"EU says water is not healthy," declares a British headline.

Of course it does. After three years of exhaustive study, a well-pensioned panel of EU scientists has conclusively concluded that water purveyors cannot make the hare-brained claim that their product -- which is　water, lest we lose sight of the puddle for the pond -- hydrates.

Once you've detached yourself that far from reality, you'll soon find yourself sinking inexorably beneath a rising tide of inane regulations. A few years back it was curly bananas that were EU-banned for being over-curly, unlike certain endive sprigs prettying up the plates at the quarterly regulator confab in　Brussels, which curl precisely. Regulations are like magnetic flux: they will always curl to the left, try as you might to have it be otherwise.

This is the very essence, the　eau de vie, of the undemocratic EU experiment. Euro-government has drifted so far from the ballot box that the governed have awoke to find the entire Rube-Goldberg apparatus tearing through the countryside mechanically unaware that it is consuming the very people it "serves."

"Oh, that's over there," you scoff. Americans retain control over their government, throwing the bums out from time to time. But do we?

80,000 pages of regulations were published last year at the Federal level, alone. That's just over 220 pages per day. An unknown number of these federal regulations specify penalties for non-compliance, up to and including jail time. Do any of them affect you? Are you sure? In reality, it is very likely you've already committed a federal crime or punishable infraction, and the day is young.

The American bureaucratic cartel may or may not have yet declared water "unhealthy" as have their EU brethren. Once I've paid a staff of attorneys to wade through this week's 1,534 pages and their implications for next week's proposals, I'll get back to you on whether or not your morning toilet flushed in the equatorially-correct and proscribed direction.

Much was made of the 2,300 pages in the Obamacare bill and how unreadable it was. What pikers: that's not even two week's worth of penumbra from our own bureaucracy.

Every day, you'd better be reading a short novel's worth of regulatory verbiage just to stay abreast of what you may or may not do. And, again, that's just the federal jurisdiction. Live in a State, County, City, or Town?

Uh-oh!