Today's winner: Social engineering. 

Joel Connelly, consider this your warning: The "social engineers" have won. That's right: We're all living under the nanny state now.

Yes, just like the federal bureaucrats who built the interstate highway system and the meanie lawmakers who make you slow down when an ambulance approaches, vaccinate your children, and get car insurance, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously today to ban single-use plastic bags and impose a five-cent "pass-through" charge on disposable grocery bags, which will go to grocers. (Food-stamp recipients and food banks are exempt from the charge).

In a statement before this afternoon's vote, social engineer-in-chief Mike O'Brien said his "hope" in banning plastic bags was that "we can help shift behavior and have more people using the reusable bags instead of disposable bags."

We look forward to Connelly's spirited defense of his God-given American right to get free disposable plastic bags at the grocery store and throw them away anywhere you damn well please.