‘Back the blue’ cannot mean blind obedience

They can give you a gun and a badge. They cannot give you good judgment.

The Fort Worth Police Department gave Sarah Stogner both a gun and a badge. What it apparently failed to determine was whether she possessed the judgment — or the constitutional literacy — required to exercise the state’s coercive power over free citizens.

Sarah Stogner did not shoot anybody, thank God. But that’s an extraordinarily low bar for fitness to exercise state power.

The controversy arose during Fort Worth’s Trinity Pride celebration on June 27, where Christian street preachers were evangelizing outside the event.

Video shows Stogner telling one preacher he could be cited if he said something “offensive.” City officials later emphasized that the citation itself was based on a noise ordinance governing amplified