My friends, it starts small and before you know it…you don’t even remember how it all started.

Sure this may sound like something that some young barfly might say after waking up next to a beer-goggled conquest from the night before, but it is also the formula for citizens who slowly but surely forfeit their rights to the sponge of an overreaching government.

Take the possible Ohio smoking ban for example. There is a possibility that by the end of next fall, it could be illegal for citizens to smoke in all public places in the state. Sure this could possibly improve the health of some of the population, but at what cost? No one is going to quit smoking because of a law-- if they’re willing to fork over the cash for a pack of smokes in spite of all the price-hikes, then I highly doubt that they’ll stop because they can’t light up in a Friday’s.

It’s already a no-no to smoke in the majority of restaurants now anyway. Now you get herds of stalwart patriots loitering out in front of eating establishments and businesses and indulging in their addiction.

This will just get worse with a statewide ban.

Although it wasn’t invented in America, I think that it’s pretty safe to say that outside of hamburgers and hot dogs, pizza is the food that most citizens believe in the most. It is a doughy stalwart and a savior in hard times. It comes to us at 2am after we have had too much to drink or simply can’t get to sleep because of the sleep deprivation chemicals that the federal government puts in our water to keep us “malleable in the brain.”

Now, my fellow slice enthusiasts, I must warn you of a sinister plot hatched by “Good Ol’ Unkie Sam” and one of our country’s oldest pizza chains. When was the last time you saw Pizza Hut advertise an actual pizza? They should change their name for the same reason that the urban legend holds that Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC…that ain’t no chicken, and this ain’t no pizza.

You won’t hear this anywhere but here, but Pizza Hut’s new “Popable Bites Pizza” is a scam, a rouse, and a device to lower our expectations both as Americans, and as lovers of the pie. First of all, this thing looks like something that a scientist developed to see how loosely the term “pizza” can be applied to something and still be legally accurate.

Just when I thought that a large portion of the government was just in the back pocket of the religious zealots of our great nation, now they are acting as though they are God.

I have reconciled in myself the idea that government should be allowed to trample the rights of property owners if it be for the greater public good of any locality so long as the displaced were given a reasonable deal, but now I feel as though the government has truly overstepped its bounds by allowing community leaders to take people’s property in order to sell it to private corporations if the resulting situation will bring greater tax benefits to the area.

This time it wasn’t the lawmakers or executives in our government that gave us the dreaded rear admiral (although some of them were instrumental), it was the “Supreme Court,” the interpreters of our laws and the same body that refused to hear my case against Papa John’s for the misleading advertising campaign for their worthless Cinnapie which appeared to be a full-pizza sized on the commercial, but in reality was no bigger than a compact disc-- complete with a miniature look-a-like pizza box.

Cherished friends, I come to you again with a bit of intelligence that I have uncovered pertaining to the infinite depth of corruption and disregard for freedom that is, sadly to say, our Federal government.

This time, rather than a carefully guarded secret like the formula for Coke or the real age of Morgan Fairchild, this outrage to liberty is right in our faces. I am speaking, of course, about the dastardly connection between television ratings juggernaut American Idol and our ubiquitous big brother.

 Each year about this time millions of American citizens tune in their idiot boxes to witness the modern day Gestapo at work.

Years ago as the British show called Pop Idol was imported to the US, the government (upon advice from the Brits) quickly made contact with the show’s creator Simon Fuller who helped to make the British version of the show the greatest vehicle for keeping tabs on the unruly and dentally forsaken youth of the once-great empire.