Police Farce
Riddle me this: How can there be the Massachusetts State Police when there is no State of Massachusetts? There is no legal entity extant in the U.S. called the State of Massachusetts, what we call Massachusetts is formally the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. What is the legal distinction between a U.S. state that is "the State of X" or "the Commonwealth of X"? None at all. Massachusetts is a state the same as any other (well, worse than most, slightly better than a very few), but it isn't called a state; how then can those chowderheads possibly justify having the Mass. State Police? "It hardly matters," you scoff. But, imagine the reverse, imagine if the State of Michigan had not the Michigan State Police but the Michigan Commonwealth Police. The hoi polloi would howl with laughter, "There's no Commonwealth of Michigan, you dolts!" Yet all four of the U.S. states styled as commonwealths—the Commonwealths of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Virginia—have state police agencies officially named "the X State Police." This is no less ridiculous than the hypothetical Michigan Commonwealth Police. For shame, Mass., Pa., Ky., and Va., for shame!