I noted here that attorneys from the Justice Department had, with only a thin layer of ostensible politeness, warned state judges that they had best ease up enforcement in traffic cases against deadbeats and scofflaws. I see now, in this article in the NY Post, that the Department has ratcheted up the pressure with a letter from the Attorney General herself.
Again and again we hear from libertarians and liberals that the feds have taken too much of a hand in matters that ought to be left to state and local authorities. We hear this caterwauling most loudly about drugs. We have heard it for at least forty years, and we still hear it all the time.
But if drugs are one sort of problem that should be left to state and local judgment, dealing with traffic citations must be the quintessential matter.
Let me know when, in dealing with this episode, you hear a liberal or a supposed libertarian complain about Big Government federal sprawl, much less about the spectacle of prosecutors menacing judges. There was a time when that was considered, ummmm, not in keeping with appropriate prosecutorial functioning, but that was then.
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