... Mike. But, as was once said by John Philpot Curran:

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance ..."

(Sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson in the form, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" or "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom".)

If we are NOT vigilant, our freedoms will backslide away from us.

BTW, I spent nearly 10 years as a prosecutor. During that time, I personally prosecuted two police officers (one for kicking a handcuffed defendant in the head and one for kidnapping a Hispanic teenager and leaving him in rival gang territory -- in an unrelated incident, the victim of that event was killed in a drive by shooting, which prevented him from testifying in a retrial of the cop after the first trial resulted in a hung jury) and one city councilman (charged with receiving bribes and kickbacks).

Other prosecutors in my office handled similar cases (in one ten year period, more than 25 local government officials were prosecuted for a variety of crimes, most of which involved misuse of their official positions).

And, if you don't think minorities are prosecuted disproportionately to their numbers and punished more severely than whites who commit comparable crimes, you are (sadly) mistaken.

----- jim o\-S