TONY THE TORY FILES:

House of Lords Limits Parents' Right to Hit Children (ALAN COWELL, 7/05/04, NY Times)

The House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, resolved today to limit, but not forbid, the right of parents to hit their children, changing a 144-year-old law that gave parents the right to strike children as "reasonable chastisement" for misbehavior.

The vote represented a victory for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who opposes an outright ban on hitting and supported an alternative proposal for physical punishment that caused neither physical nor mental harm.

For those who oppose punishing children by hitting them, the debate surrounding the vote was part of a campaign to secure for children the same protection against violence as enjoyed by adults.

But for Mr. Blair, the argument also evoked the question of whether Britain has become what his critics call a "nanny state," intruding into the privacy of citizens' homes and families.

Pretty soon they'll be down to just rum and sodomy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 5, 2004 5:41 PM