Law 'n' awduh

"You don't get the amount of law enforcement we can afford, you get the amount of law enforcement we can tolerate."
Sid Heal, Technology Consultant

Sid, who appeared on the PBS Newshour tonight, is a pretty bright guy.  I guess he was supposed to come in and defend police use of high speed license plate scanners, but the guy has a talent for nuance.  The woman from the ACLU, to her surprise, wound up kind of agreeing with him.

There was more law 'n' awduh news tonight.  Whitey Bulger was convicted on all but one count, still claiming the FBI hadn't been protecting him for the past couple of decades.  Well, they sure as hell were not looking for him, at least until the involved agents were retired or dead.

Then, again, AG Eric Holder gave a speech to the ABA suggesting that low level drug offenders might be diverted from mandatory minimum sentences.  It's a nice idea, and might divert attention from Holder's (to wit, Obama's) war on leakers and whistleblowers, but the administration assumes Congress will bog down trying to change the law.  Probably, that's entirely correct.

It seems the USofA has 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners but, what the hell?  It appears we can tolerate a whole lot of law enforcement.

Finally, a federal court decided that New York City's "stop and frisk" program is pretty much racist.  I agree.  New York City's next mayor definitely should get rid of Kelly, but really ought to revisit the idea of congestion pricing.  Congestion pricing doesn't have much to do with law 'n' awduh, but I still think it's a good idea.