More laws with unintended consequences

Mark Steyn and Power Line dudes are both using nude bicycle rides as political similes.

Here's Steyn:

What a bleak comment on the bitter divisions in our society that even so all-American a tradition as nude bicycling down Main Street should now be so nakedly partisan. It's as if the republic itself is now divided into a red buttock and a blue buttock permanently cleaved by the bicycle seat of war.

He gets my applause for the writing, the rest of which is worth reading, too, but there's substance here that he may not know about until he spends more time drinking beer with naked bicycle riders.

It's local urban legend that naked fun is illegal, but naked protests aren't. To go skinny dipping in a mountain pool, you now rip off your clothes, yell, "No blood for oil!" and jump in. It's the new "Geronimo!"

But is this cry a ghost shirt? I doubt anyone who does it really knows.

"This will keep us from getting arrested, knock on wood."

Want less of the rote, boring, politicization of public life? Pass fewer laws against having fun.