There may be a correlation here
Joanne Jacobs is not only the "celebrity" weblogger whose content I think would be of most interest to my mom. She's also the one who most reminds me of my mom, especially when she was so active in the Oklahoma state PTA.

NicoTeens
Driving past a convenience store today I noticed a sign pointing out that cigarette sales to anyone under age 18 are illegal and offering a 1-800 hotline number for people who want to report "cigarette sales to kids." This deeply offended me for two reasons:

Anonymous Reporting. Did we become a police state while I wasn't looking? I suppose there's anonymous reporting for all sorts of offenses ranging from murder to... well, what would be the least serious offense for which anonymous reporting makes sense? In any case there are all sorts of problems here involving the presumption of innocence and the degree to which neighors can trust each other. Somewhere out there little Health Toady is going to keep making the calls, see whoever get busted, and just be all smug about it.

"Kids". I guess that word technically describes 16- and 17-year-olds, just not very well. It's also a very duplicitous, double-standard use of the word. Answer me these rhetorical questions:

If you're old enough to get free condoms at your school, aren't you old enough to smoke?

If you're old enough to get knocked up, go have an abortion, and enjoy the state-sanctioned right not to have to tell your parents, aren't you old enough to smoke?

Apparently they're kids when violence (see "KILLING MONSTERS") or tobacco are involved but adults every other place you can think of.

Outrage of the month (so far). I'm dumbfounded that things like this still happen, much less that people ever try to claim that societies like this are on an equal moral footing to ours. It's worth remembering that the people who believe that this sort of "justice" is laudable are the same people who want to kill us all.