Each day we have to navigate our way through a veritable sea of laws.  There are federal laws, state laws, county laws, municipal laws.  There are a ton of laws out there, literally.  In 1970, the Code of Federal Regulations alone was 54,834 pages and by 1998 this had grown to 134,723 pages. I hate to think what the number of pages is today.

Not surprisingly there are laws of questionable value at each and every level of government.  Here are just a few examples:

On the federal level there is a United States federal law makes it illegal to issue a fake Weather Bureau forecast, Some days I wonder if you could tell the difference?

In Ohio, it is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday.

But in Tennessee, the only game you may shoot from a moving automobile are whales.

In Oklahoma it Is Illegal to have a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7 pm. 

In Indiana mustaches are illegal if the bearer has a tendency to habitually kiss other humans.

If you go to Chicago for a nice meal and the restaurant catches on fire, leave immediately, because the law forbids eating in a place that is on fire.

If the law books have room for all these frivolous laws, surely there is place for a law which I am certain you will agree with me and see the value of.  I am seriously considering writing my congressman and ask him to introduce the Uniform Coffee Maker, Microwave and Copier Act.  Think about it – how many times have you purchased one of these products, stayed in a hotel room or gone into an unfamiliar office and tried to use one of these devices – you just stand there with that proverbial “deer in the headlights” look just waiting, hoping, praying for someone to come along and tell you where the on switch, brew switch, popcorn or copy button are.  I know we have our share of problems, but this is still a great country.  I am convinced that if we brought together some of the greatest minds, they could develop a universal instrument panel for each of these devices.  A real stroke of genius would be if they could develop one standard cluster that could be used on each one.

I even have a little motivational trick to assist the process.  We put all these brilliant minds in one room with a coffee maker, a microwave and a copy machine and then each day we put in a different brand or model.  After a few days there would be total buy-in.

Don’t you think it is about time that we got Congress doing something productive?  You can thank me later.