Laws of the Land

A Florida man recently admitted he knew it was wrong to try to have sex with the family dog, according to a report.

Maybe it's the humidity. In the same week, somewhere in Florida, an elderly man was arrested for riding through town, half naked, on a tricycle. He didn't actually admit he knew it was wrong, but he did admit he was too bombed to know he was half naked. Seems like a reasonable defense to me. And, oh yes, a mother who appears to have murdered her own baby was convicted of lying and sentenced to a week in prison.

Legislators in the Sunshine State have their work cut out for them. They are already off to a flying start, enacting "Caylee's Law," which would make it a felony for a parent or legal guardian to delay reporting a missing child. I think it's already a felony to kill your own child, but that gets kind of hard to prove, so I suppose prosecutors will appreciate being able to hang their hats on a good, old-fashioned technicality. And I bet parents all over Florida will think twice now about neglecting to report the disappearance of a toddler. Thank goodness we have laws.

Maybe it's not the humidity. Right here in Chicago, we have laws criminalizing behavior that most normal folks would not engage in even if it weren't deemed felonious. There is a law on the books, for example, which forbids eating in a place that is on fire. Also, it is illegal to give a dog whiskey, or to fish while sitting on a giraffe's neck. Well there go my weekend plans.

If there's one thing you can say about Americans, it's that we react swiftly. When a would-be terrorist tries to smuggle explosives onto an airplane in his shoe, we require everyone to remove their shoes before boarding. It's gonna be ugly when someone manages to sneak in something a bit more potent than baby powder in her thong. When some guy, somewhere, decides to perch on a giraffe's neck to catch some fish, well, there goes the fun for the rest of us. And when one young mother forgets to report her daughter missing for thirty-one days and the little girl ends up dead, mothers everywhere suddenly have to drop everything they're doing the minute a child disappears and tell the police. Like we don't have enough on our plates.

Should there be a law on the books in Florida making it illegal to party for a month and get happy tattoos and have blood in your trunk and information on your computer about death by chloroform while, as it turns out, your daughter lies dead in a nearby swamp? The jury's still out on that one.