Longtime readers know I’ve been warning for some time that we’ll soon see the day when every car in the country comes equipped with an ignition interlock device, requiring the owner to blow into a tube and pass an alcohol test before he can start the car. Estimates vary, but most I’ve read suggest the devices would add about $1,000 to $1,500 to the price of a car.

The idea found some fertile ground in New Mexico, where it passed the statehouse but not the senate, and it has been repeatedly introduced in New York by state Rep. Felix Ortiz, possibly the single biggest Nanny Statist in all of American government.

Until now, though, the idea hasn’t been taken seriously outside a core of hardcore neoprohibition types. Even MADD has in the past stopped well short of supporting mandatory installation on all cars, instead opting for the devices for repeat offenders.

No more. New MADD president (and public health revolving door veteran) Chuck Hurley now supports the idea. Not only that, but it has now entered the realm of “serious public discussion,” meriting a front page story in USA Today.

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.

Turns out, the TABC agents busting bar patrons for being drunk in Texas bars weren’t even using breath tests:

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is launching an internal affairs investigation over a public intoxication bust late last month in Irving. The probe results from complaints against TABC officers in raids on bars, and News 8 has obtained videotapes of some of those raids.

One man was pulled from an Irving restaurant on March 10 after an undercover agent watched him and suspected him of public intoxication, or PI. Now he’s a suspect.

“We give them a field sobriety test. There are three field sobriety tests,” said TABC officer Lt. Sonja Pendergast.
The test is critical, because not all TABC officers have breathalyzers to measure blood alcohol. So this is the test that puts people in jail.

In the March raids, some suspects were unaware why they were being taken from the bar.
Bartenders who watched the process are skeptical.

The TABC admits charging public intoxication without measuring blood alcohol is based on judgment. But the public intoxication law, as it is now written, does not require measuring blood alcohol.

“It’s against the law to be intoxicated in a public place. Not everyone likes it, not everyone agrees with it. A bar is a public place, It is against the law to be intoxicated there,” said Pendergast.

Of course, breath tests have their own problems. But field sobriety tests are a fraud. Last fall, the Washington Post looked into the history of those tests, tracing them back to a single, unscientific 1977 study of 238 poorly-sampled students. The woman who created that study managed to sell NHTSA on its merits, and has since made a bundle as it has been adopted by police departments across the country. The Post administered the tests to a sampling of stone-sober pedestrians in D.C., and found many of them failed. That would have been enough to get those people arrested in Texas for public intoxication.

Rock Howard just testified at hearings in Texas concerning the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which has made headlines of late by raiding Texas bars and arresting patrons who fail to pass an alcohol breath test. At Stephen Gordon’s blog, he writes:

Not unsurprisingly these rookie agents were not concerned with building solid evidentiary cases and also readily ignored the operational guidelines established by the TABC. In fact many of the 2,200 SIP detainees will not be prosecutable. A number of sting victims are not only fighting the charges, but are also exploring various rights violations stemming from the arrests. The upshot is that the tab from this brief program could run into the tens or hundreds of millions.

Most outrageous is the “cowboy attitude” exhibited by TABC according to State Senator John Whitmire who co-chaired today’s hearings. He chastised TABC tactics including operations where agents dressed in SWAT uniforms and stormed targeted bars. Other committee members reported stories of patrons forced up against a wall en masse. Plenty of individuals testified about being arrested without a sobriety test or even, in one case, of being arrested after passing a Breathalyzer test. At one point TABC even stole a page from the BATF and invited local television camera crews to film their sting operations.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, let’s summarize: These alcohol control agents are dressing in SWAT gear to raid bars where people are drinking. Apologies for the overuse of italics. But sometimes, a little “what the fuck?” emphasis is in order.

The indispensible National Motorists Association (think of it as a libertarian version of AAA) has a terrific piece in its newsletter (sorry, no link) this month about a nasty series of new traffic laws in Virginia being pushed by a particularly sleazy state delegate:

Last year and this year, a bill was introduced in the Virginia Legislature to “punish dangerous drivers.” This is code for further ripping off citizenswho acquired a couple of traffic tickets.

[...]

We’re not talking pocket change, here. If you have four or more points on your license, you will be fined $100 [each year]. If you have more than four points, you will be fined an additional $75 per point. [Radley's note: This is in addition to the normal fines for the violations that got you thsoe points.] There also additional fines for specific violations in addition to what you will be charged for points [again, on top of fines already on the books].

A reckless driving ticket, for example, will cost you $350 on top of the point fees. The fiscal estimate calls for this law to generate $600 million in revenue, 30 percent of the total money programmed for highway projects.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

The sponsor of this legislation is Delegate David Albo, from Fairfax County. And what does Mr. Albo do when he’s not sticking it to motorists in the House of Delegates? Why, he’s a traffic attorney, a partner in a firm specializing in helping people on the verge of losing their drivers’ licenses.

Here’s the website for Albo’s firm. Note that they seem to specialize in DUI cases. Then note that Albo’s bill also recommends a $750 surcharge for DUI offenses, above and beyond Virginia’s already-exorbitant DUI penalties.

In fact, if you peruse the legislation Albo has sponsored or co-sponsored over the years, you’ll find a number of bills that raise some pretty serious conflict of interest questions, including bills aimed at increasing the minimum jail sentences for DUI offenses (here, here, and here), a previous bill calling for increased fines and points for traffic offenses (here), the admissability of evidence in photo enforcement cases (here). Albo introduced a bill last year that actually became law — it suspends for one year the driver’s license of anyone convicted of purchasing alcohol for anyone underage, intoxicated (!), or interdicted.

I’m all for a citizen legislature. But not when citizen legislators are passing laws aimed at steering customers toward their criminal defense practices.

I wonder if Albo tells his clients that he wrote many of the laws they’ve hired him to defend them from.

More “pre-arresting” people for drunk driving:

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission sent a message to bar patrons last week.

TABC agents and Irving police swept through 36 Irving bars and arrested about 30 people on charges of public intoxication. Agency representatives say the move came as a proactive measure to curtail drunken driving.

[...]

At one location, for example, agents and police arrested patrons of a hotel bar. Some of the suspects said they were registered at the hotel and had no intention of driving. Arresting authorities said the patrons were a danger to themselves and others.

TABC officials said the sweep concerned saving lives, not individual rights.

I have to suspend my outrage for a moment to note that the article bizarrely solicits comedian Steve Harvey’s take on the arrests.

I’m glad he’s on the right side and all. But Steve Harvey? “Now Bob, for more analysis on the Kelo case, we now turn to Full House star Dave Coulier who will give his take on the ruling in a funny, bunny rabbit voice.”

The Boston Globe takes one tragic story, and concludes that women drinking in urban areas should stop setting themselves up for rape and murder.

Oh, and clearly the problem is alcohol.

Yes, women (and everyone, for that matter) should be smart, sensible, and aware of their surroundings in urban areas. But to suggest that one incident is indicative of some trend of overly confident women getting smashed in trendy bars, then taken home and violated is needless sensationalism.

To the People has more.

A reader who says he’s a former forensic chemist emails:

Just in case you didn’t already know:

When someone blows into a breathalyzer, the breath sample is “split.” Half goes to the instant-read dohickey that gives the officer an on-the-spot BAC. The other half goes to a silica gel “trap.” The silica gel holds onto the alcohol and moisture from the breath. This silica gel sample is separated and documented as evidence, so that the accused can have a separate lab run an analysis to determine what the accused’s BAC was. In theory, it would prove a defendant’s innocence, or cement the case against him.

In practice, these silica gel samples were +/- 0.02 from the recorded value. So, if someone was arrested with a BAC of 0.08, the true value could be 0.06 - 0.10%.

During the time I tested these, I never heard of a calibration procedure for the portable breathalyzers.

What I learned from my time in forensic chemistry is that I will never drink and drive, since blind, stupid luck could determine if I’m arrested for a DUI.

Also, as Lawrence Taylor will tell you, the Supreme Court has ruled that police have no obligation to provide you with those separate breath or blood samples for independent testing. In nearly every other facet of criminal law, the defense is given access to forensic evidence for independent testing.

Fascinating (and troubling) look at how blood-alcohol breath machines work.

Given the stakes, and the machines’ penchant for error, it’s remarkable that the machines are admitted as evidence at all. But they’re not only admitted as evidence, they’re taken as de facto evidence of a defendant’s guilt, and efforts to cross-examine their methodology, reliability, and margin of error are generally laughed out of the court room.

The good news is that at least a few judges are finally showing some respect for the presumption of innocence.

Here’s a fun list of absurd alcohol laws from across the U.S. of A.. Some I suspect are dubious. But among the better-sourced entries:

After Michael O’Neil opened O’Neil’s Saloon, he was promptly informed by the state liquor authority that he was breaking the law by using the word “saloon.” He complied by changing the “S” into a “B,” thus making it O’Neil’s Baloon.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BAFT) bans the word “refreshing” to describe any alcohol beverage.

A young adult college student studying in Italy can’t have a glass of Chianti with dinner, according to the Drug Free Schools and Campuses Act. Students under the age of 21 are prohibited by the federal government from conforming to the drinking laws and customs of the countries in which they are studying. This, of course, is contrary to the educational goals underlying international education or study abroad programs.

Anyone under the age of 21 who takes out household trash containing even a single empty alcohol beverage container can be charged with illegal possession of alcohol in Missouri.

An owner or employee of an establishment in Iowa that sells alcohol can’t legally consume a drink there after closing for business.

It’s illegal in New Jersey for parents to give their children under the age of 18 even a sip of alcohol.

And to bring it all full-circle, there’s this:

Mark Phillips of Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested for selling a single bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild wine to an undercover agent in an Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board sting.

Phillips, as leader of a local wine club had agreed to post the offer on the club’s web site on behalf of a member of the diplomatic service who needed to dispose of that bottle and a few others in preparation for an overseas tour of duty for the United States.

In making the arrest, ABC appeared at Phillips’ house with a dozen armed officers and held the accused and his family under guard while officers searched the house. They threatened to confiscate Phillips’ entire personal wine collection, not just the few bottles he offered for sale on behalf of a friend.

The case was dismissed on a technicality, but had Phillips been convicted of selling alcohol without a liscence, he could have faced one year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

What the hell? That’s two cases I’ve heard about in the last two days of a heavily armed raid by Virginia’s ABC regulators. The scary thing is, because the alcohol control bureaucrats are regulators and not law enforcement, they don’t need a search warrant. And they’re allowed to use hearsay to make their case against you.

Drip, drip, drip.

Keg parties at fraternities and many other places would be outlawed under a bill passed 30-0 Tuesday by the state Senate.

If the bill becomes law, people could drink draft beer only at a bar, restaurant, private club or other retail establishment licensed for beer sales by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, said Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, the bill’s sponsor. People could not buy a keg and take it elsewhere to drink.

Singleton said he proposed the bill in an effort to stop teenagers from drinking beer.

Ah. For the kids.

Thanks to longtime reader Dan Gabbet for the tip.

Lincoln, Nebraska may start “red-tagging” houses that violate noise ordinances. Quote not to miss:

Caudill got the idea from Tucson, Ariz., where police have the authority to stick red tags on what are considered disorderly houses — or properties where five or more people are gathered or where there’s excessive noise, traffic, obstruction of streets, littering, public drinking, fighting, disturbing the peace or minors drinking alcohol.

Emphasis mine. Maybe the red tags make it easier for the SWAT team to find the house when they’re called out to settle a noise complaint.

A Missouri state legislator wants to prohibit the sale of cold beer. More disturbing is where he got the idea:

He said the idea came from a fifth-grade student in Jefferson County who was participating in a program to teach elementary students about state government. He sought their suggestions for new laws and chose the cold beer ban from a list of the top three ideas.

[...]

Last year, a fourth-grade class from Kansas City submitted a proposal to make the American bullfrog the state amphibian. It passed in the final moments of the 2005 legislative session.

Alter said the jump from naming state animals to restricting how alcohol can be purchased didn’t really surprise him.

“You never know what’s on the mind of young kids - some of them are pretty smart,” he said.

The NTSA has launched a series of holiday ads aimes at “buzz drivers.” That is, people who’ve had a couple of drinks, are not legally drunk, but who NTSA is warning will still go to jail for the non-crime of “drinking and driving.”

The message is pretty clear. It’s zero tolerance. And NTSA is generating quite a bit of local coverge for them. And of the dozen or so articles I’ve skimmed, most read a lot like this one:

Police warn driving while buzzed can be as dangerous as driving when legally drunk. A national campaign promotes the new slogan, “Buzz driving is drunk driving.” Many law enforcement agencies are taking the slogan seriously. DPS Trooper Johnny Hernandez tells NEWSCHANNEL 5, “Just because you don’t blow a 0.08, you can still be taken to jail.”

.08 is the blood alcohol level that deems a person legally drunk. But Texas law allows officers to take you in even if your level is below that. The law describes intoxication as “not having the normal use of mental or physical faculties by reason of alcohol or other substances.” Simply put, if you look like you can’t drive your vehicle or may hurt someone doing it, you could be heading to the slammer.

Shouldn’t we just drop the charade, and lower the BAC threshhold to .00?

In Arizona, they’re not even pretending anymore:

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is calling for a new law that would make any drinking and driving illegal - even if the driver is not impaired.

[...]

“They say Big Brother doesn’t need to regulate this, but we, the taxpayers, pay the bills” when drunken drivers cause accidents, he said.

[...]

He already has won the support of two political leaders and officials with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

[...]

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety is interested in Dupnik’s idea, too, director Richard Fimbres said.
“It’s time to shake up how we do things in Arizona,” he said.

In recent years, Arizona has enacted steeper consequences for drunken drivers, he said. The minimum blood-alcohol level for impairment was reduced in 2001 to 0.08 percent. Fines and fees have increased, and the number of citations issued has risen, too.

Dupnik hopes to have legislation drafted for the next session.

It doesn’t have much chance of passing. Yet.

But note that MADD is on board.

West Virginia bans grain alcohol. The quotes are priceless.

est Virginia’s alcohol board will no longer permit the sale of high-proof grain alcohol, citing safety concerns from college officials who say it is often purchased by students.

The state’s Alcohol Beverage Control Administration said the action against the 190-proof booze, which is 95 percent pure alcohol, was not in response to any specific incidents..

[...]

“It has traditionally been purchased by groups of people, often college students, who are intent on getting very drunk and who suffer serious consequences from a severe hangover to falling victim to sexual assault or even a car crash,” she said.

Lapelle said she was unaware of any such incidents involving grain alcohol among students at Marshall…

[...]

“It’s a decent move, or it was,” said Phyllis Hitchcock, manager of Classic Liquors in Huntington, Marshall’s home. “But the biggest sale of it was for labs and stuff. It’s used as a cleaning solvent.”

[...]

“We applaud their efforts to try to reduce the negative consequences of the consumption of grain alcohol,” said WVU spokeswoman Becky Lofstead.

But Lofstead said she, too, could recall no specific episodes blamed on grain alcohol abuse.

So to prevent college students from abusing grain alcohol, we’re going to ban it from everyone, even though we can’t think of a single incident in which college students have actually abused grain alcohol.

…nickname “Agitator,” yo’ 8-Ball junky.

Okay, I haven’t had malt liquor since college.

But I couldn’t resist the temptation to quote Eazy as an intro to this: A Chicago alderman wants to ban the 40. Quote:

“I’m not talking about banning it completely. Just don’t sell these individual bottles over the counter. . . . The people who buy this usually do not have the money to buy a six-pack or more. They come out of the liquor store — this is what they’ve got in their hand: a bottle of this 40-ounce stuff. I went to one store. He told me this was his biggest seller. Who does he sell it to? He sells it to alcoholics and drunks.”

Nothing wrong with the white Northside white woman who gets tipsy after a long day with a $24.99 bottle of Chablis. But $1.99 for 40 ounces of malt? Why….only poor people would drink that stuff! Poor black people! We can’t have poor black people drinking.

Lawrence Taylor notes that MADD has done something of a reversal in the face of Washington, D.C.’s zero tolerance backlash. Fortunately, we have lots of MADD higher-ups on record in support of zero tolerance policies.

On a related note, I seem to have a hard time getting anyone from MADD to debate me. They’ve cancelled out of two planned radio debates. The latter was scheduled for this Sunday at 4pm, and has been for nearly two weeks. MADD cancelled yesterday, citing schedule conflicts. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that last time I debated a MADD exec on the radio, all five callers harangued her for her position (that we should arrest parents who give their kids a taste of alcohol). I bring this up not to gloat (okay, maybe to gloat a little), but because it’s unfortunate that a group with so much influence and who is pushing so many radical policies doesn’t have enough confidence in those policies to subject them to the scrutiny of a public debate.

If MADD believes, for example, that pushing the neoprohibition agenda onto family law (for example, by insisting on zero tolerance for divorced parents with kids in the car, under penalty of loss of all parental rights) is a good thing, they ought to take the idea to the general public before trying to sneak it through state legislatures.

After blasting my Washington Post op-ed that criticized the practice of imprisoning parents who throw supervised parties for underage drinkers, and after one official “applauded” an eight year prison term for a Richmond couple convicted of same, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has decided to “withhold” judgment against a wealthy Michigan woman now facing charges of throwing a post-prom booze bash for her kid’s classmates.

While there do seem to be some cultural issues at play, here (the woman is German, where underage drinking isn’t such a big deal), this case seems like a home run for MADD. There was virtually no supervision whatsoever. Kids could come and go and drink as they please. Even I would have a hard time arguing with some kind of punishment, here (though I’d stop far short of prison time).

So why is MADD so reticent to condemn the woman? Alcohol researcher David Hanson has a theory:

The parent is Gisela Zetsche, wife of the president and CEO of the Chrysler Group. Chrysler Group’s DaimlerChrysler is a major “Platinum Sponsor” investor in MADD.

I get uppity when people accuse me of being on the take. So hopefully MADD will quickly explain why Mrs. Zetsche deserves consideration the Richmond couple doesn’t, and remove all suspicion.

Damn if this story doesn’t cover all the neoprohibition bases. Arresting people for crimes not yet committed. MADD reps actively engaged in the law enforcement effort.

The sad details:

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is saturating bars in the Abilene and San Angelo areas to arrest people for public intoxication, and bar or nightclub employees who sell alcohol to drunken customers.

The TABC campaign will continue through September 2006, said Lt. Randy Motz said. ”If we don’t arrest a bunch of people, then that’s fine. But we will do what we can to get them before they get in their car intoxicated.”

[...]

Heather Hodges, an Abilene-based MADD victims advocate, said her group is working closely with the TABC on the project.

”We believe responsible adults should drink responsibly,” Hodges said.

”And those that serve them should be responsible. A lot of people think it’s OK to be drunk in bar, but it’s illegal. A bar is not intended to be a place to get fall-down drunk … . You don’t have to be fall-down drunk to be considered drunk. Even after one drink, you aren’t 100 percent.”

Note the MADD rep’s quick descent to zero tolerance. These raids are justified to prevent irresonsible drinking — people shouldn’t be allowed to get fall-down drunk in a bar. A position many might find sympathetic (I don’t, of course) That turns into, “you don’t have to be fall-down drunk to be considered drunk.” And that turns into, “even after one drink, you aren’t 100 percent.” Remember, we aren’t even talking about driving, here.. These are patrons of a bar. The article notes:

People can also be arrested for public intoxication even if they have a designated driver.

Note also this bit of contradiction:

The good leiutenant tries to ease criticism by saying:

”We are meeting with retailers. We are not playing sneak attacks,” Motz said.

But then there’s this:

The state allowed the commission to hire 60 agents this year, Motz said.

Those new agents will be used to work undercover and as regular agents in the operation, he said.

How does one employ undercover cops without engaging in “sneak attacks?”

This crap makes me angry.