Law and Disorder

LAW & DISORDER MIND BOGGLERS

            Yes, back by popular demand, it's MIND BOGGLER day. Today's topics deal with legal goofiness and gun control.

            The first topic concerns a federal judge in Savannah Georgia. The judge became concerned about the terrible plight of the prisoners housed in a local jail. I guess the prisoner had to wait in line to use the weight machines and even worse some could not get a good view of the big screen TV. The judge got wind of these inhumane conditions and decided that the jail was overcrowded. The judge ordered the jail warden to release twenty prisoners. This was not the first time that the warden had been ordered to release prisoners. The warden tried, unsuccessfully, to find other facilities to house the twenty prisoners. Finally, the warden went back to the judge and explained that most of the prisoner in his jail were dangerous felons. Releasing any of them, in the warden’s opinion, would place citizens in danger. The judge, according to reports, became outraged, held the warden in contempt, and fined him two hundred dollars a day for every prisoner that had not been released. The fine was to run until the twenty prisoners were released. The warden had no options; he resigned.

            I am sure that you can see the mind boggler. Once upon the time, during the reign of sanity, a jail warden would have been fired if twenty prisoners escaped.  In this demented time the warden was fined for not letting prisoners out! Wouldn't it have been nice if the judge let the bad boys stay in his house!

           

My second topic today is gun control.

            The best and simplest display of the gun control lobby misguided logic was depicted in a cartoon I saw a few years ago. I am sorry that I can't find a copy of the cartoon in order to give proper credit to the cartoonist. The cartoon showed a side view of a jail. The town dignitaries were gathered on the front steps observing a hanging. The scaffold, surrounded by a cheering crowd, supported a rope with a noose, hanging a gun. At the back door of the jail a scruffy criminal was being released. That cartoon clearly identifies the gun control lobby’s ill-advised position; blame the inanimate object for crime, not the criminal.

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