Drinking While Intoxicated (DWI)

So in my home state of Texas they now arrest drunks for being drunk in bars.  So what are we to do when our woman leaves us, the dog dies, my truck won’t start or there is a layoff in the oil patch?  Does the great state of Texas expect me to stay home and get drunk…sitting alone at my kitchen table tossing them back and cleaning my guns?  Do they really want me leaving my house and driving back to the package store when I run out of Jack?  This isn’t some namby-pamby sissy state like…Maryland, Vermont or California.  This is Texas.  We drink.  Sometimes we get drunk.  And we do it in bars.  In case the crazies now in control of the state’s law enforcement agencies haven’t noticed, bars are designed to get drunk in….that is where the whiskey is sold.  

Have we really become such a nanny state that we can’t even have a few too many?  I am not talking about getting in a car and driving off a bridge, I am talking about falling off a barstool, where the only thing hurt would be my pride.  Actually I am a lot more militant about drunk drivers than the state is.  I think if you drive drunk the punishment for the first offense should be permanent suspension of your driver’s license, confiscation of your car, and a year in jail…at a minimum.  Second time driving drunk should see you in the penitentiary for 5 to 10.  If you hurt someone or kill someone driving drunk I would send you away forever.  There is no excuse for drunk driving.  Not a single reason you have to do it.  But if you get drunk in a bar and take a taxi home, or have a friend drive you home, I don’t care.  Drinking in bars is not drunk driving. 

The proponents of arresting drunks in bars say that they are merely heading off the potential drunk drivers.  It’s kind of like arresting pedestrians for walking past a bank in case they might rob it.  Or arresting people with pens and word processors to prevent slander.  Or arresting everyone with a hammer to prevent assaults on liberals or journalists.  It is a kind of prior restraint that the Supreme Court long ago said violated the first amendment when it came to censoring words before they were published.  The fact that the high court has said that making laws against potential crimes is illegal, then what are they doing arresting people in bars?   

I have an idea.  Let’s arrest people for stealing cars and breaking into houses.  Surely law enforcement can find something to do that doesn’t involve hanging out at the local honky-tonk counting the number of Bud’s some despondent goat roper drinks to forget that Peggy Ann done run off with that darn Hubbell boy.  What exactly is the legal blood alcohol limit for shooting pool, playing darts or sitting at the bar flirting with the waitress?   

The whole country has gone soft; Texas in particular.  We have become so protective of everything and everybody that our kids can’t play outside, our daughters can’t go on dates, we can’t let the cat out at night, we can’t ride a bicycle without body armor, you can sue tobacco companies for getting cancer when they tell you right on the package that you will get cancer and people even want to let gunshot victims sue the manufacturers of guns that were designed to shoot people with.  We have 12 million people who broke the law sneaking into the country and we can’t arrest and deport one of them, but we have the law enforcement manpower to arrest somebody drinking in a bar.  We are concerned to the point of distraction with the treatment of captured terrorists in Cuba, but ignore Bubba’s right to have a few too many.  What we need to do is develop a test to identify the idiots in positions of authority and arrest time before they do something stupid….oh…too late.