Nose-thumbing not allowed

You know what really pisses off people in government? No, it's not when you break their laws. And it's not even when you don't take them seriously.

It's when you set a "bad example" for the rest of the hive.

Case in point:

On Friday, Lee "Crazy Cabbie" Mroszak, disc jockey for New York's WXRK-FM and a "Howard Stern Show" regular, was sentenced to serve a year in prison for tax evasion.

But at the sentencing in Brooklyn, U.S. District Judge Gleeson said Mroszak's crime was made more serious by gloating about it on Stern's nationally syndicated show.

Said the judge: "Those folks are out there watching you, listening to you thumb your nose at the government."

Silly me. I thought thumbing our noses at government -- publicly or privately -- was an American tradition dating back to 1776.