Jason and I spoke by phone yesterday, primarily because I wanted to make sure that there were no misunderstandings.

This whole debate turns on the question of where a line should be drawn, and more specifically where a smoking ban should properly be placed relative to that line.

With only the exception of the smoking ban, Jason and I do not disagree on that line.  (At least we don't as of what we've discussed to date.)  And please don't assume that I'm making this easier than it is (or harder than it is, for that matter).

Ronald Reagan (may his name be forever praised), as Governor of California, wrestled with this same concept relative to pornography.  To him it was a matter of properly balancing the First Amendment rights of the pornographers against the rights of children to be protected from that garbage.  I don't know what answer he came up with, but I figure that if it's okay for him to struggle with this concept, then it's okay for me to do the same.

I'm not using precedent as as source of truth; I'm using precedent as precedent.  That is, there is a legal decision out there on the record that provides a persuasive indicator of where the line of government intrusion should be drawn.  In my view, a smoking ban sits on one side of that line.  Six of the seven who've thus far posted reples to my argument disagree.

(I don't have a clue of where STM stands on this, but then again I tend to rank him below "typical high school cheerleader" on my list of people who can string together a logical argument.)

And by the way, that Hale v. Henkel decision also has application to the taxation question.  I'll be using it in a series of essays that I'm working on.

The fact that I'm advocating as I am for a smoking ban doesn't mean that I'm advocating for greater government inolvement in private affairs.  Nor does the fact that my argument agrees with Roy Schmidt's make him a Statist; nor does the fact that my argument agrees with Tom Pearce make him a RINO.  What it does mean is that the three of us interpret a very narrow question differently than six of you do . . . and nothing else.