Federal Agents Raid Office of Special Counsel


Essentially, the news item is a dismayingly familiar tale of (alleged) malfeasance of office and abuse of power. The part that grabbed my attention, in a pointing-and-laughing sort of way, is:


I have a mental image of a petty crook confident that he can't possibly be caught because he saw some clever trick on TeeVee.

Cemetery full, mayor tells locals not to die

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish."

It added: "Offenders will be severely punished."

Found via wcg's LJ, a Slate series on "American Lawbreaking" (namely, the laws that are not only routinely broken, but routinely expected to be broken with a wink and a nod, if that, from the authorities).

This is one reason why I keep coming back to the idea that all laws should expire after twenty years or so (the same law could be passed again, with or without modification, but in the absence of such an active step the law would go away).

From George Will's column:

First, measuring sectarian violence is problematic: The Post reports that a body with a bullet hole in the front of the skull is considered a victim of criminality; a hole in the back of the skull is evidence of sectarian violence.

I'm not sure this is a useful distinction. It is computed that eleven thousand Sectarians have, at several Times, suffered to be called common Criminals, rather than submit to shoot their Foes in the back of their Skulls.