The law and the jungle

USA Today and Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) square off over whether journalists should have privileges such as shield laws.

Further evidence that I am getting way too old or the world is moving way too fast, or both:

RICHMOND, Va. - State legislators passed a law Saturday that would require adults who French kiss a child younger than 13 to register as a sex offender.

What's unusual about this story?

Fort Wayne Police have cleared the driver of a white Cadillac Escalade of any suspicion in the Tuesday morning robbery and assault of a manager at Family Dollar, 5307 Decatur Road.

No one was more cooperative than Randolph Jackson, who was behind the wheel of the Escalade and whose image was caught by surveillance cameras and broadcast on television news programs this week.

[. . .]

And you thought northeast Indiana was a staid, stick-in-the-mud region:

A man is being held without bond in the Allen County Lockup after police say they seized more than 6,000 pounds of marijuana from his rented home.

Sheriff Ken Fries says the drugs seized Thursday could have a street value of more than $6 million.

Gotta love it:

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. - All the world's a stage at some of Minnesota's bars. A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

Man, oh, man -- probably not the best way to get rid of Gary's reputation as a crime-plagued city:

The police chief in the violence-plagued city of Gary assaulted two people he suspected of burglarizing his home and had them and two others wrongfully locked up for three days, prosecutors said today.

The drug war started getting absurd when officials started banning "paraphernalia" -- not just drugs but anything like bongs and papers that could be used for drugs. It would be akin to banning glasses because you can drink booze out of them. Now, Chicago wants to take another silly step:

Tiny plastic bags used to sell small quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana and other drugs would be banned in Chicago, under a crackdown advanced Tuesday by a City Council committee.

It's probably too much to ask for that the court just tell the FCC it's got no business being in the "f******* expletive" business (that was "fleeting, you dirty-minded pervert, you):

Think I'll go to Canberra and rob me a bank:

ARCHITECT-DESIGNED self-contained cottages with roomy kitchens, lounge rooms complete with flat-screen LCD televisions and mountain views through floor to ceiling windows.

Welcome to the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the ACT's first prison, where the cost of a room is your liberty and more.

[. . .]

I swear, every time there's a story about prison issues, there is a dunderheaded observation like this: