Native Americans Say "See you In Court".

By Colin Grainger

Slow news day today, but I thought you might be interested in this.

"A second Connecticut legislative committee has approved a proposed ban on smoking at the two Indian casinos in the state, despite threats of a costly lawsuit".

This is a classic case of control freaks acting well outside of their remit. The Native Americans run casinos on Native American land. For all intents and purposes, the reservation may as well be on the moon, for all the jurisprudence the Connecticut lawmakers can exercise over it. I predict a sticky, and expensive end to this story.

They can't say they weren't warned:

"The tribes that run Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun say a ban would violate their rights as sovereign entities and force them to sue".

So, a predictable outcome. Nice opportunity for the lawyers on both sides though.

Why should this interest us? I agree this is happening 5,000 miles away but we should watch to see what happens. This is one of those "precedent setting" cases. The knock on effects in the USA will be tremendous when the Native Americans win their case.

This would be like the British restricting smoking in the Central African Republic. It ain't our land and it ain't our business.

Closer to home, we see this kind of Ultra vires activity all the time. Open a newspaper on any given day and you will see the headline "NHS Trust Such and Such Declares Their Hospital To Be Smoke Free". Except that they can do no such thing. For a start, it isn't their facility, it's ours. Bought, paid for, maintained and staffed entirely by our money. But most importantly, they (the NHS mandarins) have no power to demand that outside areas be smoke free, nor have they the power to enforce. Martin, our resident legal eagle, and his task force, will have much more to say on this very soon.

I think that the lesson to take from this is that for the cultists, enough is never enough.

They can, and will, be stopped. It will all end badly for them. It has done for over 500 years. This time it is no different.

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