The law and the jungle

Indiana State University is thinking about starting the state's fifth law school (we currently have two public ones, at Indiana University Bloomington and Indiana University Indianapolis, and two private ones -- Notre Dame and Valparaiso). This seems like a bad idea to some people, who argue that we already have more than enough lawers. Torpor Indiana, for example, thinks we should be worrying about real shortages, as of nurses and pharmacists.

I suspect I'm not alone in supporting the death penalty in some cases (the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crimes) but having many doubts about the way it is implemented. My concerns aren't liberal -- questioning the very legitimacy of capital punishment -- but rather libertarian. It's hard to question the government's competence to do something as simple as paving potholes or hauling garbage and then blithely give it the very power of life and death.

Speeding at 128 miles an hour isn't reckless driving?! Good lord.

Eminent domain is totally out of control:

"We are going to rescue and relocate individuals and we will put them in a better position than they're living in now."

That's what they call it these days when they steal people's land and give it to developers. "We're just helping you."

I've blown hot and cold on the death penalty over the years. I've always been skeptical as a libertarian/conservative; we barely trust the government to pave the highways, and we're going to let it make the ultimate life-and-death decision? And every time a justifiable exception becomes entrenched -- children, the mentally retarded, (soon, I hope) the profoundly mentally ill -- the temptation becomes stronger to just call for chucking the whole thing. How many exceptions can there be before it really does become cruel and unusual to impose it on the remaining handful?

I probably don't care about baseball and steroids as much as I should -- their game, their rules and all that. But it's fair to say that baseball officials haven't really been serious about stopping the use of steroids, as evidenced by fines that no one took seriously. Now they are getting serious:

I did a post last week disagreeing with a state legislator's intention to make disorderly conduct at military funerals a felony, rather than a misdemeanor in line with most other disorderly conduct charges. As despicable as such protests are, making them felonies, I thought, would amount to unequal treatment under the law. That brought a response from Steve Towsley (original post and comments here), who argued that:

If a public education is supposed to be a collaborative effort between parents and the society at large (and some of us still hold on to this belief), what are we to make of this ruling, which basically tells parents they have no say in the matter?

Northeast Indiana's U.S. Rep. Mike Pence has become a star of the small-government-conservative movement. Now he's among those championing private property rights. I don't think we could do much better than having him as House Majority Leader.

Some editorial opinions can be agreed with, some disputed. This one, in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, is simply despicable in the way it talks about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas:

In losing a woman, the court with Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America.