Good to see common sense is alive and well in this country.

Seriously?

Read more: Florida man jailed over drinking soda without paying | Fox News

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I feel safer already.

I'll give good odds, that this is someone well known to the Police, and a constant headache. Methinks there is a little more a work here that the reporter or their editor thought would be to burdensome for us to consider.

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“Quod scripsi, scripsi"

"Sometimes, the source of the beautiful dawning light that drives back the darkness, is your house burning"

A felony......???




That's just insane.....

It's felony because the guy's a repeat offender, but make sure to ignore that small detail of the law that the people of Florida determined was part of the social contract you enter into when enjoying the often dubious pleasrue of living in Florida.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

And this will cost the taxpayers how much in costs???

It's ok, no need to answer that question.

Indeed. This is why situations need to be looked at individually and not with a blanket law. Laws should never be void of basic common sense and logic.

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The law isn't a cost$/benefit$ equation. It's a social contract and often the enforcement of that contract means that more money will be spent to enforce a law than the breaking of that law cost. But that's part of the reason for that social contract. If we allow minor crimes like this to go unpunished, then the people who are being robbed from will no longer be able to contribute to the society with the jobs/services/products they provide. These small crimes add up and if you allow them to go unpuinished, then the law has no meaning. If everyone could simply walk into a McDonalds and help themself to a pop without paying, McDonalds would quickly realize that the cost of doing business in a community that allows that isn't worth it. The social contract that McDonalds was a party to was not upheld by Law Enforcement and thus there's no longer the trust in the social contract.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

If you apply laws too situationally, then the laws become meaningless. In this case, it's not just a single crime, but a string of them. The guy is a repeat offender and thus has no respect for the social contract that being a member of a society implies. He's not going to get sentenced to 5 years or a $5000 fine. Most likely, he'll get probation, community service and a smallish fine. The goal is to both break the pattern that he has of minor crimes and to make sure that the people the law is supposed to protect can trust that the law is applied equitably.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

Sorry, FS, you are not going to convince me charging this man for a felony and facing up to five years in jail is in any way logical or beneficial for taking a small cup of soda.

I have been around far too long to know better.

Sometimes you just have to use your head.

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