The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has apparently found a new way to infringe on the rights of Texas citizens.

On the one hand, we have laws against drunk driving, which I think are sensible enough perhaps. Considering that the level of impairment of missing a night of sleep has been scientifically proven to be just as bad for your driving as having a BAC around the legal limit, I'd say that perhaps our ever-plummeting legal limits are making it into a bad case, but that's another discussion.

However, especially around Dallas, much of Texas was settled by alternating bands of drinking, and fervently non-drinking, religious and ethnic groups. As a result, the "blue laws" (e.g. laws governing the sale of alcoholic beverages) vary wildly and in very close quarters. My friend once took me on a "Tour" of Dallas which included, every few blocks, "and now we're crossing the line where you can/can't buy alcohol after X hour (if at all)".

And there are apparently a few old, old laws on the books similar to indecent exposure laws, that say it's illegal to be drunk in public.

Where does the TABC come in? Well, as they claim, a bar is a public place.

Therefore, the thing to do is send a swarm of officers in and arrest everyone - in a Bar - who happens to be drunk.

Their explanation - that they were trying to stop these people from doing harm to themselves or others - doesn't hold water. If it were a nightclub where police knew regular drug sales were going on, and they raided and grabbed everyone who had Pot or Ecstacy or some other illegal substance on them or in them, I'd not be sympathetic. But a bar is a public business, that pays the state for a liquor license already. It is an acknowledged business where proprietors are supposed to play by the rules, and where the rules are clearly laid out. And the rules say that they are allowed to sell adult alcoholic beverages there, and patrons are allowed to purchase and drink them.

The explanation from the TABC is that it's about "public safety."

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.

"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.

They might hide this one behind the guise of public safety, but face it, they sent officers in to raid a legal business and arrest patrons whose only crime was purchasing, and imbibing, substances they were legally allowed to purchase and imbibe. I can't see it as a public safety issue; far from it, it looks clearly to me like a campaign to harass the owners and patrons of a legal business that someone with a little too much power and a little too little common sense happens not to like.

Further, it's getting into a very dangerous realm. Now you're not arresting people for what they have done - because they haven't broken any laws, or if they've broken one, it's an outdated one that needs repeal. None of these patrons were arrested for fighting, or attempting to drive drunk.

No, they were arrested for the fear that they might do these things. Arrested for what they "might" do, rather than anything they had done already.