The law and the jungle

Not many people are buying the FBI's explanations for misusing the Patriot Act. They think, reasonably, that so many lapses might indicate an attitude problem rather than simple procedural errors:

I thought it was just high school students who were allowed to write anything they wanted, without official supervision or consequences.  But apparently there is no middle ground for some free-speech zealots. Anybody has the right to say anything, anywhere, with no consequences, or else you can just kiss the First Amendment goodbye. How dare an outdoor magazine fire its hunting editor just because he wrote an anti-gun screed on his blog that outraged thousands of gun enthusiasts?

The Associated Press uses the story of the new Ball State campus police officer who shot and killed a student as an example in its story on states that allow police officers to hit the streets with little or no training. Indiana is one of at least 30 states to fall into that category. The Indiana portion of the story:

It's hard to say for sure without having watched the case being presented, but it seems to me there is reasonable doubt about Scooter Libby's guilt, and the longer the jury has been out, the more likely it has become that it will reach the same conclusion. The case turns on whether we think Libby's misstatements to a grand jury were lies or the result of faulty memory. Since many of the prosecution's own witnesses displayed less than perfect recollection, a "reasonable person" should have some doubts about Libby's willful intent.

This just so sad, isn't it?

The raid at VIP Tanning on Coliseum came a day before a bill passed in an effort to boost certification of workers at massage businesses. The bill in the Indiana Senate would require massage therapists to be at least certified and have a specific amount of education before they could practice in this state, hopefully hindering corrupt businesses from practicing here. No one at VIP Tanning or VIP-The Office Spa was certified by the state, police said.

Fort Wayne, like most cities in Indiana, wants everybody to help keep the sidewalks cleared. Muncipal code 99.047 says:

This advice comes too late to help Simon Rios, but let it be a lesson to any others who are contemplating the commission of heinous crimes. If you think you might end up pleading not guilty, don't show police where you left the body.

A friend asked me how I would like to be on this jury. I was reminded of something from a movie, perhaps the one about Judge Roy Bean. "I'm going to give you a fair trial and then hang you."

This article by the governor of Maryland contains a lot of the usual reasons to be against the death penalty, which are wrong for the usual reasons. The death penalty is not actually a deterrent, he says, and executing someone is a lot costlier than just keeping them in prison for life.

See if you can follow the reasoning on this one. A proposal in the General Assembly to create drug-free zones, by making it a Class A felony to sell illegal drugs within 1,000 feet of a church, would be unfair to city-dwelling users of illegal drugs. When added to current drug-free-zone laws -- protecting such places as schools, parks and housing developments, this would create such overlapping zones that someone could be guilty of a Class A felony just for possessing illegal drugs in a private residence.

I saw this headline on a South Bend Tribune editorial -- "Arming Indiana crime victims" -- and thought: What? Free-gun handouts by the state? Turns out they're talking about something else: