A Stitch in Haste

More evidence that the term "hack politician" is redundant:

Jackson [Mississippi] Mayor Frank Melton said he impulsively asked his police escort to pull four Callaway High buses over on I-220 on Friday afternoon because he needed a hug.

The buses were taking students home from school, about 4:30 p.m.
...
Melton said students saw him out their windows and waved before he had the buses stopped. "I told the kids to have a great weekend and a safe weekend," he said. "I didn't do anything stupid or illegal."

I beg to differ on both counts.

Should we start with the constitutional issues, or with the torts?

--I don't think compulsory education includes compulsory detention for group hugs or photo ops with politicians. The incident may be too de minimus to warrant a legal remedy, but conceptually this is a clearly unlawful detention and a Fourth Amendment violation.

--On the tort side, we have false imprisonment and battery (if the kids felt compelled to be hugged against their wishes). Add on some child welfare offenses for flavor. Oh, and is "busjacking" a recognized tort?

Consider: If the bus drivers (all four of them) had pulled over of their own volition for "group hugs," would it have been no big deal? How about a rank-and-file police officer? How is this mayor -- who likes to wear a badge and who personally arrests people despite having no authority to do so -- any different?

Oh, and whatever happened to the "child molester mania" we're all supposed to be sharing? Isn't there something "just not right" about a guy who has uncontrollable urges to touch children?

What a limitless idiot. He (almost) makes Michael Bloomberg look good.

(Via Fark.)

When judges, such as those in New York and Washington, insist that they must defer to elected officials, is this the kind of elected official they have in mind?

[Jackson, Mississippi] Mayor Frank Melton promised a hands-on approach to this city's chronic crime problem, and he made good from the moment he took office, donning a bulletproof vest and black fatigues and leading nightly police patrols that illuminated the streets with flashing blue lights.

But the pistol-packing mayor soon ran up against the harsh reality that crime actually increased 26 percent during the first half of 2006. Melton responded with another get-tough gesture: imposing a monthlong state of emergency across the city.
...
Some prosecutors have objected to Melton's practice of putting on police gear and picking up a shotgun, and his habit of taking crime witnesses into his home in a sort of self-styled witness protection program.
...
Federal authorities have told the mayor to quit packing his pistol on commercial airline flights. ... Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood told him to stop wearing police gear, and Faye Peterson, the district attorney in Jackson, has said he is breaking the law by impersonating a police officer.

I blogged about this unstable clown previously. But the simple fact is that Melton received 88% of the vote. If you believe in unbridled majoritarianism, then you believe in Frank Melton.

And if judges are supposed to defer to elected officials such as Melton, or to the dolts who overwhelmingly elected him, then why bother even showing up for work in the morning? Just leave your judge's robe in the closet, put your feet up on the desk and tell everyone to resolve things the old-fashioned, "democratic" and "majoritarian" way -- with pistols and shotguns.

If it's good enough for the democratically elected mayor and majoritarian masses of Jackson, then it should be good enough for everyone.