The law and the jungle

As a strong supporter of both the First and Second Amendments, I'm finding this a tough call. An Indiana House committee has approved a bill that would keep secret the names of people in a government database of those granted permits to carry guns:

The Senate Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters Committee has passed a bring-your-gun-to-work bill (SB 25), which would prevent employers from having policies that ban weapons from workplace property. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce, representing nearly 5,000 member companies with 800,000 workers, is urging defeat of the bill as a workplace-safety move:

The proposal to end the ban on Sunday liquor sales is likely to come before the General Assembly again this year. And die again this year. Even in normal times, it's hard to get legislators to consider such a radical idea, and these aren't normal times. In the economic downturn, the legislature is going to have enough to do just to keep the state solvent.

But perhaps we could take one small step:

The Indiana General Assembly is considering a bill that would lift the ban on the sale of motorcycles on Sundays.

If you think the government interferes too much in our private lives here, just be thankful you don't live in France. A bill being pushed by Nicolas Sarkozy's government would make "psychological violence" between married and cohabiting couples "a matter for state intervention." And just what is that, exactly?

We've all heard about parents who try to ease their children into alcohol by supervising their parties and monitoring their drinking. Somebody usually tries to make the argument for that practice by pointing out that in France, after all, kids even drink wine at the dinner table. But a story like this is so creepy that it knocks all the props out from under that position:

This won't add any clarity to the often incoherent abortion debate:

Danielle Brookshire Steinberger already had her infant's safety seat in the car when she was hit head-on by another vehicle on New Year's Eve 2007.

If baby Drew had died in his car seat instead of in his mother's womb, his death could have been a crime.

Mull this over:

A Mexican-born Indiana man is appealing his conviction on drug charges, saying he didn't fully understand a plea agreement due to a language barrier.

[. . .]

He was initially sentenced to consecutive sentences totaling 50 years, but that was later reduced to concurrent sentences of 30 years.

The Indiana Court of Appeals upheld his conviction in August.

This just has to be one of those "something else is going on here we can't decipher from the facts given" cases, because it doesn't make any sense as presented.

Criminal genius of the week:

Sheena Kiska lived in an apartment in Bristol, Ind., with her two young children. It was burglarized, and she wanted to move out, but the manager wouldn't let her out of her lease without paying three months rent, which would have been $2,500. So she stayed, and 30 days later, on March 18, 2008, there was another intruder, who beat and stabbed her to death.

Now, a Hoosier lawmaker, Democrat Craig Fry of Misawaka, wants to take some corrective action: