“Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine or who was trying to launder large amounts of money,” said Mark Overton, the police c

“Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine or who was trying to launder large amounts of money,” said Mark Overton, the police chief in Bal Harbour, Fla., who once oversaw a federal drug task force in South Florida. “It was never meant for a street cop to take a few thousand dollars from a driver by the side of the road.” I love watching how systems of people operate. Fascinating stuff. Over and over, what I see in U.S. history is somebody who has a real problem that needs solved -- perhaps a gnat is flying around the house. The problem looks really sexy on TV. Politicians can thump the table and get lots of votes. Then these politicians get elected and suddenly we're building industrial flame-throwers to get rid of gnats. "But it's only for the gnats!" they say. And it is -- for about 20 years. Then it slowly becomes a tool like any other. Part 3 of this story is the most interesting. It's where the rest of us figure out how we've gotten screwed and start clamoring to have something done about it. But nothing happens. Democracy's bug? That every generation feels like it is special, and that the problems it is having are special. So they "have" to start heavily mucking around with the system. Most every time, these fixes work -- until they don't. Then we're stuck with them forever. I don't have an answer here, just venting.