April 28, 2008, - 6:35 pm
Nanny State Run Amok, Mike’s Hard Lemonade Edition
By Debbie Schlussel
I’ve written this before: scramble the letters of “NANNY STATE,” and you get “NEAT ‘N NASTY.”
Well, here’s another great example of how the NANNY STATE delivers the NEAT ‘N’ NASTY:
A son’s thirst and a father’s oversight at the ballpark turned an otherwise fun outing into an ordeal for one family.
Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor recently took his 7-year-old son, Leo, to a Detroit Tigers game and stopped at a Comerica Park concession stand to buy him some lemonade. But it wasn’t until the top of the ninth inning, when a security guard asked the University of Michigan classical archaeology professor about the bottle in his son’s hand, that Ratte learned what puts the hard in Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
“I’d never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it,” Christopher Ratte [said.] . . .
Ratte said he told the guard he had no idea that the $7 lemonade contained alcohol. But when he tried to look at the bottle, the security guard snatched it – and his son was taken to a ballpark’s medical clinic. The mistake three weeks ago began a two-day stay for Leo in state custody and nearly a week before his father would be able to move back into his home.
Leo was taken by ambulance to Detroit’s Children Hospital because clinic officials said he reported feeling a little nauseated after drinking about 12 ounces of the drink with a 5 percent alcohol content. But a blood sample taken at the hospital detected no trace of it.
Ratte said the workers from the state’s Child Protective Services unit told him that day the intervention was unnecessary but they were just following orders. . . .
An assistant state attorney general said the state had no interest in aggressively pursuing the case, so a juvenile referee on April 7 agreed to release Leo to his mother as long as his father relocated to a hotel. Three days later, the complaint was dismissed and Christopher Ratte was allowed to go home.
Wow, so glad that the state of Michigan’s Child Protective Services, which has allowed foster children to be abused to death by foster parents, has its priorities straight.
This is the epitome of statism. Disturbing.
NEAT ‘N’ NASTY.
***
One other thing: It should be noted that the Michigan Department of Human Services, which is in charge of Child Protective Services, is headed by Islamist Medicaid defrauder Ismael Ahmed. He should be under suspicion (and behind bars), not this innocent dad.
For those of us who read Superman comic books, think of the Bizarro world.
c f on April 28, 2008 at 6:55 pm