Smoking

Rudolph W. Giuliani recently said "When I first became mayor of New York City, we worried about things like murder. Assault. Riots. Poverty. If they have time now to concentrate on the size of your soda and cigars, I must have done one heck of a job when I was in office."

Current New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed a smoking ban early in his first term and recently made an unsuccessful attempt to ban the sale of large, sugary drinks in the city.

Isn't San Francisco's ban on McDonald's Happy meals silly? Or how about Concord, Massachusetts, that banned small bottles of water. The Bloomberg Administration even scrutinized the practice of giving away samples of baby formula to new mothers in an effort to encourage breast feeding. Who are these idiots?

This is popular sport among some. It is unacceptably intrusive to the rest of us.

I am a "reformed" smoker, and "reformed" anything tends to lean a bit to the wacky side. But a good cigar, with a nice single malt, enjoyed on my patio where no one is bothered is one of those rare pleasures. I hope I can continue to enjoy them, and that somebody clues in Mayor Bloomberg that there are more important issues, bigger public enemies than the Big Gulp.