On the northbound Golden State Freeway north of Dodger Stadium, I was at a dead stop in the fast lane when, in the next lane over, I saw the driver of a black truck roll down his window and flick out his burning cigarette butt. That, in turn, had me burning -- we'd gone through red-alert fire days here recently -- and I rolled down my window and called out across the few feet between us that it's a crime to throw a lighted cigarette onto the road, and that the CHP would cite him if they saw him.

The driver, a 30-something fellow with sleek dark hair, driving an equally sleek dark Ford F-150 truck, smiled cockily and informed me that they'd never ticket him -- he's a sheriff's deputy.

Swell -- an idiot with powers of arrest. Had he never seen a Southern California fire eat up houses and acreage, all started from some roadside embers? I have -- I've covered them. And he's a lawman, and he didn't know the damn law, or care? It's a misdemeanor to throw a lighted cigarette or cigar or a burning match from a vehicle -- even from a sleek, dark Ford truck, even by a sheriff's deputy. The fine can be a thousand dollars. If I'd had powers of arrest, I'd have used them right then and there.

He pulled slightly ahead in the traffic scrum. I wrote down the numbers on his license plate, which, sure enough, was framed by one of those KMA metal frames, code for ''I've got a law enforcement connection and you don't, nyah nyah.'' When I got back to the office, I called the press office of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department, the department whose motto is "A Tradition of Service.''

Look, I said, here's one of your guys -- or at least he says he's one of your guys -- breaking the law, and bragging about it.

Well, the fellow said, with a shrug in his voice, when you have 9,000 deputies, you're bound to have some jerks. I agreed, using a stronger word. Don't you want his license plate? I asked. Check on the guy, at least rap his knuckles for not only ignoring the law and boasting about getting away with it? Not allowed to, the LASO fellow told me. You could call the CHP but they didn't see it, so they probably couldn't do anything.

So he was going to get away with it, I thought.

Let me say one thing, the voice on the phone told me. I perked up. Maybe Deputy F-150 could get what was coming to him after all?

You shouldn't take chances like that, he advised me -- talking to strange drivers like that. Could be dangerous. Around here, you never know who it might be -- maybe some gangbanger, somebody with a gun.

Yeah, I thought. Or some jerk of a sheriff's deputy with an attitude and a Zippo.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America announced this morning the latest wrinkle in its anti-piracy litigation campaign: it's going to target slightly older young people. OK, OK, that's a cheap shot. The major labels' trade group said its new emphasis would be file-sharing on college and university computer networks. Read more about the pros and cons of the labels' strategy at the Bit Player blog.

One of the many tragedies of Darfur is that some of the international community's best-intentioned efforts to stop the slaughter of innocents end up doing more harm than good. A case in point was Tuesday's move by the International Criminal Court to target two suspected ringleaders in Sudan's campaign of ethnic cleansing for prosecution.

The ICC is simply doing its job, and it's an important one. But in the end, its attempts to bring interior minister Ahmed Haroun and militia leader Ali Kushayb to justice might just strengthen the resolve of Sudan's ruling regime to dig in and reject all attempts to resolve the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

The genocidal campaign that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions won't end until United Nations peacekeepers enter the country and start protecting innocent civilians from the soldiers and government-backed militias who are destroying their villages. But the U.N. can't move without permission from the Sudanese government, which isn't forthcoming. This isn't all that surprising: If you were a mass murderer, would you invite the police into your house? There isn't much doubt that many of Sudan's leaders, from President Omar al-Bashir down, should at least be investigated for their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bashir and his fellow goons have reason to fear that if they open the door to international troops, they're opening the door to international lawyers, too. The ICC has just stoked those fears.

Though the U.N. is wrangling over the appropriate sanctions against the Sudanese government, it's hard to imagine it could come up with a stick big enough to prompt Bashir to risk sharing the fate of Saddam Hussein. Which means unless we want to consider some kind of immunity deal for Sudan's leaders -- which would set a horrible precedent -- the diplomatic options for solving this crisis are fast shrinking to the vanishing point.

The folks that run L.A.'s humble international airport finally have something to smile about. Turns out that Airbus will land its A380 on March 19, the day when the mega-jumbo will make its first stops in the United States. Of course, the only reason LAX officials have to soak up the moment is that Airbus  gave them the finger just two weeks ago by reneging on a promise to make the airport its first U.S. stop if LAX accelerates building larger gates to accommodate the plane.

Of course, the landing is merely a publicity event, and LAX can use all the positive PR it can get. But it's hard to imagine that any widespread media exposure would boost the public's (or airlines')  confidence in the airport. Just think: After the A380 touches down smoothly, it taxis past at least three drab terminals -- all congested -- that can barely accommodate today's largest planes. The mega-jumbo then pulls up to a gate built specifically for the A380 at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, which many say represents the cutting edge of bus terminal design. Not exactly the most camera-friendly airport.

After all the hype dies down, LAX officials still have plenty of work to do. (For the record, I plan on stopping by for the WhaleJet's first LAX visit, which I'm sure hoards of airplane spotters are as well.)

Jon Healey will be chatting live today, at 1 p.m. Healey is a member of the Times editorial board and author of the Bit Player blog, which tracks the shifting border between entertainment and technology. In recent weeks, Healey has:

• criticized the FCC for obstructing the XM/Sirius merger;
• mused over the growing DRM battle;
• moderated a Zócalo event on broadband TV; and
• condemned efforts to turn MySpace into another arm of the nanny state.

Now's your chance to give Healey a piece of your mind. Go to chat.latimes.com for free registration, then follow the link to "Opinion Chat." If you can't make it to the chat, email us at chat@latimes.com and we'll pass your question along to Healey.

(If you have any problems with login or chat, please let us know at chat@latimes.com.)

The suicide bombing that killed more than 20 at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan while Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting ... it had to make you wonder:

What would happen if anything happened to Dick Cheney? It's not an unreasonable question, or a cruel one. The man has a famously bad ticker, and now this.

Who might George W. Bush select as a successor to Cheney as vice president? Now ordinarily this could be a hot-ticket job, what with a presidential election coming up in less than two years. It might be considered an anointing of a Bush successor in the GOP ranks, a singling out of somebody to take the Republican reins and ride that horse to victory.

But with the Iraq war going on, and on, and on, the potential vice presidents might be inclined to run -- the other way. Consider Hubert H. Humphrey, who was already Lyndon Johnson's vice president when Johnson chose not to run for another term, leaving it to Humphrey to slog through the 1968 election with his boss' war slung around his neck like a particularly stinky albatross. The Democratic peace-party candidates lacerated him as a war surrogate. Even the perennial politician Richard Nixon was much more his own man, with a ``secret plan`` to end the war, than was Humphrey.

So who might Bush turn to in the event of such a loss? McCain? Giuliani? Maybe bring Bill Frist back into the lists? Bob Dole, again? Mitt ''at large'' Romney?

Or Jeb? Come to think of it, the job is so unappealing at present and so unpromising for the future that it might only be blood ties, not political ones, that could persuade anyone to take the job. Right, bro?

The Wall Street Journal Online reports that the U.S. Supreme Court’s charm offensive will continue with an appearance by Justice Stephen Breyer March 17 on “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me,” an NPR quiz show. Breyer, who is known for lengthy disquisitions from the bench during oral arguments, may be too much of a good thing for the show. On the other hand, he in indisputably brainy and well-read. Next stop: Celebrity Jeopardy!?

When I first heard (out of one ear cocked to the TV news) that “Titanic” director James Cameron had had produced a documentary about a purported “lost tomb of Jesus,” I visualized Leo DiCaprio standing on a mausoleum shouting, “I am the king of the Jews.” An Associated Press story about the documentary doesn’t incline me to take this ”bombshell” any more seriously, though I suppose I’ll watch the program.

    I gather that Winston Smith has joined the White House staff.

    Mr. Smith -- the protagonist of ``Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' a man we meet as the clocks are striking 13 -- works in Oceania for the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents. In fact, he's a guy applying Wite-Out to history, obliterating the unpleasant, the unseemly, the inappropriate. So of course he's welcome in the Bush White House.

    I know he's working there because of what I read on the dailykos website: that the White House websites have been ''Wited out,'' scrubbed clean of some of Dick Cheney's more awkward remarks, like the one in March 2003, when he told ``Meet the Press'' that he believed that American troops in Iraq will be ``greeted as liberators.'' Ditto his May 2005 remarks to Larry King about those ''last throes ... of the insurgency.''

    I know this is upsetting, this blandly malevolent -- well, it can't be called rewriting history, can it? More like un-writing history. But I've given it some thought, and here's the bright side: if the vice president keeps on talking like a Lewis Carroll character, it's very possible that Winston Smith will one day be ordered just to obliterate Cheney altogether.

Public radio broadcaster KCRW in Santa Monica recently touted a $600,000 grant from the Annenberg Foundation to support the station's efforts online. This was the silver lining of a cloud, however. In the view of KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour, the more a public station succeeds online, the more it undermines its survival. Get her perspective at the Bit Player blog.