Fumble in the smoky, fatty till

What do you do if you're an editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal and have spent the summer watching three years of rants about the glorious consequences of invading Iraq and the miracle of self-financing tax cuts come crashing down around your ears? Simple, you editorialise about something else entirely. Like the oppressed smokers and eaters of Ireland. And so it is that these groups find themselves elevated to a cause celebre in one of Tuesday's WSJ editorials (link requires subs). Let's just pick out a few er...highlights of the reasoning:

The Republic of Ireland is a Catholic country. But when it comes to health issues, the Irish Free State is apparently no longer feeling either very free or (small-c) catholic. Ireland's health minister has proposed a New York City-style smoking ban in all workplaces, including pubs, from January 1, 2004.
....It turns out that Irish Health Minister Micheal Martin has been weighing a tax on fatty foods as well....

But it says something about the spread of nanny-statism that a fat tax is being contemplated even in a nation as famous for food and drink as Ireland...The question of what makes us fat isn't so clear-cut. What if it turns out that the main culprit is carbohydrates in the likes of potatoes and Irish soda bread? And what about Guinness? If the minister thinks the uproar over smoking in pubs is something, wait'll he takes on them.

Note:
1. The dated usage of the term Irish Free State, presumably a desperate search for a bit of word play. The country hasn't been called that since 1937 or 1949 (depending on some constitutional technicalities).

2. The use of the term "nanny-statism" to describe taxes. DUDES! The whole point of market economies is to ensure that prices reflect the true cost of people's behaviour. Sometimes getting prices right will involve the imposition of taxes, no communism involved. Another small example of the divergence between intellectual economics and its bastard child in the world of politics.

3. Which means that we're really not sure what they mean by "taking on" Guinness. Alcohol is already taxed, quite heavily. So in the WSJ's terminology, the Republic has already long been a nanny state.

4. We're "famous for food and drink?" OK, they didn't say famous for good food. So we'll let that one pass.