Great minds travel the same roads.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/17/114117.shtml
Laws Be Damned
Al Rantel
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004
There is a new political development in America that should frighten every law-abiding citizen in this country. That is the growing disregard for people who follow the law and play by the rules, and the rewarding of those who do not.
Where I live, in California, we have two concurrent stories going on that demonstrate clearly what is at issue. The first one involves the mayor of San Francisco, who, though sworn to uphold the laws and the constitution of California in his just-taken oath of office, now allows and instructs city government to break those laws.
Under California’s penal code, he might very well be committing a felony. Mayor Newsome has decided that he doesn’t like California’s law that says marriage is only between one man and one woman and so he orders marriage licenses to be issued to hundreds of gay couples waiting in line at City Hall.
The public and the law be damned, the mayor will do what he wants. Meantime, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a “no comment†for the media when asked about it, and the state’s attorney general musters a statement that no one has asked him to issue a legal opinion. Are they serious?
Imagine for a moment if some local public official started giving out gun licenses en masse because he did not like California’s oppressive anti-gun laws. The entire weight of the media elite and the state would be down upon his head. The irony is there is in fact a right to bear arms, as stated in the now ignored Second Amendment to the Unites States Constitution. There is no right to get married.
The second example is the newest move in California, only weeks after a similar law was repealed due to huge public opposition, to allow those people in this country illegally to obtain California driver's licenses. The governor now says he is close to a deal with the state’s liberal Democrats who run the Legislature to bring back the idea with a few new safeguards like background checks.
Yes, background checks for people who are already living outside the law and who as illegals are notorious for having more false documents than Saddam Hussein’s weapons manufacturers. Those who have chosen to ignore and outright violate the nation’s laws on how one enters into this country would be rewarded with the most important piece of state documentation, the driver's license. As we all know, this photo identification in a country that does not have a national ID card is used even to enter the country when you come from places like Mexico or Canada, and is also used as ID to board commercial aircraft.
So here we are living in a country that stands for the rule of law and not the rule of a single individual or group of individuals, and those who choose to break the law are not only allowed to keep on doing so but in the case of the driver's license controversy, they are given a reward for thumbing their noses at the rest of us.
What will happen to our society when people begin to ask what law they can break that they don’t like? What will happen to our society when it finally becomes clear to law-abiding citizens that those who do not obey the laws are not only not worse off than they, but in some ways are better off?
Just think, in the nation’s most populous state today, you can get an illegal marriage license and soon be illegally in the country and get a driver's license. Not only will public officials not stop you, but they will even help you to break the rules. Even the tough-guy governor will not be able to muster a comment when he used to talk for a living.
America has never been on such a morally ambiguous path, but no intelligent person can really believe all of this can make our country better, safer or stronger as a nation. And we embark on this road at our own peril.
Al Rantel is a radio talk show host on Los Angeles' KABC.
Will be keeping an eye on this one. 
