The problem with gun-purc hase background checks few seem willing to talk about:
WASHINGTON — About 4,000 Hoosiers could not pass a federal background check to buy a gun because of mental illness.
In Delaware, a state about one-seventh the size of Indiana, a background check would block nearly 19,000 people with mental illness records from getting a gun.
Unbelievably, the Supreme Court has been considering other issues besides gay marriage. In a apparent victory for privacy rights, it ruled this week that using a trained dog to sniff for drugs on the porch of a home constitutes a seach and if it's done without a warrant it violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition again unsreasonable searches. I say "apparent," because some legal analysts are unhappy with how narrowly the case was decided:
Gotta hand it to Justice Sotomayor. She asked the most pertinent question about gay marriage of Ted Olson, one of its advocates arguing before the Supreme Court:
Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you're being asked -- and -- and it is one that I'm interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.
The Indiana Supreme Court on the state's school voucher program -- Ain't saying it's good, just saying it's legal:
The state Supreme Court agreed with that, saying in a 22-page opinion written by Chief Justice Brent Dickson that the program primarily benefited parents, not schools, because it gave parents choice in their children's education.
TACOMA, Wash. — John Connelly leaned forward on his barstool, set his lips against a clear glass pipe and inhaled a white cloud of marijuana vapor.
A handful of people milled around him. Three young women stood behind the bar, ready to assist with the preparation of the bongs, as the strains of a blues band playing downstairs sounded faintly off the exposed brick walls.
War on drugs, the conservative view:
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A sweeping plan to overhaul Indiana's criminal sentencing laws will go before a legislative committee after Republican Gov. Mike Pence said last week he worried the proposal wasn't tough enough on low-level drug offenders.
[. . .]
The attorneys general of 21 states, including Indiana, have filed briefs before the Suprem Court in defense of the right of states to ban same-sex unions. The attorneys general of 15 states have filed briefs on the other side of the issue. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller explains his actions:
The federal government and states across the country have spent billions of dollars in recent years on sprawling, privately run halfway houses, which are supposed to save money and rehabilitate inmates more effectively than prisons do.
I never had all that much faith in the Supreme Court, and my opinion of it turned more negative after John Roberts' inexplicable and indefensible embrace of Obamacare. I've wondered if others had the same reaction. Seems so:
This is a very good Wall Street Journal editorial about the federalism issues at state in the two gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court:
This week the Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage, amid shifting American mores and a healthy debate about equality. Yet the two cases before the High Court are less about the institution of marriage than the sanctity of democratic institutions and the proper role of the courts.
