The system is inefficient, unpredictable, and occasionally senselessly punitive, and it saps the effort to secure the border against serious crimes (crossing illegally is only a misdemeanor, and being in the United States without papers is a civil violation).
During the electoral campaign, Labour nodded imperceptibly towards a Keynesian take on the euro-zone crisis, protesting the EU-mandated deficit limit of 3% of GDP as a senselessly rigid measure that would "cut the economy to pieces".
In what looks like the theatre of the absurd, prosecutors have for weeks been senselessly reading out pages from their multi-volume case, often confusing pages and repeating passages twice.
The Pope said it was his duty to honour the memory of the innocent men, women, children, priests and bishops who were "senselessly slaughtered" by Ottoman Turks in 1915.
It was a senselessly violent end to a career spent exposing the senseless violence that has for years plagued El Salvador for years.
America and the world yesterday remembered John F Kennedy, and the terrible 22 November of exactly 50 years ago – still etched in the mind of anyone old enough to remember – when the life of a young and handsome president was stunningly and senselessly cut short by an assassin's bullets.
Pietersen senselessly clipped Peter Siddle to midwicket after Joe Root had struck the first ball he faced from Nathan Lyon to deep square-leg to expose the lower middle-order to Johnson.
England and France supporters will unite in defiance against those who so senselessly attacked the French capital last week, including a football match at the Stade de France where France were playing Germany.
"The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers," said Mr Obama, branding the suspects "terrorists".
And now another nine, senselessly dead in a normally tranquil corner of the Pacific north-west.
They don't know why they are in Iraq; they "do their job" as narrowly defined, which often means doing it blindly, senselessly — shooting at a frightened driver who runs through a checkpoint, for instance.
