Berry beer lovers unite

I suppose libertarian readers agree that the wrong side won the Whiskey Rebellion, and just maybe they'll suggest that a new one -- about  beer this time  -- would not be amiss.

It's that durn gummint shutdown, again. Bad enough that most of the "essential workers"  still on the job seem to be the ones carrying guns and given the power to haul your sorry hooligan butt off to jail for taking an unsupervised -- and therefore illegal -- walk in the woods.

But now they're screwing around with your constitutional right  to an on-demand growler of gooseberry ale touched by a dash of dandelion pollen and a smidgen of Gatorade. That is, "craft" beer hustlers are facing their own barricades. Because there's evidently only one employee left in the TTB, a surly sort whose job it is to tell reporters it's closed and slam down the receiver.

The TTB? I'd never been very aware of it either. Thanks to the shutdown I learn it is the special Treasury Department bureaucracy in charge of giving permission to make beer, including stupid beer marketed to gushing neo-hippies who think a handful of sugar-steeped nettle leaves might improve a pint of Harp.

You will have gathered that I am less than thrilled with berry beer and all other variations which might be devised by Rachael Ray, but I will defend to the death Brucie's right to brew it and your right to drink it, even when the TTB agents of Eric Holder and Barack Obama are taking a paid vacation and therefore can't issue permission slips.

The job of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is detailed here, and you may be amused to learn your congress has given it the powers -- among many others -- to deny a boutique beer license if it doesn't like the label attached to the bottle.

If someone will endorse taking a Claymore to this tentacle of our squid government, I shall editorialize in favor.

Welcome, Janet

I see by the news His Ineptness is anointing you as the new Ben Bernanke. Savor it.  I am Janet Yellin Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System of the United States of America. 

Rolls trippingly from the tongue and carries a nice salary, $199,700 per annum, about a 20 grand raise from your current gig as second banana to Ben. Plus, I hear, the servant will wheel a silver service of fresh orange juice into your office each morning promptly at ten.

So I'm happy for you. It is much more promising than your rumored backup ambition to be corporate spokeswoman for Victoria's Secret.

TBC on a more serious note, but I wanted to lose no time at all in tendering  congratulations and wishing you every success.

Jim Chee, policy analyst

You don't go to Tony Hillerman's Sgt. Jim Chee for your political insights, at least not on purpose. So it's fun when you just happen to run across one.

Jim is working on a homicide on the Navajo reservation. The FBI is claiming jurisdiction and getting in the way of honest police work. He explains it as a life lesson to his young and lovely deputy, Ms. Bernadette Manuelito:

"It is a political law. Like physics. ... When a federal agency gets into something, the number of tax-paid people at work multiplies itself by five, raw number of hours taken to get it done multiplies by ten, and the chances of a successful conclusion must be divided by three."

Shutdown side bar -- Mrs. Obama is more equal that others

Not all .gov sites are dark.

Michelle's is up and running. It's a must read. Where else can you see her as sexy hip-hop stunner in one frame, then gushing about healthy federal chow (which the kids won't eat) in the next.