Florida state prosecutors don’t drop their case against Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) quietly. Instead, they excoriate him and the flimsiness of Florida’s campaign finance laws. Really worth a read.

That being said, I’m uneasy about prosecutors slagging their putative targets even as they decline to bring charges. The journalist in me is almost always happy to see dirty laundry aired. The lawyer in me tends to think that when prosecutors don’t have a case, they should close their briefcases and quietly shuffle off into the night. There are always more crimes than prosecutors can possibly prosecute so save the grandstanding, moralizing, and soapbox-climbing for the cases that actually make. Discretion is the better part of valor the rest of the time.

David Kurtz

David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.