Who owns the rain?

Yesterday a regional TV station ran a story about dumb state laws. You know the kind of idiotic legislation that's usually still on the books restricting such nefarious actions as crossing State lines with a chicken on your head or kissing on a train. Yeah, you know the kind.

Anyways, a whole wave of these laws were just reversed. Just in time for the summer Farmers Markets it is now legal to sell "ugly produce" on the street. Apparently, vendors couldn't sell bent cucumbers and misshapen mushrooms until now. What a relief!

But the most certifiable, and implicitly disturbing, overturned law was the one prohibiting the collection of rain water. What's the crime in that you ask? Well, in reality there's quite a sound chain of reason supporting this law. Legally, the state owns the rain so when you or I gather it then our crime becoems one of theft of government property.

I can't help but wonder does the state think it owns sunshine too?

As a famous philosopher once proclaimed: "Good grief!"