We’d pretty much thought we’d seen everything our beloved home state of California could produce in terms of wackiness, from Gary Coleman running for governor to taxing orbiting satellites in space under the doctrine of air rights, but this one has got to take the cake. (Literally.)

The Los Angeles City Council is prohibiting any new fast-food stores in South Los Angeles, where poor people have higher-than-usual rates of obesity. And it’s being done in the name of public health.

We must confess both a fondness for the occasional fast-food meal, as well as an unqualified acknowledgment that the same is no good for us. We don’t stop by In-N-Out for a Double-Double (or two) because it’s good for us. We stop by because it tastes good, although we do so less often than in the past.

We must also confess a certain libertarian compassion for our fellow human beings, inasmuch as we think anybody else should be able to enjoy that same delicious In-N-Out Burger whenever the mood strikes, and as often as it does. Who are we to tell somebody — whether poor, or fat, or a resident of South Los Angeles — that he or she must go to a salad bar instead? Blasphemy!

Not the Los Angeles City Council. They want people to get healthier, and they think that will happen a lot sooner if there are fewer KFCs, McDonald’s, Jack-in-the-Boxes, Burger Kings , Del Tacos and Taco Bells about.

But we suspect a black market will soon crop up, with Whoppers, Big Macs, Jack’s Spicy Chickens, and Macho Combo Burritos smuggled in across city lines from Gardena, Compton, South Gate, Torrance and Inglewood. We happen to know from our college days that there’s an In-N-Out in Sante Fe Springs, which isn’t too terribly far away.

It’s not just the fecklessness of this maneuver that gets us, however. It’s the presumptuousness. What right does the city of Los Angeles have to tell anybody what to eat, or not to eat, even if some of that food isn’t very good for you? That’s a decision a person can and must have the right to decide for himself, damn it all! If we think that drugs should be legal (and we do) then it necessarily follows that the devilish gut-bomb that is the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese shouldn’t be considered contraband.

In short, if Americans truly enjoy a right to life, then they have the right to kill themselves if they so choose, whether by handgun or hamburger.

And that’s why they’ll take our Double-Double when they pry it out of our cold, dead (and French-fry stained) fingers!

An MGM Mirage executive responds to a Moody's Investor Service stock downgrade.

Consider this a personal confession of a miserably errant soul, but — aside from the way it’s tragically chewing up the lives of workers at the rate of one every three months or so — I had always been sort of looking to CityCemetery CityCenter as a sort of bellwether o’ hope in these cruddy economic times. Something in the way its progress just kept humming along, something in how the building just kept slickly accreting like some polished alien crystal while other Strip properties stumbled and the surrounding creamy suburbs succumbed to a gnarly pox of “For Sale” signs.

Uh, well, scratch that misplaced block of faith; now The Hungering Obelisk is starting to hiccup too.