Posted 4/25/2006 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

A friend sent me this story this morning, and I really think I was too disgusted to really digest it. I still am, and I suppose my comments will be visceral, but still, the phrase "this is America" used to mean something. Your freedoms end where other's began. Not anymore. The pre-emptive approach taken now by law enforcement (and foreign policy) seems to be here for a long long, time. Anyway, here's the article, about how every car will soon have an Ethanol interlock device. In the U.S frickin' A Today, no less.

Widespread use of ignition interlock devices that won't allow a car to be started if a driver has had too much alcohol, once considered radical, no longer seems out of the question. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) gives a qualified endorsement to the idea. New York state legislators are considering requiring the devices on all cars and trucks by 2009. And automakers, already close to offering the devices as optional equipment on all Volvo and Saab models in Sweden, are considering whether to bring the technology here.

Keep your European hegemony of your 'subjects' in Europe, please. We used to have a thing call the Fourth Amendment here in America. I haven't seen it of late.

Manufacturers are perfecting technology that could detect alcohol on the skin surface, eliminating the need for the current, cumbersome, blow-into-a-tube breath-analyzing systems. Current breathalyzers cost about $1,000. The newer systems are expected to cost about the same.

Skin surface drunk tests? So if I'm a designated driver and someone spills a beer on me, does that mean my car won't start?

Ok, so there isn't a single paragraph in that story that pisses me off any less than any other, so I'll stop the running commentary. The point is that the rule of law has stated, quite eloquently for several hundred years, you can't be prosecuted until you've actually committed a crime, and to think that you're going to spend thousands of dollars on a vehicle that forces you to pass a driver's test each and every time you get in it is absolutely absurd. I know the Reichstag burned in 1933 2001, but that doesn't mean we have to deal with the tactics of the brown shirts.

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Update: Crap! Of course, Radley's all over this one, and said it better than I ever could:

It's not just that ideas as absurd as this one are slowly gaining acceptance, it's that the lapse of time these Nanny State gimmicks must traverse to get from absurd to mainstream grows shorter by the day.

Damn, I wish he wasn't as smart as he is.