Anyone who’s skeptical about the existence of the so-called “wall” between the news and opinion sections of this newspaper should check out today’s news story about the police involved in the in-custody death of Kenny Lazo and the editorial on the same subject.

The news story included the names of the police, identified publicly for the first time in a letter from Chief Trial Prosecutor John Collins to Frederick Brewington, the attorney representing Lazo’s family. The editorial said the officers had not been publicly identified, citing the Suffolk County executive, police commissioner and other county officials who said late yesterday that they could not release the names because it would be a violation of state civil rights law.

Oops.

We, the editorial board, knew Brewington had some names, but we didn’t have them in hand. And after talking with county officials who said those names couldn’t be officially released, it appeared that Brewington might have gotten them from an unofficial source. Since we couldn’t reach him after that conversation and before our deadline, prudence dictated an editorial based on the information we had in hand.

Unfortunately for us — but fortunately for Newsday readers — reporter Zachary Dowdy did manage to get the names in time to make today’s paper. Our bad.

A jeer to Suffolk Legis. Brian Beedenbender, a rookie Democratic legislator from Centereach, whose bogus immigration bill passed the county legislature on Tuesday. Another jeer to County Executive Steve Levy, who seems certain to sign the bill, even though (as we predicted) he has zero intention of hiring extra employees to enforce it. The law purportedly cracks down on undocumented workers by requiring all 17,000 county licensees to verify the immigration status of their workers and pay all the applicable taxes. But existing law covers these requirements already, and without additional enforcement, the new law will accomplish nothing.

A cheer to Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor), who tried a little bit of everything to derail the Beedenbender bill. He knew that, once it got to the floor of the legislature, there was little doubt that most legislators would not have the stomach to vote against it. That's exactly what happened. Now he's fielding nasty calls and other harassment from the anti-immigration extremist crowd. And a cheer to Legis. Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), who brought a court action to try to stop the vote, and to the two legislators who joined Cooper in voting no: Thomas Barraga (R-West Islip) and Vivian Viloria-Fisher (D-Setauket).

People do so many dumb things while driving that it's hard to rank them in order of dangerousness. But text-messaging seems worthy of inclusion on anybody's list of the top-five dumbest things to do while steering a potentially lethal vehicle.

Now, the Suffolk County Legislature is considering a ban on this practice. You'll recall that this is the legislature that prohibited drivers from using cell phones while they drive, unless they use hands-free devices. That legislation later went statewide, and police have issued well north of a million tickets statewide for violations of the ban.

The champion of that original county cell phone ban, Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) has agreed to co-sponsor a text-messaging ban sponsored by Legis. Jay Schneiderman (R-Montauk). It's scheduled to come before the legislature's public safety committee this Thursday morning. The key question about the bill is enforcement. People using their cell phones in the car are pretty visible to any police cruiser passing by, but people text-messaging are usually doing it below the line of sight of passing cars. Even so, some sort of statewide ban seems likely in the not-too-distant future. So why shouldn't Suffolk lead the pack again?