Spanking Bill Spanked, But Meddling Never Dies

There will be less fiddling in Sacramento as California burns:

The California Legislature won't be cracking down on spanking after all.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has abandoned her plans to push for a legislative prohibition on parents spanking their children under age 4.

Lieber, D-Mountain View, will introduce a bill Thursday morning that will target the use of physical force on children, but not spanking, an aide said. (source)

Lieber, who lives the child-free life of a Bay Area liberal, isn't giving up on dictating to parents how to handle their kids. Licking her wounds after getting stomped on her spanking bill, she's introduced a new bill that proposes a "rebuttable presumption" that throwing, kicking or hitting children under 18 with a cord or other instrument is unjustifiable, and that for kids under four, vigorous shaking and the act of hitting or slapping on the head or face.

Sal Gal, we don't need laws to tell us that.

She hasn't exactly freed up the Legislature to actually take care of important things a state legislature should do -- balancing the budget, trying to contain state employee and teacher unions before they bankrupt us, salvaging our infrastructure -- but hopefully the debate on her new bill will take less time than the spanking bill.

But honestly, do we need another law in this area? Hurting kids is illegal and bad parenting, and we don't need an anti-parenting busybody to stick her nose, and the California State Legislature's noses, into our homes.