Too many laws

The hoses on the generator were replaced and it was validated with a leak-free half hour test run.

Temperatures peaked in the fifties last night and we have steady rain.  There is no risk of icing.

Temperatures are expected to drop and the winds to pick up in the evening.  We plan to attend Christmas Eve Mass and then we plan to cozy down for the duration.

Sports Officiating

The Eaton Rapids women's varsity basketball team picked up a nice win yesterday.  Belladonna is basking today.

The basketball officiating has been "lumpy" all season.  I talked to one of the coaches.  He told me that new rules had been implemented.  A defending player can only drape a hand on the ball handler.  Any other incidental contact is a foul.

The officials will often call all incidental contact at the start of the game.  The game becomes exciting and the officials slip back into old habits.  They forget to call it for a while.  The contact escalates until it becomes blatant and then the officials start seeing it again.  They will call it for a while and then forget.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

The team that can sense the changing moods of the refs on a minute-by-minute basis has a huge advantage.

Eaton Rapids came out and played 9 minutes of Rugby before the refs started calling everything.  By that time, the other team was buried. 

The refs called two fouls a minute against Eaton Rapids for the next five minutes.  Eaton Rapids was not playing "thug" basketball...they were playing 2013 basketball.  Eaton Rapids recalibrated and made it to the half.

The second half started out with three minutes of both teams sprinting up and down the court, popping off a miss from long distance with the other team getting the rebound.  I think both teams got the same message in the locker room at half: "Stop fouling!"  The girls were gassed.  I think one of the girls must have fouled after three minutes of sprinting so everybody could get a break during the free throws.

There was one more short period during the second half when the Rugby team showed up and could play full-contact basketball.  But after that, the refs were calling "mercy" fouls against Eaton Rapids.  That kind of things happens when you are winning 40-to-19 and pulling away.

Behaviors when "bullet proof"

The team that can sense the changing moods of the refs on a minute-by-minute basis has a huge advantage.

In some cases, like prevailing speeds on roads, the mood is easy to discern.

In other cases, it is very difficult.  We have too many laws.  No single law enforcement officer can know them all.  There are not enough prisons to hold all of us who inadvertently violate local, state and federal laws.

I have had three conversations with law officers in the past few weeks on this topic.  Paraphrasing their comments:  There is only one law.  The officer must  be able to identified "Who was injured?"

In the a case of some laws like drunk driving, the law is proactive.  It seeks to prevent injury by addressing foreseeable hazard.  The specific "Who?" cannot be identified but the population that holds "Who" can be identified. 

That is one reason why laws against spitting on the sidewalk might not be enforced at some times, but enforced after conditions change, like when a case of Ebola is diagnosed nearby or during peak flu season.

The unfortunate thing about too many laws is that enables the politicization of law enforcement.  The LE Agency must choose which laws to enforce or not enforce.  That which is political can be bought and sold.

We see this in the pointed non-enforcement of marijuana laws in many jurisdictions.  On another plane, we see it in the non-prosecution of TBTF banksters for RICO violations.

The politicization of law enforcement is a grievous injury to the social contract and that bothers me.