Tikkabik

This may seem like much ado about nothing, but here's another example of government trying to over-regulate people's lives.

From where I sit, tongue bifurcation is icky. I don't like the look, am not turned on by it in the slightest, and find it to be jarringly ugly and really kinda creepy. Then again, I feel the same way about women in beehive hairdos who wear polyester double-knit pantsuits. C'est la vie.

The problem as I see it here is that the law in Illinois (and the proposed legislation in W. Va) makes tongue-splitting illegal unless it's done for medical purposes -- and since there's no medical purpose for this, it's totally cosmetic -- it is, by definition, an illegal procedure.

This legislative arrow pierces my occasionally Libertarian heart. It's none of the government's damn business if you want to chop your tongue in half, tattoo your face green and scaly and file your teeth down to sharp points like this guy did.

A certain amount of regulation is good -- making sure that safeguards are in place to assure people considering the alteration can have it done by a qualified professional, for example. But over-regulation -- providing legal loopholes to have the procedure outlawed by default -- is just bad government.