Thanks to Slog tipper Joe for sending this along: Bloviating opinion-monger George Will has decided to foist his stuffy prose on Washington state matters for a change:

In 1927, seven years before the board game was created, Washington state decided to play monopoly. It gave a private interest the exclusive right to operate a ferry on 55-mile-long Lake Chelan in the northern Cascade Mountains. It apparently will defend this folly until Judgment Day, when state officials will get an earful from the Creator who — we have Jefferson’s word for this — endowed everyone, including Jim and Cliff Courtney, with the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Courtney brothers’ happiness would be enlarged if they could operate a competing ferry. But 84 years ago Washington state asserted a principle much favored by all of America’s governments:It may parcel out certain economic liberties sparingly and only to those who can prove to government that their exercise of their liberty will satisfy some government-concocted criteria.

As he does, Will goes on. And on. And on. But he makes some points—the ferry is basically useless if you're looking to make a day trip to or from Stehekin—even though he begins by suggesting that he knows how God feels about the ferries on Lake Chelan and he ends in an explosive burst of hot air that compares our Washington with the "denigrat[ion of] economic liberty" and "pandemic rent-seeking" of Washington DC. Let's hope this doesn't mark the beginning of a new Washington-based beat on Will's part; we've got enough conservative blowhards in Seattle, tossing opinions around like they're free.