We Don’t Need No Stinking License
Kowtowing to the illegal alien lobby, and a looming showdown over the federal consent decree.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MT ... EzMzZkZDg=
By Jack Dunphy

In previous columns (here, here, here, and here) I have written on the absurd lengths the city government of Los Angeles has gone to in acquiescing to the demands of illegal aliens. The illegal-alien lobby would of course be powerless were it not for its many sympathizers at all levels of government, and now some in the management of the Los Angeles Police Department have again demonstrated they can be just as nakedly partisan as even the most shameless of politicians.

Over the past three weeks, a minor skirmish in the battle over illegal immigration has been raging here in Los Angeles. At issue is a provision in the California Vehicle Code that gives police officers the authority to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The Los Angeles Police Department impounds more than 40,000 such cars every year.

But on August 21, under the dubious premise of following the mandates of a two-year-old court case, LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger issued a memo throughout the department instructing officers to cease making these impounds in most circumstances. In Miranda v. City of Cornelius, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a particular seizure of a car in Cornelius, Oregon, was unwarranted. Jorge Miranda, a licensed driver, had been teaching his wife Irene to drive when they were stopped by an officer from the Cornelius Police Department. After discovering that Irene Miranda had no driver’s license, the officer ordered the car to be impounded pursuant to a city ordinance. The case made its way through the courts before coming before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, which ruled unanimously that because Irene Miranda had already parked the car in the driveway of their home, and because her husband had a valid license, the seizure of the car could not be justified.

There is scant foundation for the LAPD’s impound moratorium to be found in the Miranda decision. In fact, the decision clearly states that impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers is justified in most circumstances. “The violation of a traffic regulation,â€