And in today's wingnuttery...

The Coplay Whitehall Sewer Authority's sewer plant is getting overwhelmed with rainwater every time it rains, causing raw sewage to overflow into the stream it outputs its water into. The EPA doesn't like that both because this stream is upstream from drinking water plants and because it's just plain nasty to have brown turds floating in your waterways, and has threatened them with fines if they don't fix their overflow problem. So the sewer authority has checked the sewer lines in the streets to make sure none of them are connected to storm drains or anything like that, and they look good. Then someone brought it to their attention that it had become customary in their area for people to attach their downspouts and sump pumps to the sewer line instead of dumping the water out into the lawn to soak into the ground. And a bing! went on in their heads, and they sent out a notice that sump pumps and downspouts were *not* to be attached to their sewer lines -- and that they'd be inspecting every home attached to their system to make sure that none of these unauthorized sources of rainwater were attached to their system, and giving notices of noncompliance with health regulations to the people who were overwhelming their system with rainwater, and, if the noncompliance wasn't fixed, they'd start passing on the EPA fines to those people too by using their statutory authority under their state's public health ordinances.

Now, there's a reason for sewage treatment plants, and it's simple public health. A sewage treatment plant that isn't, err, treating, is a bad thing (like, duh?). In third-world nations, water-borne illnesses are a major cause of death. Cholera is of course the biggy that gets all the PR, but there are literally dozens of diseases that get similar results, such as guardia, cryptosporidia, hepatitis, and typhoid. Here in America they became almost unknown after sewer and drinking water treatment plants were instituted, to the point where a single case of typhoid causes a major freakout of the general public.

But none of that matters to the wingnuts at World Nut Daily. It's a violation of your right to kill your neighbor with your fecal matter to have the sewer district inspect your home! Even if the only thing they're dong is looking at your downspouts and tramping down into your basement to inspect your sump pump's discharge, why, it's government overreach! Thus a huge headline, "Feds come knocking for home inspections", even though the Feds are involved only in that they're going to fine the sewer district if the sewer district doesn't stop discharging human fecal matter -- shit -- into the upstream of several other water district's drinking water treatment plants.

Yeppers, World Nut Daily says you have a right to make your neighbors drink shit and die of water-borne illnesses! Wow, why am I not surprised? What's next from World Nut Daily: a screaming headline proclaiming laws outlawing murder are a violation of your fundamental human right to kill people anyway you want? Talk about a bunch of murderous sociopaths... but hey, we're talking about the right-wing in America, after all, and as I've pointed out the body count from the right wing in America is pretty darn high, whether it's the body count they've done directly or the body counts that result from their disastrous policies such as the "War on Drugs". So why should we be surprised that World Nut Daily would stand up proudly to defend your right to kill people with your turds?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin