The Washington Post lashes out at the Virginia legislature in a particularly vituperative editorial.

What, you may be wondering, is the subject matter? After all, there are lots of reasons to bash Virginia’s state lawmakers. Failure to rein in overly aggressive policing? Freewheeling tax and spend policies? Incessant gay bashing?

Nope. The Post is upset that Virginia has stubbornly refused to enact primary seatbelt legislation, which would give police the authority to pull over and harass motorists for nothing more than failing to wear a seatbelt. Worse yet, the state did so despite a $16 million federal blackmail grant attached to the law being enacted. Some would call that a rare act of principal on the part of usually-busybody legislators. The Post calls it “stubborn.”

The Post is also annoyed that Old Dominion lawmakers won’t pass legislation allowing for red light cameras, despite a long, documented trail of evidence that said cameras don’t work, are ripe for abuse, and routinely snag innocents, who then are pretty much helpless to appeal.

Better yet, when Virginia lawmakers did nix traffic cameras at about this time last year, they cited “liberty” as their justification — the first time I can remember that word being uttered as cause for a piece of legislation since I became politically aware.

Which, one presumes, is why the Post would be so offended.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 12:39 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.