There was yet another stunning display of lawlessness over the last couple of days in Washington D.C. It was bold, wanton, and right in the face of the authorities.
And it was awesome.
Children were sledding down Capitol Hill. This was despite a specific ban on sledding or skiing around the capitol. Both activities are expressly forbidden. To be fair, cross-country skiing IS allowed, but only for the purpose of transportation. Presumably, that's no fun at all and therefore totally OK.
Not everyone was happy about this, according to The Hill. Capitol Police Board Chairman and Senate Sgt. At Arms and Doorkeeper (aside: in this bloated-beyond-recognition world of government, the longer one's title the shorter one's effective reach and vision, apparently) Frank Larkin pointed out that the ban on sledding was actually done on behalf of the children.
He said that over 20,000 children a year are injured while sledding and that as the legal liability to municipalities looms large due to this, sledding on public property is banned all over the country.
In other words, everybody else is not doing it and so neither are we.
The chief doorkeeper and gravity-games compliance officer who overlooks the backyard of the nanny-state's palace played his part perfectly. Responding to D.C. Congressional representative Eleanor Holmes Norton's request to temporarily lift the ban, he simply replied that he was unable to even do that.
She even issued a press release, saying in part, "Because the (Capital Hill Police) Board did not enforce the sledding ban for many years, it is clearly within its power not to enforce it again during a four-day period."
Obviously, the only surprising fact about this aspect of the story is that Norton was on the common-sense side of an issue.
There was even a petition to get the ban lifted on www.change.org that had over 800 signatures. Frozen-grass roots activism, apparently.
On Thursday a semi-organized "sled-in" was held. Dozens of parents and children held a lesson in civil disobedience and whisked down the hill in the face of the capitol police. There were even protest signs. One said "Let My People Sled."
One parent, Tim Krepp, was told by an officer to stop with an officious "“no sledding or skiing on Capitol grounds because of safety and property damage on Capitol grounds.”
Krepp then connected the extraordinarily obvious dots, telling Fox News this:
“On the DHS side, we’re seeing Congress embarrass itself in passing legislation. The fact they they’re lecturing us about safety … when dropping the ball resonates with me.”
Indeed. Lecturing us while dropping the ball - that could not possibly have been stated any better. What's needed now is a sled-in against everything else they're doing at the top of Capitol Hill.