Today's The Day: Your Civil Rights Go Up In Smoke

May 23: D Day, as in dumb, dumb, dumb. Today's the day that NYC Dictator Bloomberg's fascist smoking ban goes into effect, prohibiting lighting up in Central Park, beaches and pedestrian plazas like Times Square—essentially turning the city into a totalitarian state.

The New York Times wrote in an editorial, "No smoking at the crossroads of the world? The vortex of tourism that brings smokers and nonsmokers in great numbers? The site of the world’s most famous New Year’s Eve party, where who knows what goes on? All of this takes the mayor’s nannying too far."

Michael B. Siegel, a professor at Boston University's School of Public Health and an advocate of the dangers of second-hand smoke, insists that outdoors, deeming cigarette smoking hazardous is pure bunk: "Smoke quickly disperses in the open air," he says. "No evidence demonstrates the duration of outdoor exposure causes health damage."

Sadly, adding insult to injury, a daft young journalist writing about the ban for CBS radio, proved for the 100,000th time that professional reporting has also been extinguished...