Gov. Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina) has proposed a new test for whether or not "there ought to be a law."

From the state's largest newspaper:

To become a police officer in South Carolina takes 396 hours of training. To get a concealed handgun permit, eight hours. But to shampoo someone’s hair? Try 1,500 hours.

At least, that was the law until Wednesday, when Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill taking away that training requirement for hair-salon shampooers. To mark the occasion, the signing took place at a Columbia salon.

[snip]

Sanford highlighted other odd requirements — fortune-tellers must be licensed; circuses cannot spend more than two days at a single location in a year — that he said are too laughable to take seriously.

"What we want to do is avoid laws on the books that don’t pass the Comedy Central litmus test," Sanford said. “You want to have laws that people see as real."

This is is a good time to remind readers of the fine work of the Institute for Justice, which takes on silly--and liberty-killing--laws all the time.

(Thanks to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation for the tip.)