Below the Fold for June 8

Let's check out some political stories we found Below the Fold:

Playing the Race Card

New York State Supreme Court Judge Donna Mills (search) has offered a novel defense for charges that she got hammered one night last fall and drove her father's Rolls Royce into a couple of cars parked outside a Bronx store.

Judge Mills says she was targeted for prosecution not because she had turned a 5,000-pound car into a potential weapon of mass destruction, but because she is black.

Taxing Times

Cumberland County Pennsylvania District Justice Susan Day has made headlines by handing out stiff fines to tax cheats.

Among the scofflaws is 17-year old Laurie Hanniford, who got hit with a $352 fine for failing to report $316 in earnings.

Says the judge, "We used to let people plead guilty and we would direct them to their tax collector to file the return, but they wouldn't do it."

Speed Trap

New Rome, Ohio is a village grimly familiar to many residents of the Buckeye State, has been told to shut down the institution that provides two-thirds of its municipal revenue.

The town, which boasts 60 residents and stretches for all of 1,000 feet along U-S 40, last year took in several hundred thousand dollars in speeding tickets. Said one former administrator of the speed trap's traffic court: "I don't know anyone that will be sorry if New Rome folds its tent and steals away into the night."