Power Drunk

It looks as if someone put the Nazis in charge of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission:

Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.

"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.

"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated..."

Very true--whether that intoxication originates from alcohol or from excessive power.

Since it seems the TABC is encountering difficulty with some basic legal principles, I've highlighted the pertinent bits for them:

Amendment IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

Please note that the word "seizure" has been determined by precedent to mean "arrest" as well as the more literal material interpretation.

I've always thought that particular Amendment was quite clear and easy to comprehend, even for the most dense of aspiring jack-booted thugs. Obviously I was wrong.

Furthermore...

entrapment - n. : a defense that claims the defendant would not have broken the law if not tricked into doing it by law enforcement officials

Any first year law student could make a very effective argument to a jury that since the TABC agent has ultimate responsibility for all the alcohol in the bar, and can stop the serving of said alcohol at any time, the act of watching someone get drunk and then arresting them is entrapment. It's the same reason police cannot sit in the parking lot of a bar and then pull over everyone who gets into a car and leaves.

If I can make this argument, you can bet that a good defense lawyer will hand the TABC their collective, swastika-branded little asses in court. And I can't wait to see it happen.

This demonstration of idiocy in law enforcement brought to you by:

1) Dwindling State coffers. Must find a way to extort more money from the populace, since the tax on the mathematically illiterate is failing.

2) The neo-Prohibitionists, led by MADD. They won't be happy until the general populace is living a happy, healthy life--as dictated by them, of course. MADD went from being a force for good to a group of self-righteous elitists with the alacrity of a teenage intern fleeing from Teddy Kennedy. I can't imagine they could've studied American history and missed the entire 1920's bit, so I must assume that they're just plain, old-fashioned stupid.

Can we get a judge over here, please...?


(Hat-tip to Rusty C.)