Be careful on your cross-country trip, Julie. Politicians in a North Dakota town, spooked by the campground lobby (the campground lobby?), want you to stop parking your RV at Wal-Mart:
JAMESTOWN, N.D. - Campground owners here want the city to outlaw free overnight camping for recreational vehicles at the Wal-Mart parking lot, city parks and elsewhere.
The Police Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to recommend that the City Council draft an ordinance to regulate RV parking.
Charlie Tanata, owner of a 60-space campground, complained to the committee about the number of RVs parked in the Wal-Mart parking lot each night. He said that hurts business at private campgrounds.
And on the exact opposite end of the culture divide, politicians all over want you to stop eating foie gras:
Hurley's is among several Portland restaurants that have removed foie gras from their menus because of protests by animal rights activists, who would gather outside restaurants with gruesome images of dead and diseased ducks they say are the result of inhumane force-feeding techniques used to produce foie gras.
Opponents say the practice should be outlawed, and persuaded the California Legislature last year to pass a bill that will ban foie gras in 2012 unless producers can prove the technique is humane.
Legislation also is being considered in Oregon, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts that would make it a criminal act even to possess the delicacy.
I'm not the only one who thinks this is absurd, but we in the pro-eating lobby are simply not as organized. Maybe we'll get our act together by the time activists (and cowed politicians) start seriously talking about banning meat altogether (which I honestly expect to happen somewhere in the United States within a decade or two...)
UPDATE: I didn't mean that I believe that meat *will* be banned, I meant that I believe that a serious attempt will be made to ban it...