The law and the jungle

Hoosier criminal genius of the week:

Police in Kokomo, Ind., said a robbery suspect accidentally shot himself in the groin as he put his gun in the waistband of his pants during a holdup.

[. . .]

I'll bet a lot of you conservatives out there have thought, "Maybe President Bush has screwed up in a lot of areas, but at least he'll stand up for the 2nd Amendment." Guess again:

Since "unrestricted" private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions, according to the Bush administration.

Every time I write about intrusive government and the slow chipping away of our liberty -- and our complicity in the erosion of rights -- I hear from somebody who says I'm a libertarian caveman who just doesn't understand that we're all in this together and have to submit sometimes to the greater good. But, surely, this should be alarming to the most committed collectivist:

Welcome to the bar, where you may feel free to kill yourself with alcohol, either the slow way, by sinking slowly into beer- and whisky-induced organ shutdown and/or suicidal depression, or the fast way, by turning your car into a killing machine also likely to take out any number of innocent bystanders.

An Indiana legislator wants to introduce a bill to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The Indianapolis Star weighs in with an editorial urging the General Assembly to be cautions:

A man apologizes for scribbling an obscentiy on the check he used to pay his parking ticket with, but his lawyer says he could have fought it:

The lawyer for David Binner, 45, said his client would have prevailed if he went through a trial.

"The F-word isn't what it used to be," attorney Keith Williams said. It doesn't have a sexual connotation anymore and so can't be considered obscene, he said.

As a veteran, I spent about 20 years flinching every time I saw a headline saying something like "Vietnam vet in homicidal rampage." The war was wrong, the narrative went, so, naturally, the men we sent there came back damaged and primed to go off like time bombs, punishing the country forever. There were never headlines saying "Insurance salesman kills family" or "Librarian murders seven."

Since birthright citizenship is such an obvious contributor to the growing number of illegal immigrants, that would be a good subject for a presidential debate, and I would like to know where the candidates stand. Would any of them, for example, like to challenge Mike Huckabee's position?

Justice Anthony Kennedy can usually be counted on to be the swing vote when it looks like a case is going to a 4-4 tie. But in the Indiana voter-ID case, it might be someone else:

The concept of privacy continues to "evolve," i.e. the trend of everybody wanting to know where everybody else is all the time continues to strengthen. Fort Wayne Police Chief Rusty York wants to put GPS chips in all patrol cars:

It will allow officers, dispatchers and managers to see where the vehicles are located across the city. The chief said this will help in officer safety because it will better locate officers calling for help.