tyrannical stripping of the "modest and ancient freedoms" related to smoking.

1. Henceforth smoking shall be banned indoors, outdoors, and in all public places in between. This includes outdoor patios, where the wind blows hamburgers off tables, five feet from corners where MBTA buses belch more smoke than an Everett family reunion, lest the delicate health of the cocktail waitress be harmed.

2. Drugstores shall no longer be permitted to sell tobacco, a drug legal in all 50 states and whose commerce even the Taliban saw fit to countenance.

3. Cigarette sales on colleges are banned. However, campus bookstores may continue to stock pipes and tobacco alongside the saddle shoes, raccoon coats, and adhesive-backed suede armpatches.

4. Cigar bars are verboten, starting 5 years from today. That is: banned, outlawed, stripped of all rights, expropriated, and driven off into the wilderness to die in the snow. How thoughtful and generous our Emperor is, to give his poor subjects such advance that they may have time to select an engraving for their tombstone!

5. Two dudes can come here, rent a hotel room, get married by a justice of the peace, and consummate their nuptials upstairs--but no cigarette afterwards!

6. The penalty for selling cigarettes to minors shall be waterboarding. Illegal immigrants caught doing so will be driven straight to Logan and put on the next plane to Chile. Try sneaking across a whole continent to get back in, you, you evildoer, you!