Not in the running for father of the year:
A father who left his 5-year-old son in his semi-trailer truck while he ducked into a Near-Southside strip club was charged with felony neglect and public intoxication this morning.
Donald Crawford, 39, Franklin, was arrested at 1:15 a.m. when he left Sassy Kat's Showclub and called police to report his truck stolen and his child missing.
When I watched my aunt suffering with Alzheimer's, I thought that must be the worst condition to be in while still alive. To still know what and who you once were but feeling your mind slipping away and realizing you can't do a damn thing about it -- could anything be more horrible?
The good news is that there are apparently very few of us who hate everybody. Of the 7,783 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2008, only 8 were for "multiple biases." The bad news is that the overall number represents a 2 percent increase from 2007. Of course there may not actually be more hate crimes, merely more emphasis on them and awareness of them. And sometimes, it can be difficult to say what exactly is a hate crime. If you burn a cross in somebody's yard, that's pretty obvious.
It's one thing to give prisoners so many benefits that incarceration hardly seems like punishment -- things like premium cable TV channels and access to a college education many on the outside can't afford. When I heard that some of the poor souls in the Monroe County Jail were having to sleep on the gymnasium floor because of overcrowding, I confess that my first reaction was, "The Monroe County Jail has a gymnasium"?
The Indiana Supreme Court's invalidation of part of Zachary's law seems pretty straightforward. The state constitution bans ex post facto laws in pretty plain language, and the portion of the law requiring even sex offenders convicted prior to the registration law to register is, by intent and effect, retroactive. But at least one law enforcement officer isn't having any of that constitutional mumbo jumbo:
If you're not worried yet about the implications of trying terror suspects in a civil criminal court, maybe this will help:
The greatest danger posed in the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) isn't that he will go free. The greatest danger is that he will be convicted and that during his appeals the courts will ratify all of the extraordinary measures used to capture and convict him. The great danger is that the courts will ratify the rough, inaccurate and ambiguous norms of martial law as applying to all civil criminal trials.
This sound a little Orwellian to anybody besides me?
INDIANAPOLIS - A felon's friends and hobbies could influence how much time he spends behind bars if the Indiana Supreme Court upholds a lower-court ruling.
If I tried to rank the worst Supreme Court decisions in my lifefime, Kelo v. City of New London, which more or less put the last nail in the coffin of private property, would be right up there. And what came of it? Nothing:
Is Elkhart noisier than all other Indiana cities, or are they just obsessed about the issue?
Drivers in the northern Indiana city of Elkhart may want to think twice about pumping up the volume on their car stereos.
The city is aggressively enforcing its noise ordinance, which carries a fine of up to $2,500 for repeated violations. More than 1,100 citations have been issued so far this year.
Ah, those crazy Californians, they just kind of make up the law as they go along:
