There's been an expensive but thus far generally unsuccessful movement to ban smoking in all public places in Indianapolis. As someone with a life-threatening chemical sensitivity to, among other things, cigarette smoke, I can't help but feel strongly about this issue. To everyone who has put their dollars and energy into freeing Indianapolis from smoke in bars, restaurants, et cetera, I'd just like to say...

Shut up!

Yes, you heard me.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America begins:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

If you are human, and you are born here, you are a citizen, period.

For all they talk about small government and constitutional conservatism, the GOP are just as much big government idiocrats that Obama and his friends in the Democratic Party are.

"So they won't go on our welfare roles" is not a reason to deny our citizens their rights based on something their parents did. In a sane world, we'd just stop subsidizing poverty to begin with.

The gall of suggesting an unconstitutional measure to mitigate a small portion of the damage done by another unconstitutional measure is staggering.

Yesterday, I wrote about a bill that would treat income differently based on the job description of the person earning it.  A New York Times editorial, bravely posted without a by-line, announced "The Unemployed Held Hostage".  It described this same bill, acting as if a gun was being held to the head of every jobless person in America by those lawmakers who weren't on board with using the tax code to punish this week's unpopular crowd.

While Support for congressional health care reform has fallen to a new low (Rasmussen), there are still people who seem to want it. Today, I talked to an acquaintance still rooting for health care reform about what he believes it will look like and why he wants it.

The following is an open letter to my fellow Americans, and to our representatives in both houses of the legislature. I have sent this to my congresspersons and senators individually, and I post it here for the benefit of my readers. It is distributed under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to use it or pass it on with attribution.

The rallying cry for so-called health care "reform" goes something like this: Think of the uninsured! Think of the small businesses! Think of the single mothers! Think of the children! Anything must be better than what we have. This is effective only as long as we blindly accept that anything is better, making it pointless to evaluate what is really being offered.

As an uninsured, small business employed, single mother concerned for the health and well-being of her six-year-old child, I feel compelled to tell the side of the story being most ignored -- that of the people this legislation promises to help.