Axel does something I respect...

Guns N Roses cancels show over booze law - Yahoo! News:

LEWISTON, Maine - Guns N' Roses canceled a performance in Portland, Maine this week after being told by state officials that the band could not drink on stage.

Inspectors from the state fire marshal's office gave the band the no-drinking order when they came to look over the pyrotechnics planned for Monday's scheduled concert at the Cumberland County Civic Center, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Public Safety Department.

McCausland said the band had wanted to drink beer, wine and Jagermeister while performing. A couple of hours after being told that would violate state law, Guns N' Roses canceled its concert, he said.

After the cancellation, a band spokesperson blamed fire marshals for "making it impossible for the band to perform their show to the usual high standards that their fans deserve.

Good for them. Now, granted, drinking doesn't necessarily guarantee that "high standards" are "usual", but on the other hand, it really is nobody's business if they drink on stage, something done in most other states with no problems at all, provided band management have a little insurance.  Regardless, the government shouldn't have any right to interfere with personal behaviour on such a scale.

Plus, there's the ridiculous "public safety" hypocrisy inherent in a state complaining about a performer drinking on stage when Maine is one of the last states without a motorcycle helmet law...

Bernstein a commie? well, who wasn't?

William F. Buckley Jr, writing in 1994 about the Freedom of Information Act revealing that Hoover had an FBI file on Leonard Bernstein.

Useful idiots - Leonard Bernstein as a fellow-traveler - On the Right - Column National Review - Find Articles:

But the most interesting point. What happened to Bernstein? Well, the same thing that happened to me. Nothing. The publication, since the Freedom of Information Act, of the records of all the people Mr. Hoover kept a file on doesn't demonstrate, far from it, that they were all (we were all) Communists and traitors. What it absolutely established is that to be listed with the FBI was about as dangerous as being listed with the Garden Club of America.

Something tells me that having your name in the "no-fly list" may end up with that same status.  First a curse, then a badge, finally a footnote.