OK, so I'm stretching the truth like county fair taffy. Everyone knows the police do nothing about fireworks complaints on July Fourth.

        And Ben Franklin, Sam Adams and Patrick Henry were probably the only people who did not set off illegal fireworks in Ohio yesterday. But only because they're dead.
       

Light it and run

       If they had not been indisposed, I'd like to imagine they would have touched a match to some exceptionally imprudent sky-scorching, window-rattling, scare-the dogs, light-it-and-run Roman candles. Big enough to wake up King George I, II and III.

        If the men who signed the Declaration of Independence could celebrate it today, they'd laugh through their powdered wigs at Ohio's pusillanimous cap-gun fireworks law.

        The state fire marshal says fireworks can be legally sold in Ohio but can't be used in Ohio: “Firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, skyrockets, fountains, and missiles are examples of 1.4G fireworks. When purchasing these items, the buyer must sign an affidavit stating that they will be taken to a designated out-of-state address. After the items are purchased, Ohio residents must take these fireworks out of Ohio within 48 hours and out-of-state residents must do so within 72 hours. No one can legally discharge these fireworks in Ohio.”
       

Battle of Loveland

        Sure. If “No one can legally discharge these fireworks in Ohio,” what explains the Battle of Bunker Hill in my neighborhood last night?

        I'd like to see someone tell the Founding Fathers they can buy fireworks in Ohio, and pay Ohio taxes — as long as they swear they will immediately drive to Idaho and light them there.

        Thomas Jefferson would climb on the nearest stump and launch into a bark-peeling spontaneous combustion on the insidious tyranny of perfidious governance. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he would rail. “The good people of these colonies who buy fireworks in Ohio have every right and duty to use them in Ohio.”

        He might remind us that, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.” And use random capital letters wherever they want.

        And don't even get the Founders started on the liberal federal judges in San Francisco who ruled the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it mentions God.

        Just before fitting those judges for a new coat of tar and feathers, John Hancock might inform them that all men are endowed by their Creator — that's God — with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness — and July Fourth fireworks.

        E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.
       

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