Friday's Wall Street Journal has a piece by Eric Felten on a "dark skies" movement seeking to define outdoor lighting as a form of "pollution" and pass laws to boss people around regarding their choices on lighting up their own property. The piece characterizes those promoting such coercion as "trendy types touting natural lifestyles" and notes that, "for municipal busybodies, no cause is complete until it has been imposed on all one's neighbors."

Fortunately, Michigan's political class is immune to such misguided notions.

Oh, wait a minute. ...

2004 Senate Bill 1250 (Create light pollution study board):

Introduced by Sen. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor) on May 19, 2004, to create a state outdoor lighting study board to investigate the establishment and likely effect of new laws to limit "light pollution," which is "excessive and misdirected outdoor lighting" that deprives "residents of the beauty of the starry night sky and of nighttime cloud patterns."

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