Great Moments in Local Government

This may not be as important as an IRS agent killing a small business with an audit. And we can certainly imagine dismal scenes of bureaucrats denying health care to sick people in America's future, and those also would be more important. But when a city official shuts down a lemonade stand because an eight-year old girl did not have a license to operate a busines, that surely is a symbol of government that is both stupid and overbearing:

Eight-year-old Daniela Earnest has made lemonade out of lemons in more ways than one this week. Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday. But because Daniela didn't have a business license, the city of Tulare shut it down the same day. ...The story began Monday morning when Daniela and her stepmother, Marisa Earnest, set up shop at Cartmill Avenue and Hillman Street in north Tulare. The lemonade was freshly squeezed and priced at $2 for a 32-ounce plastic cup. Richard Garcia, a Tulare code enforcement officer, happened to be at the same intersection... Garcia told Daniela and her stepmother that their lemonade stand — on the northwest corner of the busy intersection — was not safe, and also that they needed a business license to sell lemonade.