Excuses, Excuses

"Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest." Judge Frank Easterbrook, Coleman v. CIR (7th Cir 1986) 791 F2d 68 at 69.

Excuses, excuses. Making excuses is all we seem to ever do in America anymore. I hear excuses constantly. It amazes me that more people aren't willing to take responsibility for their own actions. It also amazes me how many people pontificate preposterous positions that they believe will benefit them, or rather, help them get around "the system."

As a misdemeanor prosecutor, I constantly hear excuses. I find it humorous that so many excuses are exactly the same, yet people believe that only they have thought of such a creative excuse. Traffic cases are definitely the worst. Its funny how many people caught speeding or driving recklessly were supposedly taking a loved one to the hospital, especially when they weren't traveling towards the hospital. Perhaps they were taking a shortcut.

I also find it funny how many speeders weren't really the ones speeding. The officer obviously got a different car; I mean, aren't there many cars on the road? If we have that many officers getting the wrong car, I'm worried about how they catch the real criminals. Are they really getting the right suspect, or did they get the wrong car there to? Most people don't understand that many officers no longer use radar, but something called lidar - a laser that must be pinpointed on a specific car on a flat surface in order to give a reading. This makes it much less likely that the officer got the wrong car.

The sad thing is that these are just the general examples. They aren't even the preposterous excuses. One individual who was caught racing alleged that his feet simply got tangled up in the pedals, which is why he was fishtailing and racing another car. He wasn't really racing, he states. He simply had a foot problem with the pedals and, to the untrained eye, it appeared that he was racing somebody.