Well we've got a new texting while driving ban in the State of Ohio, freshly signed by Governor John Kasich. This law may be going into effect soon, but not before I weighed in one more time on the nonsense of creating laws against things that are already against the law. While I was at it, I thought that I might kick my two cents in on some of the other kinds of laws that municipal, state, and national elected representatives like to pass and why. The result became "The Law of Averages" on the TFP website.
But it's summer, and between the mid-week Star edition and the regular weekend one there will undoubtedly be a number of reasons to find a shady spot, relax, and catch up on everything going on in the area in what is (now without doubt) Toledo's largest Sunday circulation, and Ohio's Best Weekly newspaper for the third year in a row, the Toledo Free Press.
(And who knows, there might even be more to come this week ...)
4 comments:
Let's pass a law forbidding the passing of laws, especially those laws that are in the interests of public safety. Who in the hell is the government to tell me that I should be respectful of the lives of others or that the sanctity of life is not really something that should be discretionary?
Ah Roland, one might well also say: Let's pass a thousand laws every day, each one duplicating a thousand others that protect safety. Let's create a web of laws so complex that we cannot extricate ourselves from it, and so all-encompassing that we are bound to be in violation of some part of it every moment of our lives.
The texting ban, which by and large isn't being enforced on a city level currently and probably never will be enforced at a state level except after the fact, provides great 'sizzle', but little steak where the public's safety is concerned.
So, let's just let the inconsiderate, dumbasses who text while driving continue their murderous ways. Why even try to send them the message of the danger they place all the rest of us in?! While we are at it, let's get rid of all the many laws against murder, manslaughter, 1st degree, 2nd degree, premeditated, involuntary, and the like. After all, none of those laws, many of which overlap one another and are duplicitous on several levels of government have prevented the mindless killing of others. Besides, is it not common sense that one should not kill another?? Why do we need the government to tell us the obvious?
No one is say the those texting should "continue their murderous ways" (a statement which might be a baiting and extreme). I at least am saying that there already exists a law against driving distracted, which likewise covers a variety of distracting behaviors.
As for the case you make about the overlapping laws for murder, a number of the victims you seek to protect my well ask for such, having not been protected by the existing forms of those laws. Far too often now judicial discretion and common sense is often removed from the process and the hands of prosecutors are tied under the existing ones.
But of course you know all of this Roland and this seems simply distraction from the issue at hand, that the specific texting was unnecessary.
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