Friday, March 24, 2006

Jack Booted thugs crack down on public drunkenness

From the government knows better that you do files: Local police in Texas went into bars and arrested people for public intoxication. They were not wearing jack boots, but undercover agents were watching people for public intoxication. On the Today show I saw that they even arrested people drinking in the hotel bar that they were staying in! Also arrested was the bartender for serving drinks to someone who was intoxicated. In my opinion, that is not too far from drinking in your own house; think of the hotel as your rented house and the bar as your rented living room.
For those law and order and benefit of society types out there I will point out that I am not so blind as not to realize that society has a vested interest in preventing drunk driving and accidents due to drunkenness and so on. But there needs to be a balance between individual liberties and the needs of society. Unchecked government power is a bad thing. I am sure that many people would agree that this action is a little heavy handed (of course the Texas constabulary would disagree).

Others find this amusing as well, Consumerist quips "I won't quit you, Jim Bean". For advice about the dangers of drinking, I leave you with a pointer to one of my recent favorite songs and bands - 8-bit knows all about drinking too much as put to music with their hit "Drunk". You can find an mp3 download of it at their myspace account.

1 comment:

whirdly said...

I hear the jack-booted thugs now! Oh wait, that's just construction workers on the roof.