The Friday Letter / Issue No. 169

Next Obama appointment: Movie theater food czar

Stephen Combs / The Federalist Review

News of a young man suing a movie theater over its snack prices is easy to laugh off as just another incidence of a goofball enraged over unrequited entitlement. How could anyone take this seriously?
Answer: the same people who take seriously the demands of a sexually energetic young woman that the Catholic Church – and ultimately taxpayers – pay for her birth control.
I say ultimately the taxpayers because, as we are learning with revolting clarity, the nation’s healthcare system is heading inexorably toward one of taxpayer-funded single-payer government control. Barack Obama told us he would do this if elected, and people were not listening.

Inexorably unless we remove President Obama from office next January.

The only ones listening were those who heard “Somebody else is going to pay for my healthcare” (and mortgage, and gasoline, and food, and rent-to-own wheel covers).
So now a 30-year-old Georgetown student who seems as ignorant of our Constitutional rights as the unhappy moviegoer – a law student of all people – wants us to finance her busy sex life while she climbs the tree of knowledge in statist theology.
Nobody should be surprised, in an era where entitlement has replaced opportunity as a hallmark of American exceptionalism, that demands for free birth control and cheap theater food would occur within 30 days of each other. The frightening part is that so many people, deprived of schooling in our nation’s founding doctrines, know so little about either economics or our liberties.
They don’t understand the simple Adam Smith principle that anyone who doesn’t like the price is welcome to take his business elsewhere. That’s the Invisible Hand thing at work. They don’t understand the difference between the pursuit of happiness and the right to happiness.
At least Joshua Thompson doesn’t. He filed a class action lawsuit in Michigan’s Wayne Circuit Court against the local AMC theater because its snack prices are too high.
“He got tired of being taken advantage of,” Thompson’s lawyer told Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter. “It’s hard to justify prices that are three- and four times higher than anywhere else.”
Maybe the lawyer also went to Georgetown, where students apparently learn to file lawsuits anytime they are unhappy about something. So here’s a suggestion: Tell your client to rent a $1 movie at the 7-Eleven or go watch some free Internet porn.
           Josh, alas, has plenty of company. “The prices are ridiculous,” said Rebecca Motley, 55, a Southfield physician (so are your fees). “When I was a kid, $1 could get you into the movies and buy you a pop and popcorn,” she said in testimony demonstrating that absence of relevance is no longer a barrier to making argument.
And when I was a kid, my dad made house calls for $5

Just one more question: Why isn’t Josh’s lawyer disbarred for mocking the legal system?

Welcome back to Congress!

You remember Alan Grayson. He’s the one-term ex-Congressman from Florida who took the House floor to announce that Republicans want people to die when they get sick, and who called a lobbyist a K-street whore. (The difference between a whore and a slut, we are told, is one of professional status. The whore gets paid.)
In 2010 Grayson was defeated by a Republican. Now Grayson is back, thanks to the Florida Legislature, which carved out a nice Democrat-rich district for him when Central Florida got an additional House seat.
Last Saturday Mr. Grayson ran a red light while rushing to a fundraising event and crashed into a city bus. A campaign stooge said Grayson, driving a Mercedes, and his passenger were not hurt. Two bus passengers claimed they suffered minor injuries and were taken to a hospital.
Police said the crash is under investigation. Thus far no charges have been filed.
Featured guests at the fundraiser were Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and an actress you’ve never heard of. The suggested entry fee was $1,000.
Only one question remains. Will Grayson, an obnoxious, loud-mouthed trial lawyer, represent the “injured” bus passengers when they sue him?
– Ron Falkner / The Federalist Review

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