Retirement Plans

Your humble and obedient servant, having served the public as a Federal official since 1976, can see the light at the end of the tunnel: retirement cannot be that far away. (Of course, what I take to be a beacon of hope may simply be a nurse with a penlight come to bring me my medication.)

Questions are thus raised as to retirement activities. I know some retirees who have become avid gardeners. Others have become part-time academics. I believe that I just may become a professional pain in the ass. Not to my neighbors or my children (or, at least, not on purpose). But, instead, to obnoxious, pompous, self-important people who would very much like to tell me what to do.

I can, for example, imagine a role for myself in the events upon which Melanie Scarborough opined yesterday morning in the Washington (D.C.) Examiner:

Before a citizen can be charged with a crime, an officer has to cite a violation of law. Yet in announcing the road closures accompanying the World Bank protests, the police department said, “Only pedestrians with business in the area and proper identification will be permitted access.”

Which statute requires law-abiding citizens to produce ID to walk down a sidewalk? What law says that citizens must explain to police where they are going and why?

A call to the police departments general counsel asking that question was not returned. Unfortunately, there likely is some badly written statute that the Metropolitan police can contort into affording them sweeping powers — similar to the Secret Service’s ability to operate virtually unchecked by claiming it is protecting someone or something.

Such laws are more dangerous than any group of protesters.

I see a lawsuit. I see a gray-bearded gentlemen in late middle age getting himself arrested. I see a great deal of fun ahead.