Various and Sundry Stupidities<

The human race remains prone to folly.

What a shocking surprise. I was taken aback today by the Supreme Court decision that the Fourth Amendment does not protect us from being arrested for the most minor of fine-worthy infractions. Apparently, being handcuffed and hauled down to the station for having a broken taillight is in fact "reasonable."

I hate it when they do things like this, because then I am forced to respond like any one of a number of frothing libertarians of my acquaintance, and I prefer not to do that. I don't enjoy frothing. But have the Justices been so busy lately that they haven't noticed public ambivalence over the tactics of the drug war, or minor little problems like profiling and police abuse of power (I would have thought they at least noticed those riots a couple weeks back)? Are they truly that ignorant of how easily abused this ruling is? It's already far, far too easy for our theoretical protectors to harass people (and worse). Now it takes even less pretext.

Thanks a bunch, guys.

In the meantime, other arms of the government are taking the time to compile reports (ooh, ahh) on how the music industry lied (gasp!) when it said it wouldn't market the nasty stuff to kids. Thank goodness someone's on the ball there. I can't tell you how much better I'll sleep at night knowing that not only I can be arrested for my own good at any moment, but that the government plans to keep me and my theoretical eventual children safe from the eeeeevil entertainment industry.

I swear, the only up-side to the Bush presidency is that we don't have to face the specter of Vice President Lieberman.

I'm off to work on my frothing. See you next week!

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