Whenever I mention Fast Food Nation or Supersize Me or whathaveyou, people inevitably say to me, "Yeah, fast food is bad, but do you think that people should sue over it?"

One area where political conservatives have done a tremendously good job of poisoning the well of public discourse is in torts. People nowadays think nobody should ever be allowed to sue anybody for anything. "Personal responsibility," yadda yadda.

That's not the point, and I'm not going to get into it now. What I will do is point you in the direction of the Organic Consumers Association, which has a brief commentary online that explains, succinctly, why it's so important that people be allowed to try and sue huge corporations for poisoning them:

Just as in the early days of the tobacco battle, "personal responsibility" is the junk-food industry's mantra. Of course we are all ultimately responsible for our own behaviors. But food choices don't take place in a vacuum. It's unfair for an industry that spends $33 billion a year on marketing its unhealthy products to blame individuals for succumbing to relentless messages to eat more unhealthy foods.

and especially

Whether or not it makes sense for someone who eats too many Big Macs to sue McDonald's, what scares the food companies more than costly jury verdicts is the prospect of the litigation process unearthing damning information about dishonest industry practices, which opens the door to a plethora of new government regulations.

The judicial process isn't some lottery for the stupid. It's part of the system of checks on corporate behavior. We need it.

Oh, and by the way, the junk food industry just got the House to pass the "Cheeseburger Bill," which immunizes the industry against precisely this sort of lawsuit. Now it goes to the Senate. Ah, democracy.