The new traffic law is in part illogical and in part too strict.

It is essentially good in the fundamental objective to decrease the amount of unnecessary traffic accidents that end with death. But it would also help if someone were monitoring whether the law is being obeyed.

Standing at a stretch of road with a radar and collecting fines from those who break the speed limit is not a bad job.

But do they really consider the purpose of the law? Policemen should monitor the most dangerous roads and focus on drivers who endanger not only their own lives but also the lives of the others.

Instead of constantly pressuring "the road pirates," the police leave the "cursed" stretches of some roads without surveillance.

Constant complaints that the traffic police are understaffed are not an excuse. Monitoring roads is the most important task of the traffic police. If they have no people to do this work, it's as if traffic police do not exist, Komárek writes.

I apologize for my initial thoughts about Mirek Topolánek, whom I suspected recently of big talk when he mentioned a deputy of his being threatened at gunpoint, Pavel Verner writes in Právo Oct. 26.

I also apologize to the president's secretary, Ladislav Jakl, for taking him to task that he cannot produce evidence for such an allegation. Anyone who took Toploánek's words as an accusation of the Social Democrats' (ČSSD's) use of gangster methods should be ashamed.

It's as though the ČSSD deputies' club was struck by lighting when an e-mail came from Deputy Michal Pohanka saying he's leaving the club without prior warning. Under the current circumstances, when the Chamber of Deputies is divided evenly, with both sides having 100 votes, Pohanka's action is troubling.

Leaving a party, if you are a deputy, is usually not done this slyly. Unless Pohanka is scared of something. Maybe he has a gun pointed at his head, or maybe he is being threatened and blackmailed. Whom to ask?

Mirek Topolánek says he knows, but he's not telling. The political culture here is is pretty blue. Is Pohanka going to be the "realistic" Social Democrat voting for the ODS? The trouble is that President Václav Klaus says he will not tolerate any defectors. And Mr. President can be trusted; he has his principles and that's why everybody likes him.

The horror taking place here since June has a fixed script.

On Sunday, for example, we were guessing at home what kind of pre-election scandal would be born in the police's Organized Crime Division this time. Will somebody find out that a ČSSD Senate candidate has three children with the villain Doležel? Not at all, but the tradition is kept. This time it is a planned attack on Interior Minister Ivan Langer's family, who had to be taken abroad and now has extraordinary protection. It is supposedly related to Langer's role in the leak of the Kubice report, which, translated into rumor talk, means that Paroubek has a hand in it. I firmly believe we need not worry about Langer's family, in the same way we are not worried about Kubice's life.

However, the story of deputy Pohanka and "the gun pointed at his head" will leave a bitter aftertaste, Verner writes.