Just how many absurd laws are there in the U.S.?

The precise answer to that question may never in fact be known, but a couple students from Cornwall, England are going to try and find out:

Undeterred, a couple of students from Cornwall are intent on making American criminal history by spending their summer breaking as many US laws as possible.

Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.

In the far more conservative - and landlocked - state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.

If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

Pretty amazing how easy it is for politicians to pass new laws that they feel are absolutely necessary, and to rail against "archaic, anachronistic" limits on government power that were set a couple of hundred years ago - but how seldom we hear our venerated legislators talking about repealing useless and pointless laws when they expand government's role in our lives. They don't call 'em "lawmakers" for nothing, I guess.