And who cares what MADD says, really? They’re merely another in a long line of greedy, press-hungry advocacy groups. Their original intent was noble, but they long ago abandoned their original do-gooder, public-safety ethic. Their primary intent is now fundraising, and their tightassed, misinformed pronouncements, redolent as they are with the stench of their dishonesty, are as off-putting as a turd in my morning oatmeal.

I know it’s a pro forma exercise for reporters to quote MADD officials on drunk-driving stories, but they should be hip to their institutional rot by now.

When a non-profit organization has repeatedly been muddied up in the public prints for questionable fundraising tactics, their spokespeople — who are not lawyers, lest we forget — are hardly germane to a discussion about morals, constituional law or judicial ethics. Greedy zealots — and they are demonstrably, provably greedy and zealous — don’t really deserve a voice in the debate.

I don’t like drunk driving — I really don’t like drunk driving — but bad laws are a bigger threat. I pick the 5th Amendment over questionable state drunk-driving laws any day.

And no, I’ve never been popped for drunk driving, arrested for drunk-in-public, or anything else. Though I do like a tipple now and again. I’d wax poetic about Woodford Reserve, but that’s for one of the local food blogs.