No Special Snowflakes: Stop Special Privileges For Cops, Government Honchos
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is right on with this USA Today column noting that cops and pols do not deserve special treatment, but they're getting it all over the place:

Sometimes it involves freedom from traffic and parking tickets, like the special non-traceable license plates enjoyed by tens of thousands of California state employees or similar immunities for Colorado legislators. Often it involves immunity from legal challenges, like the "qualified" immunity to lawsuits enjoyed by most government officials, or the even-better "absolute immunity" enjoyed by judges and prosecutors. (Both immunities -- including, suspiciously, the one for judges -- are creations of judicial action, not legislation).

He notes that the Constitution prevents this:

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibits the federal government from granting "titles of nobility," and Article I, Section 10 extends this prohibition to the states -- one of the few provisions in the original Constitution to impose limits directly on states. Surely the Framers must have considered this prohibition pretty important.

Well, yes. But since then we've read it rather narrowly: Basically, so long as people aren't granted titles like Baron, Duke, or Sir, nobody even considers the question of titles of nobility.

He'd like to see the ban on titles of nobility be given a second look:

How would I do it? I'd provide that any rule giving government officials -- whether elected, appointed, or members of the civil service -- preferential treatment compared to ordinary citizens would have to withstand "strict scrutiny." That is, I'd treat discrimination based on government employment status the same way we currently treat racial discrimination. To withstand strict scrutiny, a government action must serve a "compelling government interest," and must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest. And there must be no less restrictive means of achieving the same goal.

And the problem, ultimately:

The growth not only of government, but of a governing class that believes, in a very real way, that it is fundamentally above the law.

I've certainly had enough of that, and I'm tired of people re-electing legislators who lap up these privileges instead of doing the right thing and discontinuing them.