Inflexible town officials and law enforcement officials around the country have found a new target to bully this summer:  Children illegally operating lemonade stands, according to a piece by National Review editor Rich Lowry in The New York Post today. The law is the law, these buzz killers say. In one case, an official demanded on the spot a $400 permit fee.  The children behind the stand predictably burst into tears.

“Invariably, the parents of illicit lemonade-stand vendors protest to the authorities, ‘but they’re just kids.’ That should be a clinching, self-evident argument. But not when an unbending legalism is ascendant, and there’s a law for everything. It’s in this spirit that we pat down children in the security lines of airports. People in authority are afraid ever to be caught rendering common-sense judgments.” Mr. Lowry writes. 

The NR editor has a simple solution: “There should be an easy rule of thumb for when enforcement of a regulation has gone too far: When it makes kids cry.” 

Let’s codify it.