What parent knows about the engineering merits of swimming pool design and which kinds to allow their kids into? Do they have to inspect each pool for a private certification of safety to a given standard? It is pretty convenient to know if your kids are visiting someone with a swimming pool you have a high degree of confidence that pool meets local building codes.

The point is not whether one person, or even a bunch of us feel represented (no, none of my “representatives” are very representative of me, either), but whether the public, collectively, gets to select them or not. However imperfect, we do have an actual democracy now, which makes today not very comparable to 1776–when the primary complaint was that they didn’t have any democratic participation.

Similar response to Michael Smith, above. However much he and I may dislike President Obama, Obama is in fact fit to be the president of a free people, because the free people voted for him.

All that really matters in this case is the number “1.” 1 kid per year, in the tens of thousands of swimming pools in this country, and the millions of kids swimming in them. By all means, let people know the (minimal) danger, but obviously this is too minimal to require such a determined bureaucratic response.

That having been said, of course you can go too far with appointing officials. Why is the federal government inspecting swimming pools?!?!?!?! Maybe make a few laws about certain chemicals, but this is pretty goofy. The Declaration of Independence metaphor missed it’s mark, but this is still a pretty dumb thing for them to be doing.

Alan Korn, public policy director of the Washington-based nonprofit group Safe Kids Worldwide, said the vast majority of American swimmers don’t realize that the bottom of pools and spas and wading pools are a hidden hazard, especially to children.

He said one person dies because of pool or spa drain suction in a typical year. His agency cited 33 deaths of children under age 14 between 1985 and 2004.

The article also quotes one reasonable person from the National Swimming Pool Foundation who asks how many more drownings will result due to kids not being able to take swimming lessons because their local pool has closed.

Sounds to me like the old story about how requiring infants to sit in their own seat on a plane in an attempt to save lives actually would cause more deaths because people would drive instead of buying a ticket for their child causing more infants to die in auto accidents.

Maybe Obama’s minions are trying to kill more kids so they can save money on their health care plan.

Yes, and I thought it was just me.

By the way, is anyone else still getting sent to the “agriculture” page? It happens to me all the time, mostly at night…

Simple cholesterol management doesn’t represent the holocaust of gut ripped kids.

I read that as someone went to the trouble to actually stick a kid to the bottom of a pool. Dry pool, wet pool, we don’t know. Super glue maybe in a dry pool? Shit, who knows? The kid losing his intestines from being stuck to the bottom of a dry pool by someone using super glue? Ack, how crazy is this?

Wet pool? What sticks a kid to the bottom of a wet pool? As a kid long long ago I visited the bottoms of many a pool, or stock tank, and never found anything to stick me there. Even played around the drains in the bottoms and never felt the pump force that would even make me aprehensive much less plaster me against the drain……….so much less than what might rip the guts out of me.
I guess I am horrified at the reckless rhetoric and loose rattlely logic of such as Mogden.

General Mills obviously failed to support or bribe the appropriate politicians and bureaucrats. Quaker Oats products have carried an identical claim for years, and that claim was fully approved by the FDA because it helps promote healthier eating. The FDA’s anti-Cheerios campaign smelled funny from its onset, but I haven’t seen any reports about why it was targeted so maliciously. Cereals containing lots of whole oats or oat bran do reduce cholesterol levels, but only General Mills products are banned from saying so.

Hell, just make swimming pools without drains, and schedule politicians to come around and empty the pools once a month, after all everyone knows they suck.