Alabama lawmen harrass amateur baker

If I told you a state could outlaw baking bread, you'd say I was nuts. After all, they can't stop people from buying crushed grains, yeast metal pans. Even if they passed the law -- good luck enforcing it.

Well, that wont' stop the state of Alabama.

I'm not going to post the link here for various reasons, but according to online forums one of the people quoted in that story has been visited by Alabama's bakery police, who aren't too happy about his yeast-related activities. It sounds to me like they're just trying to put a scare in people who would flaunt their prohibition on amateur bakeries, because if they were planning to send in the SWAT teams with a warrant, they have all the probable cause they need from that article.

If you're thinking I've lost it, because clearly the story is about a home brewing hobbyist and not a baker at all -- then I would ask why the law should see any difference between the two? Grains, water, yeast and heat are combined to force a chemical change that creates an all new food product that dates back to the dawn of civilization.

Of course, one source of the ongoing stupidity is clear from the article -- too many people who would rather police the fate of other people's souls when they should be examining their own.

But as I usually do, I'd rather put the blame on bureaucratic inertia and the unfortunate majority in this country who've never seen a problem they couldn't fix with some extra government interference. We just never learn.

The number one lesson, though, is that it's OK to break a stupid law -- people are doing it every day -- but don't rub Big Brother's nose in it. He bites.