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Was Manssor Arbabsiar really part of an Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States? Or is he a pawn in a scheme to drive the United States to war with Iran? Who do you believe when you don’t trust any of the people involved?

The man who the U.S. government accuses of being the ringleader of a bizarre Iranian plot to kill a diplomat has been a used car salesman in Texas for 25 years. He’s also a naturalized U.S. citizen, so he’s probably lucky the Obama administration didn’t just order him killed.

Although the U.S. government claims that Iran’s elite intelligence service was behind the plot, the facts coming out make it clear that it was amateur hour. Not only that, but some legal analysts are suggesting that a paid federal “confidential source” was actually the source of the plot and that the case against Arbabsiar is weak and might fall apart in court.

For their part, the Iranians say the accusation against their country is just a diversion to keep Americans from paying attention to their failing economy and protests on Wall Street. Although I don’t tend to believe much the Iranians say, their story might actually make more sense than the badly plotted spy comedy that the U.S. government is alleging as the work of terrorist masterminds.

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I don’t know this person, but I’d say this is the kind of thinking that’s going to save the next generation, not the thinking of those who borrowed foolishly and are now angry that they’re in debt.

There was a time when this sort of thinking was ubiquitous in America (and probably around the world). But as people came to depend on governments — believing that they could demand whatever they wanted from the state and that the state would provide — this sort of thinking went out of style.

It’s about being reasonable. It’s about being responsible. It’s about being independent. It needs to make a comeback, starting right now.

If you have a young child in Europe and allow him to blow up a balloon or blow on a party whistle, you might just be a criminal under new safety rules handed down by the EU Nanny State.

You know that thing kids like to blow on and it makes a thing sort of like a tongue roll out? (I have no idea what it’s called.) That thing’s banned, too, for all kids under the age of 14.

When I oppose giving bureaucrats the power to make up rules for us to live our lives by, I frequently make up examples of things such bureaucrats could do with their power. And I ask, “Would you like it if they made up a rule about what color you could paint your house?” Or whatever. The response is always the same. “You’re just being silly,” they say. “They’d never do that.”

But as people grow comfortable with the idea that bureaucrats have the power to rule their lives, the bureaucrats do take more and more and more of these absurdities and turn them into reality. What starts off as absurd hyperbole or even satire ends up turning into reality. Parents are no longer exercising their judgment about what’s safe. Games that have been safe and reasonable for generations are suddenly banned or made hard to get.

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