A couple of weeks ago when I wrote about the lack of common sense that some people obviously have, I never thought I’d be writing on that topic again so soon. Then again, I didn’t stop to think about some of the laws that we have.

Laws, of course, are written to protect people and when someone breaks one, the general consensus is that that particular person should be punished.

But there are sometimes special circumstances that should be taken into consideration. Sometimes it might just be wrong to enforce a law or prosecute someone for breaking that law.

This all goes back to Hurricane Katrina and the various effects after such a storm. We all remember seeing looters on television taking anything that they could carry. I know that stealing is wrong, but when faced with what those people went through I can’t blame anyone from taking food, diapers, or clothing to keep warm.

I don’t think that anyone can say for certainty what they’d do in the same situation. We don’t know until we have to go through it and hopefully that will never happen.

Another incident that took place happened in Forrest County, Miss. Five days had passed with the residents getting no relief from the federal government. The sheriff of the town knew there were trucks of ice sitting idle at Camp Shelby, a FEMA staging area, and he also knew that he had residents suffering, many of them diabetics who needed to keep their insulin cold.

So he did when he felt was the right and human thing to do. He seized two of those trucks and ordered them to the towns of Petal and Brooklyn to distribute the ice. His deputies detained a National Guard soldier who tried to interfere.

Dozens of those residents say that they would have died without that ice, and that the sheriff saved their lives by having it sent there.

For his heroic behavior, the federal government is considering prosecuting the sheriff on charges of interfering with a federal operation.

Residents of Forrest County are circulating a petition in support of the sheriff, who has been in office since 1991, and are raising funds to pay for his defense should he need one.

To me, the only defense he needs is that he did the humane thing and helped people in need, and no one should fault him for that.