Please pardon me for not posting last week's column. I left town immediatly after filing it last Friday and neglected to post it upon my return. Thanks.

We Californians are so used to the government butting into our business, many of us no longer take notice.

But a recent proposal by the California Energy Commission was so outrageously Orwellian it was almost impossible to ignore.

Not that it rated the same attention as really important news, like Britney Spears' latest drug test. But it should have.

For those who may have missed it, allow me to recap.

Looking to thwart rolling blackouts and cut energy use during peak hours, the commission recently proposed a takeover of the state's thermostats. Including yours.

Sound farfetched? Not to the commission, which recommended the mandate in its revision of California's 2008 energy efficiency building code. The proposal would have required builders to install "programmable communicating thermostats" in every new or extensively remodeled existing home. In plain English, a PCT is a non-removable FM receiver that would have allowed utility companies to dictate the temperature in your home, ostensibly during "price events" and emergencies, though the proposal is vague as to what those emergencies might be.

In other words, dear readers, the mandate would have handed ultimate control of your home's heating and cooling systems over to the state's power police.

I say "would have" because on Tuesday the commission wisely chose to drop the mandate from its revision.

Good thing, too. The proposed mandate was over-the-top creepy even for California, a state where government intrusion is a given. I'm not sure how the code's authors thought they were going to push this one through -- perhaps they hoped the mandate would get lost in their 236-page snoozer of a revision -- but when word got out, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public would have none of it.

So, bowing to "considerable discussion" over the mandate, the Energy Commission's Efficiency Committee "directed that PCTs be removed" from the proposed revision of the building code, according to the agency's Web site.

Not that it's fallen completely off the commission's radar. It has actually been transferred to the agency's "load management" venue, where participation in such programs by consumers is typically voluntary. In a final, colossal understatement on the proposal, the commission noted "it is important that consumers have the ability to opt out of or into demand response programs, such as those involving the PCT."

Critics of the proposal, some of whom correctly characterize the mandate as "evil," say there are other solutions to the energy crunch, the most obvious being the building of more power plants to ensure shortages don't occur.

That, of course, is a fight few politicos want to pick. But it's only a matter of time before they must, because, as the commission so belatedly observed, it's important that homeowners have the freedom to fiddle with their thermostats without fear of a shutdown from some obscure government entity.

That the commission was seemingly unaware of that freedom before making their proposal is not only a shame, it's scary.