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There are a lot of dumb old laws in the United States. In North Carolina, for instance, it is illegal to plow a field with an elephant, a law that owes its existence to a P. T. Barnum publicity stunt. Often, these laws don't get repealed, because it would take up a lot of time, and our legislators are very busy trying to get re-elected. And plus, it's not like anyone is going to arrest you if you find yourself in North Carolina with an unplowed field and only an elephant to assist you.

It turns out that this willingness not to enforce absurd laws is one of the primary differences between North Carolina and Chicago.

If you don't believe me, just ask Salvador Garcia, a young Chicagoan who was arrested thanks to an antiquated obscenity law still on the books here. The law says that you can't "utter lewd or filthy words," and Garcia was allegedly standing on a street corner announcing that he was a "love king" and a "dragon killa" at passing cars. Apparently, these constitute lewd and/or filthy remarks.

Let's be perfectly clear about this. We live in a city where you cannot legally advertise your services as a slayer of dragons or brag that you're the monarch of amorous admiration. Now, that doesn't much bother me personally, on account of how I am by no stretch of the imagination the king of love - to be honest about it, I'm not even a minor baron. Nor am I a dragon killa - I'm barely even a house fly killa. What concerns me is that there's no list of objectionable words in the body of the law - if there were, I suppose we would have to arrest the law itself. This means the police can technically arrest us for saying, um, anything. I mean, if shouting "Love King" is lewd, then maybe screaming, "No Blood for Oil You Dirty Fucking Warmongers" is lewd, too. And that's just not right.

I wish we had left the obscenity law to rot away quietly with other unenforced laws in Chicago. But now Mr. Garcia has, understandably, filed a lawsuit arguing that this obscenity law is perhaps just a wee bit unconstitutional.

So maybe we should repeal the law, since it's idiotic and everything. But I'm sure the City has a response to that argument. You're living in the New America, they'll tell us, where the sacrifice of civil liberties is a patriotic rite of passage. And we can't have people walking the streets threatening to murder dragons. What if the dragons hear?! They'll sweep down on us with fiery rage and burn the city to the ground, and no single dragon killa will be able to stop them.

What good will your precious freedom of speech do ya then, they'll ask. The City and its police force must protect Chicagoans from the threat posed by dragons and those whose braggadocio might incite dragons to violence-even at the expense of our beloved civil liberties.