[Porsche-O-Phile]

Sniper,

I normally agree with you but on this one I only can agree with you to a point. While I think the U.S. population is WAY over-policed, over-incarcerated and that the police in this country are WAY too overzealous about the wrong kinds of offenses, this is not necessarily a failure of the criminal justice system. Mostly it's a failure of our legislation. We have too many laws on the books - period. The job of law enforcement is exactly that - to enforce them, right or wrong, stupid or smart, well-intended or ill-intended.

Here's the inherent problem with our system:

Elected officials have one primary objective and one only - to get re-elected. There are inadequate term limits and there are too many "career politicians" that run for elected office for the wrong reasons. That said, we all know the reality - politicians care first and foremost about re-election prospects. All else is secondary.

That creates an interesting situation whereby legislators constantly feel the pressure to sensationalize issues, grandstand, and (most importantly) constantly propose and pass new legislation on anything/everything they can come up with. If they don't do this, it makes them vulnerable for a challenger to peg them as "do-nothing" or "part of the system" or "a political insider". The best defense against such things is to paint onesself as being active, promoting legislation (particularly on "hot-button" issues that get the attention of the press and public), etc.

So there it is. There is NO incentive in our system to eliminate old, stupid, ill-conceived, inapplicable, inappropriate or outdated laws. There is EVERY incentive to simply create new ones.

I would propose the following solutions:

1. Strict term limits. Both for individual offices AND (more importantly) a lifetime limit on service of how many years a person can spend holding ANY elected office - federal, state or local. Get rid of the career politicians. Naysayers will say "this will get rid of the most experienced". In this case, I don't care. It'd be worth it.

2. Eliminate "dead" legislation. Create a requirement whereby two old, outdated or otherwise "dead" pieces of legislation to be stripped from the books before any new ones can be passed into law. It'd be nice to see the volume of laws and codes SHRINK for a change instead of bloating up bigger and bigger year after year. . .

3. Sunset provisions. Every new piece of legislation should have a reasonable expiration date or sunset clause. A way for it to automatically "go away" when it's done addressing whatever problem it is intended to address.

- - - - -

I agree our system is not perfect. I agree that there is tremendous manipulation of it by the wealthy. I agree it is corrupt. I agree it is in many ways just a way to legitimize oppression of the poor and less fortunate. It's sad.

But every once in a while, even our imperfect system gets it right. In the case of putting away a rapist scumbag, a thief/con-artist (such as a former g.f. of a close friend of mine who recently stole $12,000 from a former employer), a murderer (such as the two worthless pieces of schit who murdered another close friend of mine some 15 years ago, and who are still rotting away in prison), etc. I don't have a problem defending our system.

Yes, it does occasionally get it wrong. But it's nice when it gets it right - such as in this case.