Mississippi - This would mean that the government would not only have the power to define what is and is not “fat,” but also the power actually deny people defined as “fat” the freedom to eat at privately owned restaurants. An appalling power grab, the noxiousness of which is only compounded by what it says of the politicians who are backing it’s opinion of personal responsibility.

The legislation indicates that citizens aren’t responsible for their own eating habits. Restaurants and food producers are.

What ever happened to freedom? I think that far too often we forget that freedom means not only the right to make good decisions, but the right to make bad ones as well. If an American citizen wants to eat steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner and die of a heart attack at 45 why shouldn’t he (or she) be free to do that?

I don’t think there’s anybody out there who likes being fat, or wants to be fat, and certainly we all have a personal interest in being healthy. But that interest is explicitly personal, and no business of the government’s.

Bill No. 282 is the brainchild of three members of Mississippi’s House of Representatives, Republicans W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows.