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Here in Massachusetts, as in the neighboring land known as "America," the criminal justice system exists to protect, to punish and to rehabilitate. In alphabetical order, that is. As the concept of "criminal rights" has grown more popular, the rehabilitation angle has become more important -- often rightly so. Now, however, the emphasis on letting convicted felons live normal lives, après-prison, stands in opposition to the goal of protecting the citizenry.

Per Brockton Mayor John Yunits on WBZ-AM Wednesday, Middlesex Superior Court ordered last month that online sex offender registries shall be banned. Evening radio host David Brudnoy, concurring with judge Christopher Muse, battered Yunits for suggesting that perhaps moms and dads should know about the sex felon around the corner.

In the Brudnoy tradition of keeping things vehemently on-topic, let me point out that we're talking about sex offenders adjudged to be "level 3" -- likely to re-offend. We're not talking about statutory rape or indecent exposure by kids who have learned better. These are the real monsters: violent assaults, young children and minds that are likely recidivists, according to a seven-member board of professional psychiatrists, psychologists and expert analysts in the field of sexual crime.

Brudnoy's argument Wednesday night (I tuned in on my drive home, roughly from 7:20 to 7:45) was that posting these people's faces (or, as the Herald would have it, "mugs") violates their sacred constitutional right to privacy (which right, he did not continue, has existed only since Griswold v. Connecticut, but we'll let that slide).

Quite frankly, the level-3 molester gave up his right to privacy when he decided to violate little Mollie. That's incontrovertible; our entire criminal justice system is based on the principle that when one commits a crime against society, one gives up a whole slew of rights: freedom of movement (incarceration), freedom of assembly (visiting hours) and right to vote (many states prohibit this to inmates), among others.

The question here is not whether criminals have privacy rights; certainly if their voting rights can be taken away, so can privacy. The question is whether the state should be taking away those rights after the incarceration term is completed.

There is precedent for state trampling on released felons' rights: being convicted of a violent crime already compromises the right to bear arms (background checks for weapons) and the "right to work" -- for many government employees, at any rate. You're not going to find any convicted sex offenders teaching second grade. At least, you shouldn't.

Brudnoy is wrong to suggest that a constitutional issue is involved here. Having been adjudged to have committed a violent crime, felons have given up their rights.

The real issue is a public-policy question: is it better to publicize this information widely; to publicize it narrowly (i.e. only in the offender's hometown/workplace town); or not to publicize it at all?

According to the Globe, the court ruling simply states that the sex-offender registry legislation only provides for narrow publication, not worldwide (e.g., Internet) publication. Judge Muse suggested that if towns want to put this information online, they should seek a new law from the Legislature.

In my opinion, then, there should be a new law.

The only fly in the ointment is this, from Massachusetts public defender Carol Donovan, quoted in another recent Globe story:

What we've observed is, once the information is out there, these offenders lose their jobs just about invariably.... If they're renters, they suddenly find their rent contract is up. They end up essentially homeless and without jobs, and in many cases, there has been harassment against offenders.

Remember, the purpose of the sex-offender registry is to protect people. If it turns out that the registry is making it more likely to re-offend -- as Donavan suggests later in the story -- the measure is self-defeating.

Forgive me for asking, but what exactly is wrong with tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike?

From where I live, a trip into Boston weighs in at $3.20, which does tend to add up (especially when you throw in the return trip and the $3 tolls for airport tunnels). Certainly, from a standpoint of economic self-interest, I should want to see the tolls eliminated, as is proposed in a current state senate bill.

Just as certainly, the tolls are unfair to certain parts of the state and have outlived their mandate. They were instituted in 1957 to recoup the construction costs; while the Turnpike Authority has apparently found a way to keep those bonds outstanding, there aren't too many other roads projects that take 57 years to pay off. Nowadays, tolls on the Boston Extension of the Pike (east of Route 128/I-95), which are not affected by the proposed repeal, are used to finance the Big Dig, which benefits equally travelers on I-93/Route 3/Route 1 (i.e., North Shore, South Shore), who don't pay a cent in tolls, with the exception of the Tobin Bridge.

However, the institution of tolls on the Pike is still the fairest -- and, dare I say, both the conservative and the conservationist -- way to go. It's a shame that the defenders of the Pike tolls have pinned their arguments on (true) claims that the state can't afford to lose the revenue. There are other reasons why toll roads are a good idea.

First, let me justify calling tolls "conservative." Most conservatives hate a tax -- which tolls are. But they (we) hate even more a tax that forces us to pay for a service we don't use. "Tax me for the national defense; I understand that I benefit from that," says the conservative. "Just don't tax me for NPR, which only serves to raise my blood pressure." Turnpike tolls are a user tax, not a general tax. People who choose to live 50 miles away from their workplace can go ahead and throw their money into the basket; those of us who live 20 minutes away are not forced to subsidize suburbanites' lifestyle.

Ever since Gov. Mitt Romney came into office, Massachusetts conservatives have also been singing the sweet song of "smart growth" -- redevelopment of existing land, as opposed to "suburban sprawl." Inasmuch as turnpike tolls encourage less daily use of the turnpike, and thus make long-distance commuting less attractive, tolls serve to encourage redevelopment in city centers or, at any rate, closer to employment centers.

The curbing of suburban sprawl is just one of the reasons why conservationists should champion the tolls. If tolls serve to discourage long trips at highway speeds, they achieve an environmetental goal of reducing car emissions and gasoline consumption (we all know that your car is less efficient at 75 m.p.h. than it is at 40, unless you have seven forward gears or your name is Mario Andretti). Even if they don't discourage long trips, then at least they make money that can be put toward environmental causes.

The Pike was never meant to be used as a daily commuter route for Westborough yuppies with Boston offices. If you're paying a $6-per-day fee to use one of the most important of the National Defense and Interstate Highways, I would submit to you that that's the price you pay for living in one area code and working in another.

The only thing that really bothers me about the turnpike tolls is that they truly are unfair to Central and Western Massachusetts (and Boston's MetroWest too, I suppose). To the end of correcting this injustice, I would suggest placing tollbooths in Somerville and Quincy.

Let's let North Shore and South Shore commuters, too, pay their fair share for the use of our expensive expressway system and the pollution and suburban sprawl it encourages.

Like many conservatives in Massachusetts, I've spent a long time trying to figure out just what it is that bothers me about John Kerry.

Of course he's a leftist. But so are many of my friends, and for that matter so are a lot of local politicians that I admire. There's something else to him, especially since he became "the Comeback Kerry," that produces a backlash in my gut the same way Al Gore used to.

Now comes Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe columnist, who also tends to tickle my gag reflex, with a surprisingly calm and on-target analysis of the "anybody-but-Bush" (ABB) mindset that will, if anything does, prove the Democrats' downfall in November.

Jackson argues that the Kerry camp is spending too much time whipping up anti-Bush fervor ("bring it on," "middle-class misery index") and not enough time talking about his vision for the future. Boiled down, it means that despite the fact that Bush is also airing attack ads, it's Kerry who has gone too negative. He writes:

... As someone who thinks Bush has indeed been a pretty bad president, but who also travels a lot around the country and encounters many soccer moms and NASCAR dads who remain far more charitable to Bush than the Democrats care to admit, I think Kerry has to do a lot more to make voters understand how he will turn misery into miracles of jobs, education, and world peace.

And somewhere in that statement, I think, is the reason why John Kerry reminds me so much of Al Gore, the man who lost an election that had been gift-wrapped and hand-delivered by eight years of Clinton prosperity.

Gore had a university professor bearing about him, the sort of smart-aleck air that is instantly dislikeable to a large number of people. Kerry can seem the same way, and for all the carping (around here, at least) that there's no such thing as a "Massachusetts Liberal," Kerry fits the bill. Sure, he represents the common man ... the common man who went to prep school and Yale, married an heiress and lives in some of the nation's priciest real estate, on Boston's Beacon Hill.

Gore beat the drum, and beat the drum often, that the Republicans were simply lower than slime. I, personally, hate people with that sort of message. I think the vast "unenrolled" or "independent" voter bloc out there, which will provide the critical swing votes, is inherently mistrustful of the party regulars who denigrate their opponents. It's one thing to disagree and to say that your opponent's ideas would be ill-advised; it's another to say that electing your opponent would be a calamity.

Depending on how far Kerry embraces the ABB rhetoric, he could scream himself right out of an election -- the same way, incidentally, as former ABB poster child Howard Dean.

Front-page, above-the-fold, today's Sunday Telegram illustrates one of the reasons why it's so difficult to get around New England. Or, if you prefer, one of those Yankee quirks.

In a news graphic about unsolved murders, they manage to mislabel six separate state routes in Central and Eastern Massachusetts as U.S. routes. For the record, Telegram, Rtes. 140, 128, 28, 25, 24, 3 (south of Boston) and 2 are not federal highways (actually, there are no federal highways; all highways are maintained either by state or local governments. What I mean, of course, is that these are not federal routes).

This stands in contrast to the practice at Mass. Highway, where they do the exact opposite. More often than can be explained by simple human error, green destination signs show the numerals for U.S. routes in the bland state route box -- not the federal shield.

If you know a thing or two about Massachusetts' road system, you'd know that route numbers are never repeated here. Thus you can call the Worcester Expressway "Rte. 290" without fearing that there is a Mass. 290 or U.S. 290 somewhere else in the state. But a visitor from New York, where S.R. 90 is not the same thing as I-90, might pause for a moment upon encountering "Mass. 20" instead of the expected "U.S. 20."

I know it doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed-up world, but the it's good to get that rant out.