The Show-Your-Papers State

I liked this graphic posted by John Cole to illustrate a story about the new Arizona law making brown people guilty until they prove themselves innocent:



And the idea that "innocent" people never have anything to fear from police is just naive. As Matt Welch observes

When you have thousands upon thousands of criminal laws, chances are non-trivial that you're breaking one of them as we speak, or at least can be seen as possibly breaking one of them, in case you happen to cross paths with a motivated law enforcement officer.

Its a hallowed law enforcement tradition, to pull over cars full of young people and find something to charge them with.