Thank god for the nanny state...

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Castout

I can understand the lady with clipboard was just dong her job but still that's a bit too stringent. And that's a symptom she may need to get la**

Riiiiight.... because having some man wave his self-proclaimed Magick Wee-Wee in one's general direction is the solution to all of life's many problems.

Seriously, though, I can see both sides of it. Making a little kid cry by publicly calling her out for setting up a freakin' lemonade stand is pretty harsh. There had to have been a better way to handle it.

OTOH, the rules are there for a reason, and if the inspectors had not done their jobs and someone had bought some lemonade and gotten sick later or found some reason to make a public health issue of it and it turned out that the rules weren't followed, they probably would've gotten raked over the coals for not doing their jobs.

Seems like the organizers of the event need to take a little of the heat for not being aware of the laws in question and the fact that their event was big enough to draw the attention of the people who are required to enforce them. That's assuming they knew the kid's family was setting up the stand and either said nothing or never even bothered to find out about the regulations and requirements that might apply to their event.

Update: the county chairman has apologized.

Jeff Cogen, chairman of Multnomah County, says the health inspectors were ''just following the rule book'' but they should have given the girl and her mom a break. On Thursday, he talked with Julie's mom to apologize.

''A lemonade stand is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do,'' Cogen told The Oregonian. ''I don't want to be in the business of shutting that down.''