In Dallas? Wear your seat belt!

Being hauled out of school in hand­cuffs because of a $50 seat-belt tick­et was bad enough for Lan­cast­er High School music teacher There­sa Dobbs.

She had no idea what was yet to come.

That seat belt tick­et — the only blem­ish on her dri­ving record — would result in a har­row­ing three-day stay in a crowd­ed hold­ing tank at the Dal­las Coun­ty Jail last week with­out a chance to see a lawyer, bail bonds­man, or judge.

This comes a year after Dal­las Coun­ty insist­ed that they’d fixed the prob­lems that led them to lose one man for 15 months due to sim­i­lar paper­work prob­lems. Yes, 15 months.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think Ms. Dobbs will get a lot of sup­port from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in any case against the coun­ty in Bush’s Amer­i­ca. After all, she lives in what was recent­ly Bush’s Texas, and it has­n’t changed much since he was in charge there, has it?