In keeping with the unofficial but universally enforced government mandate to obstruct human progress and cultivate misery, the Arizona State Government’s Board of Cosmetology is investigating a complaint against a cosmetology student from Tucson who has been giving free haircuts to the homeless.

Juan Carlos Montesdeoca, who had been studying at a local Regency Beauty school until it closed last September, has been homeless himself, and when he learned that people living in a nearby park hadn’t had haircuts for several months he decided to offer his services to them for free. His deeds were observed by someone who, acting with the anonymous malice upon which every police state depends, filed a complaint with the Cosmetology Board.

Donna Aune, executive director of the Board, declined to answer specific media inquiries about the case, taking refuge in the familiar bureaucratic dodge that she couldn’t comment about an “active investigation.” She cited a section of Arizona’s state code dictating that “A person shall not perform or attempt to perform cosmetology without a license or practice in any place other than a licensed salon” – a provision that, if applied with the Pharisaical rigor Aune appears to favor, would make it a crime for a mother to cut her own child’s hair at home.

As a result of offering free haircuts without receiving government authorization, Motesdeoca points out, the board that presumes to grant such favors “can suspend [me] even before I even try to get a license.”