What high regard regulators must have for citizens these days! Now, they want to take the tube out of the tube steak because they don’t trust parents to feed their children safely. As the Washington Times reports: “Bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are studying how to change the shape of hot dogs to prevent youngsters from choking. … Of the 66 to 77 choking deaths for children younger than 10 in 2006, hot dogs reportedly accounted for about 11 to 13 deaths.”

But, says the Times: “American kids younger than 10 eat approximately 1.8 billion hot dogs per year, which works out to an average of about 45 hot dogs per child per annum. That pegs the death rate per hot dog from choking at 0.0000007 percent.” Meanwhile: “More than 90 children younger than 5 died from drowning in bathtubs in 2006. Forty-three children younger than 10 died riding bicycles. Even in extremely regulated areas, there are many more deaths. In that age group, more than 1,100 died as a result of motor-vehicle accidents that year.”