Sheriff Dart defies the banks

Sheriff Tom Dart has the makings of a folk hero for our times: he is refusing to carry out evictions resulting from the mortgage foreclosures which have plunged America into crisis.

He might be on the opposite side of the law, but his stand is making him into a 21st Century version of Bonnie and Clyde, the Depression-era bank robbers who were cheered on by the unemployed and the newly-impoverished middle class because they offered a vicarious revenge. Now, as in the 1930s, the bankers are held to blame for hard times.

So the cheers were heard around the nation when Sheriff Dart stood before a microphone and declared: "We won't do the banks' work for them anymore." He also said: "We'll no longer be party to something that is so