The law and the jungle

OMG! The Fourth of July falls on a Sunday this year. You know what that means:

. . . thanks to Indiana's outdated alcohol laws, you won't be able to buy your alcoholic beverage of choice in the store on the day of your celebration.

Hey, a prediction I got right for a change. Back in March, I predicted in the "No props for the peeps" post that the prosecutor would have a tough time making a voyeurism case against Fort Wayne upskirter David Delagrange, who was nabbed for using a camera attached to his foot to shoot video up the skirts of women and girls at Castelton Square Mall in Indianapolis. Sure enough:

A timely reminder:

Amid the storms and power outages across the state this week, the Indiana Department of Transportation sends this reminder: Intersections with nonfunctioning traffic signals become four-way stops.

Indiana law says that after stopping, motorists may proceed with caution through those intersections. They also should yield the right of way to traffic within the intersection or so near that it presents an immediate hazard.

It gets harder to criticize our enemies when our allies are such jerks:

Judicial officials say a Saudi court has convicted four women and 11 men for mingling at a party and sentenced them to flogging and prison terms.

The men, who are between 30 and 40 years old, and three of the women, who are under the age of 30, were sentenced to an unspecified number of lashes and one or two year prison terms each.

When it was reported a couple of months ago that two Martinsville police officers had been suspended over an incident in which a 10-year-old boy at a day care center was subdued with a stun gun, I did a post that was skeptical of the police actions. But now a special prosecutor and a grand jury have exonerated the officers, and their arguments that the officers acted appropriately are compelling:

I don't have much to say about this. It's just the kind of story you shouldn't let go unnoticed, that's all:

VALPARAISO -- A retired Chicago police officer was arrested at Lake of the Woods Nudist Colony after allegedly pushing a 66-year-old pool attendant to the ground.

The latest from Chicago, the city that disarms its law-abiding citizens:

Eight people were killed in at least 44 others were shot across the city Friday night into early Monday, including a baby girl who suffered a graze wound to the neck when gunfire erupted at a Near West Side barbecue.

I get a kick out of seeing all the "human signs" out in front of various businesses, like the guy with the "$5 pizza" sign at Clinton and Rudisill. The ones who dress up are especially interesting -- the tax place on Broadway sends out a Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam to entice us in March and April, and there's a barbecue place on State that has even trotted out a pig now and then. These walking advertisements add a touch of eccentric whimsy to the otherwise boring urban landscape.

It is a common practice in editorials to overstate one's case and ignore any evidence to the contrary. Heaven knows I've engaged in this "preaching to the choir" thundering from time to time. But leave it to The New York Times to push the tactic as far as it can go:

I was a fan of Gov. Daniels' tax amnesty plan in 2005, which critics said would just reward scofflaws and not raise much money anyway. But according to the final report on the plan, more than $244 million in delinquent taxes was raised. The governor's original projection, I believe, was for about a fourth of that amount. For scofflaws not to benefit, the state would have had to carry through with it announced intention to bring out the stick for those delinquents who chose not to take advantage of the carrot.