Every presidential administration appears to have at least one moment when you wonder if anyone working for the administration has any brains or sense.

These are not momentous issues over which great debates usually occur; these are moments where some bureaucrat takes his or her authority too far, or moments where some political hack demonstrates his or her lack of familiarity with the concept of public relations, or the rule of never embarrassing your boss.

The Reagan administration had two of them. The Department of Agriculture proposed changing the school lunch classification of ketchup and pickle relish from condiments to vegetables. (The Obama administration’s DOA did the same thing 30 years later, proposing limits on potato servings, requiring more green vegetables, and mandating a half-cup of tomato paste as counting as one serving of vegetables, thus allowing pizza to be counted as a vegetable.)

Then there was James Watt, the Reagan Administration’s first Secretary of the Interior, who banned the Beach Boys from performing on the National Mall in Washington for an Independence Day 1983 concert because “rock bands” attracted “the wrong element.” Watt’s definition of “wrong element” as it applied to the Beach Boys included both Ronald and Nancy Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The Clinton administration’s moment in bureaucratic buffoonery came when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed inspecting and regulating home offices, on the grounds that home offices certainly fit into the realm of workplace safety. Before OSHA started planning invading basements, attics and dens, the proposal was withdrawn.

Now comes the Obama administration with this brilliant idea, according to the Daily Caller (via Wis U.P. North):

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H andFFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.

“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson. “I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.” …

In February the Labor Department seemingly backed away from what many had called an unrealistic reach into farmers’ families, reopening the public comment period on a section of the regulations designed to give parents an exemption for their own children. But U.S. farmers’ largest trade group is unimpressed.

“American Farm Bureau does not view that as a victory,” said Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s a misconception that they have backed off on the parental exemption.”

Boswell chafed at the government’s rationale for bringing farms strictly into line with child-labor laws.

“They have said the number of injuries are higher for children than in non-ag industries,” she said. But everyone in agriculture, Boswell insisted, “makes sure youth work in tasks that are age-appropriate.”

The safety training requirements strike many in agriculture as particularly strange, given an injury rate among young people that is already falling rapidly. According to a United States Department of Agriculture study, farm accidents among youth fell nearly 40 percent between 2001 and 2009, to 7.2 injuries per 1,000 farms. …

Boswell told TheDC that the new farming regulations could be finalized as early as August. She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations. “In the last three years that division has grown 30 to 40 percent,” Boswell said.

Some Farm Bureau members, she added, have had inspectors on their land checking on conditions for migrant workers, only to be cited for allowing their own children to perform chores that the Labor Department didn’t think were age-appropriate.

It’s something Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran believes simply shouldn’t happen. During a March 14 hearing, Moran blasted Hilda Solis for getting between rural parents and their children.

“The consequences of the things that you put in your regulations lack common sense,” Moran said. “And in my view, if the federal government can regulate the kind of relationship between parents and their children on their own family’s farm, there is almost nothing off-limits in which we see the federal government intruding in a way of life.”

I asked the farmer’s daughter in the house about this. Her response: “That’s crazy.”

I can think of no better way to describe the Obama administration’s latest overreach. The rationale has to be that parents of farm families have absolutely no regard for their children’s safety, which is an insulting rationale. The Labor Department is no substitute for a parent.

Someone in the Illinois Democratic Party probably should tell Obama that losing his home state because his Labor Department alienated every single farmer in the U.S. would be embarrassing. And regulating family farms where they have never needed to be regulated before will lose him Wisconsin, too.

9 p.m. update: Never mind: And now, the Department of Labor:

The U.S. Department of Labor today issued the following statement regarding the withdrawal of a proposed rule dealing with children who work in agricultural vocations:

“The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations. The Obama administration is also deeply committed to listening and responding to what Americans across the country have to say about proposed rules and regulations.

“As a result, the Department of Labor is announcing today the withdrawal of the proposed rule dealing with children under the age of 16 who work in agricultural vocations.

“The decision to withdraw this rule – including provisions to define the ‘parental exemption’ – was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms. To be clear, this regulation will not be pursued for the duration of the Obama administration.

“Instead, the Departments of Labor and Agriculture will work with rural stakeholders – such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union, the Future Farmers of America, and 4-H – to develop an educational program to reduce accidents to young workers and promote safer agricultural working practices.”

Let’s repeat: “To be clear, this regulation will not be pursued for the duration of the Obama administration.” The Internet gets results.