The fellow who was "traveling, not driving" without a license sounds like your typical right-wing nut. The laws of nature don't apply to them, because they're "creating jobs", not polluting the air, water and soil. Call it something different, and the problem evaporates. Good thing the S.M. County Sheriff's Dept. doesn't buy that hooey.

The driver could have been someone with limited intellectual skills.

Just a thought.

What's gonna happen when you are sitting behind the wheel of a "car that drives itself"?

Self-driving cars. Will we even need licenses? And if we do, what will they imply in terms of driving skills?

What will happen to driving skills? They'll go the way of the skills of crews who used to climb the rigging of sailing ships and break out the sails so as to get underway from a anchorage.

Joe - If he had limited intellectual skills that would identify him as a fuzzy-headed liberal---would it not?

No, it would not identify him as a liberal, fuzzy headed or otherwise.

There are plenty of confused people around without political leanings, though maybe not in Silicon Valley, given the high cost of living and the lack of employment and housing opportunities for non-technical people. As I've said before on this forum, we're living in a monoculture.

This guy had real problems, obviously, with his record, but I feel for anyone with an unusual perspective who gets caught in the net of what passes for normalcy and has to pay some kind of price.

There must be some equivalent to Godwin's law that people will turn the most innocuous story into a political issue.

There are plenty of nuts on both sides to choose from. You don't have to resort to dragging an unlicensed driver into your circus.

pogo:

you read my mind. I think we should call it "pogo's law" when someone drags politics into a totally non-political unrelated conversation or topic.

I think Steve Martin wouldn't mind if I respond thusly: Excuuuuuuse me!

This guy brings back memories of when I worked for Internal Revenue Service. There are people who claim that our laws do not apply to them, tax laws, vehicle laws, etc. I had a case on a guy who not only claimed that he did not have to pay Federal taxes, but that a driver license was a contract between him and the state, and that if there were no such contract, he did not have to obey California Vehicle Code provisions.

Yeah...

Politically, they tend to have a libertarian (lower case "l") bent, but I did have one such person who was active in the Libertarian Party. We seized and sold his pickup truck for his rather large tax liability that he claimed he did not have to pay.

Sometimes they get away with it, usually they don't and they tend to ruin their lives when they don't.