I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she lost her license on the most recent charges, Speeding with your lights off at night certainly qualifies as reckless driving to me. Revoking her driving privileges is certainly on the table with two major violations in six-months.

About two years ago, one of my fellow members of the local Amnesty International (and a very active member at that) commuted almost everywhere by bicycle. Richard, who was scrupulous about bicycle maintenance and legal behavior on the road, was knocked off his bicycle by a drunk driver. His injuries left him in a coma. Six months later, he died.

Richard was in his early thirties, a likable fellow who cheerfully helped anyone with their Linux or UNIX problems, a fellow who knew his way around a radio station studio and mastered radio tapes for Amnesty and other nonprofits, a fellow whose belief in human rights ran as deep as my own.

Compared to Richard’s punishment for someone else’s DUI… what is Paris’s, and what does she have to complain about?

I have a neighbor who got nailed for a DUI and he would have loved to trade original sentences with her. He paid three times as much in fines and court costs, is paying an arm and a leg for the alcohol program, has community service, has to take time off work for probation appointments, sold his truck because the storage fees when it was impounded are more than he can manage with everything else.

She had a good deal and she blew it.