Yes, I’m a Law and Order Liberal. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are retired Special Agents for the U.S. Treasury Department. Many of my mother-in-law’s relatives are local law enforcement. I honor and respect the jobs that all of them do, often putting themselves at personal risk to assure our safety and rights as citizens.

I guess that is part of the reason I get so annoyed when people do things that recklessly put law enforcement officials at risk or squander our taxpayer dollars that are supposed to be used to make us safer and protect our rights.

So, it looks like I may get bloggers credentials from the Media Bloggers Association to help with the coverage of the Scooter Libby trial. Scooter Libby is on trial for obstructing justice, making false statements and perjury in the investigation of who outed information about Joseph Wilson’s wife. If the allegations are true, he contributed to making our country less secure.

Yet we don’t have to travel to Washington to find taxpayer dollars being misused in a way that makes us less secure. Ken Krayeske was arrested for attempting to take pictures of the inauguration parade of Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Since that event, there has been a lot of ink spilled questioning how Ken’s name got on a list of threats, why money was spent on making color leaflets about Ken.

Today is Ken’s court date. There have already been hearings at the Legislative Office Building about the case, and I expect there will be more. As I talked about the cases with my thirteen-year-old daughter, she had an interesting observation. When she reads about trials in school, it is from To Kill a Mockingbird, or Gone with the Wind. She has developed a great respect for our history of jurisprudence. Yet when she hears about Ken’s case she wonders how anyone in their right mind could bring the charges against Ken.

The arrest of Ken Krayeske is damaging to our state not only in that it raises questions about how seriously our rights are being defended, but also about how our taxpayer dollars are being spent to make us safer and if misguided government officials are further weakening by damaging the credibility of the judicial system in pursuing such cases. Let’s hope that charges are dropped, an apology is issued, and that thorough investigations are conducted into how we can make sure that our taxpayer dollars are spent in ways that actually make us safer and protect our rights.

(Cross posted at MyLeftNutmeg)