Nick Gillespie's post about the Pennsylvania crackdown on unlicensed allegedly "unregistered" beers makes me glad I left the state:

More than a dozen armed State Police officers conducted simultaneous raids last week on three popular Philadelphia bars known for their wide beer selections. The cops confiscated hundreds of bottles of expensive ales and lagers, now in State Police custody at an undisclosed location.

The alleged offense: Although the bar owners had bought the beer legally from licensed Pennsylvania distributors and had paid all the necessary taxes, the police claimed that nobody had registered the precise names of the beers with the state Liquor Control Board - a process that requires the brewers or their importers to pay a $75 registration fee for each product they want to sell in Pennsylvania.

Based on a complaint from someone the State Police refuse to identify, three teams of officers converged last Thursday on the three bars, run by Leigh Maida and her husband, Brendan Hartranft. Checking their inventories against the state's official list of more than 2,800 brands, the cops seized four kegs and 317 bottles, totaling 60.9 gallons of beer, according to police calculations.

In fact, according to Maida, more than half the beer removed by the State Police was properly registered - but the cops couldn't find it on their lists because of "clerical errors" or "blatant ineptitude" between the police and the Liquor Control Board, with whom the officers were conferring by telephone.

Pennsylvania, readers may remember, is a place where you can't buy a sixpack of beer in a convenience store, but instead have to buy it by the case at specially licensed "beer distributors" which are only open during certain hours. The latter, of course, now constitute a well-funded lobby that fights to keep their monopoly.

The unregistered beer brand bust is so typical of the way government works. Petty tyrants like the Liquor Control Board bureaucrats love nothing more than playing Eliot Ness reenactment games at the taxpayers' expense.

Why ordinary people put up with it is one of the mysteries of life.

MORE: It seems that whether ordinary people want to put up with it or not, they have very little to do with it. As former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornbugh explains, attempts at reform are blocked by an odd coalition:

"In my view, the principal roadblock to reform has traditionally been an odd coalition of state store employee unions, fundamentalist anti-alcohol groups and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all of which perceive that they have legitimate interests which are not susceptible to statewide budgetary considerations," Thornburgh said.

"It would take some courageous leadership to stare down this combination, something I do not see in the Commonwealth today," he added.