The light changed. Red for cross traffic. Green for me. A clever ruse, designed to lure me into the path of four speeding cars and a runaway chrome-laden Escalade with ghetto chic hubcaps.

It was the kind of hot, disagreeable August afternoon when frustrations with South Florida traffic roil into an all-encompassing metaphor for carping bosses, careening finances, too tight underwear and the Dolphins' tepid offense.

I honked. Muttered obscenities. Lifted my fist and extended a digit. But, in my redneck fury, I failed to grasp that this speeding gaggle of red-light runners were U.S. patriots, flaunting their constitutional rights before God, country and terrified pedestrians.

TAX ON IDIOCY

The driver of the Escalade might as well have been Thomas Jefferson himself, who during the constitutional convention of 1787 apparently anticipated that oppressive municipal governments in places like Fort Lauderdale and Aventura and Pembroke Pines would go King George on American motorists.

Misguided commie dupes like the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety regard traffic-light running as dangerous (killing 800 Americans a year) and worthy of Big Brother intervention.

Several South Florida cities, relying on the studies indicating serious T-bone accidents would fall by 30 percent, have installed red-light cameras, officially, to save lives.

But maybe for the revenue. Aventura's five cameras have pulled in more than a million bucks since October. Most of us shrug that off as a tax on idiocy.

LEGAL THEORY

But West Palm Beach lawyer Jason Weisser, who's busy collecting plaintiffs for class action lawsuits against Florida's red-light camera towns, claim they undermine basic rights. His website declares: ``We feel strongly that this course of conduct is in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution'' along with the state constitution. He promises ``to do what it takes to assure that each and every individual's rights are protected.''

Weisser, with some 250 plaintiffs and counting, has filed suit, so far, against Aventura, Miami Gardens, Orlando and Juno Beach. Pembroke Pines, Homestead and North Miami are next on his hit list.

His legal theory challenges whether cities can install traffic cameras and issue civil fines in a state that neither permits nor prohibits the devices.

BIG BROTHER

But the issue that has crazies riled up revolves around this peculiar expectation of privacy, that they ought to be protected from the electronic eye of government as they barrel through red lights. (Big Brother has been snapping pics of toll-booth runners on the Florida Turnpike since 1999 without much fuss from constitutional scholars.)

Weisser claims that automatic fines mock a car owner's right to a presumption of innocence. But so do parking meters. Where were those Jeffersonian principles when my car was racking up $18 parking fines?

In May, a national poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies found 69 percent of Americans favor the notion of robotic cameras snapping pics of lunatic red-light runners.

But like so much else in our national conversation, whether we're talking about guns or healthcare or President Barack Obama's birth certificate, a vociferous wild-eyed minority yells down the opposition.

Or they'll run you down. Red light or not.

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