Marietta Daily Journal

Attention ACLU: In America, the law applies to everybody
Laura Armstrong
Columnist
October 18, 2009

The woman was wary when her husband decided to drive through Cobb one evening not long ago. As she bathed her children, she had a premonition something had happened.

Then the phone rang.

I need you to get some money,” her husband said. “I need $149.50, exact change, in cash. You must come here to the Kennesaw jail and pay, tonight.”

She could hear noises in the background. What could her husband have done to be in jail? He was only going to get gas in his car. He always tried to maintain a low profile. He was quiet, soft-spoken even. How could this happen?

She rushed her toddlers out of the tub, trying to remember where the jail was. Did she have enough money?

She stopped at two banks before finding an ATM that worked. Her hands trembled. Exact change, she remembered. She dug for quarters.

The children had fallen deeply asleep in the back. She had no choice but to bring them.

The woman found the right building after driving awhile and parked as the sun was setting. Her children would not stir and she’d forgotten a stroller, so she’d have to carry them both. People in the lot stared as she struggled with her precious cargo. A man almost offered a hand, she noticed, but then did not. She understood.

Reaching the door to the government building, she found it locked. A sign said the jail entrance was on the uphill side of the building. The children were heavy in her arms, and she cursed softly as she changed course.

Reaching the correct door, her little boy stirred. Setting him down in the stark lobby, she picked up a phone. Five or 10 minutes later a giant policeman appeared and silently escorted them to where her husband had “disappeared into detention.”

It was slightly insulting as the jailer put on rubber gloves to collect her $149.50 through a barred window. He could at least smile at the children, she thought. Then she caught sight of her husband – a middle-aged former U.S. Marine who’d been still carrying his California driver’s license when he was clocked going 17 mph over the speed limit headed downhill on U.S. 41.

But wait. Is that the ACLU babbling in outrage at this incarceration, which happened – not to an illegal immigrant with a broken taillight, but to an honorably discharged military citizen with almost 30 years’ exemplary service?

I think not.

The ACLU could care less about the case, in which a little known law, the Driver’s License Compact Law, was enforced. The law doesn’t discriminate. If your license is from a nonparticipating state and you have a minor traffic infraction, they have to haul you off.

But do honest citizens call the whambulance? Of course not. Because Americans believe in laws, even when we don’t like them. We realize no one is exempt, not good Americans and especially not trespassers from other countries.

So get over yourself, ACLU. And quit trying to slander Cobb officials with bogus reports. Law-abiding people have little sympathy for your drummed up charges of profiling.

HERE