The law and the jungle

Why Dennis Hastert's indictment should worry us all:

It's a guns-guns-guns day.

Now that the Supreme Court has pretty much established that the 2nd Amendment protects and individual right to bear arms, the gun-control crowd is going to become ever more creative in its efforts to work around that pesky old Constitution. There is this, for example:

Hey, chimps are people, too!

Its lawyers said that personhood rights have already been applied to corporations, rivers and ships. If chimps are also eligible, they are then eligible for the writ of habeas corpus, which gives those who believe they are unlawfully detained or imprisoned the right to appear in court.

George Will has decided it's time to end capital punishment:

Most of us look at splashy, chaotic events like the upheaval in Baltimore through the lenses of our preconceptions.  It's a crime problem. It's a racism problem. It's police misconduct. It's the breakdown of the family. It's poverty. On and on.

Rand Paul on the violence in Baltimore:

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a contender for the GOP nomination for president, offered his take on the Baltimore riots on Laura Ingraham's show this morning, saying a "lack of fathers" and a "lack of a moral code in our society" were responsible for the "thievery and thuggery."

It's risky to predict Supreme Court decisions, but the consensus seems to be, 1) The court will split in the usual four-four way on the gay marriage question, 2) Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the swing vote and, 3) given the opinion he wrote in the case partially dismantling the federal Defense of Marriage Act, he will vote in favor of gay marriage. Therefore, gay marriage as the law of the land is a done deal.

Should John Hinckley be released from psychiatric custody? As Ed Morrissey points out, he is already mostly out. He stays with his mother in a gated community for 17 days every month. Now his lawyer, Barry Levine, say he has been in "full and stable remission for more than two decades" and is "clinically ready" to live full-time outside a mentl hospital:

This weird, weird world just got a lot weirder:

Hercules and Leo, who are currently used for biomedical experiments at Stony Brook University on Long Island, were granted habeas corpus by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe.

This is interesting:

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – A change to Fort Wayne’s city policies and procedures will require employees to get written permission to record a conversation with another employee.

Indiana is a one-party consent state, meaning a person can record a conversation they are having with another person without the other person knowing.