Man, those things are awful.  May our tireless Highway Warrior be back on the blacktop soon.

I'm with you on that, Franco, and this is an important point.  The over-complexity and specialization of the law, along with the reduction of discretion, makes it hard on those of us doing street-level police work.  As the law becomes more and more complex and rigid, it becomes harder to enforce, harder to articulate and harder to explain.

Worse, it becomes harder for well-intentioned citizens to even comply with.  As you pointed out above, this is corrosive to people's trust in the rule of law, which is essential to a free and just society.

The fact that good deeds are in someone's job description doesn't mean that the good they do doesn't count when assessing their general character, and only the negative is relevant.

It sounds like you've had a lot of negative experiences with bad and unprofessional behavior from police, and I'm very sorry to hear that.  My experience (even before I became one) was entirely different.  But I wonder if you're missing a slight irony: you base a suspicious attitude about police officers based on your bad experiences, which is totally understandable.  But then you criticize police for having a suspicious attitude towards the general public, that "everyone is an adversary".  Don't you think that might be rooted in their experience as well?  This is something I always try to keep in mind in my daily work - just because I'm knee-deep in drunken jerks night after night after night doesn't mean that every member of the public is like that.  It can be depressingly easy to lose perspective.

I think you'd be surprised at how much ticket activity results from direct requests by the public.  One of the constant complaints we get, through e-mails, calls, neighborhood meetings, etc. are traffic issues: people speeding through neighborhoods, or blowing stop signs.

Just yesterday, I was in court prosecuting a larceny.  Afterwards, the judge called a short recess and pulled my partner and I into chambers.  We thought we were in trouble, but he just wanted to tell us about an intersection near his house (he lives in our patrol area) where people were disregarding the stop sign, and ask us to keep an eye on it. 

For every person sneering, "Don't you have anything better to do, Officer?", there's someone grumbling about the heedless speedsters roaring through the streets where their kid plays, and the damn cops ignore it.  The only thing both sides agree on is that the cops are worthless.

You have a good point with the insurance card, though it may stem from the fact that insurance information is required on most motor vehicle accident forms.  I don't work in NJ, so I don't know for sure how it works there.  Then again, it's certainly possible that the officer was just being spiteful or trying to inflate his ticket count to keep his commander off his back.  We don't really know.

Still, if NJ is anything like where I work, nobody gets fined for no proof of insurance.  Bring an insurance card to court, and the ticket gets dropped.  If appearing in court is impossible, they'll generally accept a faxed copy, or someone bringing it in on the defendant's behalf.  There's little revenue involved, and here, most of that money would go to the state highway fund anyway, not the city that employs me.

It's true that taxes go to pay for the cranes, etc. but what's wrong with making the person who created the need for the crane pay a little extra to defray the cost to taxpayers?

Also, at the risk of seeming churlish, what is it about this story that makes it somehow representative and emblematic of "Our Modern Police", but this one isn't?  Or this?  Or this or this or this?  They're just as valid as this one, in the sense of "something that happened with cops involved", but you're sure not going to see them on the Reason home page.

Heck, the night after Roder's car took its plunge, two of my co-workers downtown chased and tackled two strongarm robbers who had just mugged a tourist (and another one the previous night).  A few weeks ago, my partner saved a stabbing victim's life by holding his intestines in place with her hand, while simultaneously restraining him from pulling his own guts out in his delirious panic.  Neither incident resulted in a news story you can link on the internets, but they still happened.

Under the circumstances, issuing the tickets strikes me as kind of a jerk move.  But on the other hand, a 2-ton-plus vehicle rolling uncontrolled toward a 35-foot drop is not exactly a safe situation.  What if it had hit Roder, his son, or someone else?  What if, as almost happened, Roder's 6-week-old had been in the car at the time?

The tickets might have been the act of an overzealous rookie.  Or they might have been intended to provide some recompense to the taxpayers for providing the crane and personnel to pull the Jeep out of the river.

Me personally, I wouldn't have been inclined to cite the guy, on the grounds that he's had a bad enough day.  But nor am I inclined to denounce as evil someone who looks at this incident and concludes that Roder kept control of neither his child nor his vehicle, and created a dangerous situation for everyone.

So that's the chemical composition of hot air?

Love this bit:

But don’t get the wrong idea: Mooney insists he is not saying “conservatives are somehow worse people than liberals.” That would be judgmental, and Science is clear: Liberals aren’t judgmental.

I also like how Ferguson points out that studies conservatives might like, such as the one indicating we have a better understanding of liberals than they have of us, are just as worthless scientifically.

Super Genius, actually.  It's an advanced degree.

Maybe they couldn't find enough Cherokee dancers.

High cheekbones, y'know.

Citizens don't succeed because of the State.  States succeed because of their citizens.

Not just that, but one of the best aspects of the character was the way he told a different origin story to everyone he met, to mock their efforts to "understand" or "explain" him.  For my money, The Dark Knight is one of the most conservative movies ever made.

Sympathetic and friendly monsters are a staple of cultural products aimed at children, so it's not surprising we would see that more and more as our culture becomes more infantilized.

Not to worry, there will be a follow-up story attributing this to their "authoritarian personalities" or racism or something.

This is more about fundraising than votes.  That's the only explanation where his timing makes sense.  If he were after votes, he would have held on to his reveal.  Since a statement like this can be dropped pretty much anywhere and creates its own media ripple, it would have made for a handy October Surprise to energize his base to fall in love with him again before the election.

Doing it now means he's courting wealthy liberals, for whom this is a major issue, and who have expressed disappointment that he hasn't been the liberal crusader of their dreams.  He's hoping this is enough to make them open their wallets.

I smell panic.  And it's delicious.

No, I'm smart enough not to date my dentist.