Soon we may see protest signs of President Bush adorned with the Hitler whisker broom mustache.
Michelle Bachmann, the conservative Congressional Representative and future shopping network host, blasted President Obama's State of the Union speech calling for more U.S. manufacturing and energy efficiency. And part of her ire was directed toward existing legislation directed at getting inefficient incandescent bulbs phased out.
Under Obama,"We bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy and which may put 16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing" health laws, she said, according to the Associated Press.
The power given to the unnamed bureaucracy to police light bulbs is, specifically, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It requires that general-purpose light bulbs that produce 310 to 2600 lumens be 30 percent more energy efficient than current incandescent bulbs by 2012 to 2014. The efficiency standards will start with 100-watt bulbs in January 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in January 2014. Essentially, it will lead to the death of incandescents, which were first debuted in public in 1879. The car was invented six years later. Exemptions for Easy Bake Oven bulbs and reptile terrarium lights exist.
The law, again, was passed in 2007. At the time, George W. Bush, a Republican, was president, according to a calendar analysis conducted by Greentech Media.
Earlier this year, Texas Congressional Representative Joe Barton (R) railed against "government regulators" who want to replace the inefficient incandescent with what Barton called "the little, squiggly, pig-tailed ones," according to an article in Talking Points Memo.
Light bulbs, of course, are only the latest in a long line of curbs against our freedoms. You can't buy a car without a catalytic converter, either. You can't buy vitamins that don't come in bottles rigged for child protection.
And try to open a slaughterhouse in a residential neighborhood. The black helicopters from the local zoning commission will do their best to hound you.
Extremism in the defense of light bulbs is no vice.