Policy

Friday Funnies (Eww, Not Ha Ha)

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A 24-year-old woman faces two Class-D felony counts. Presumably, she violated Sec. 14 (2) and Sec. 14 (3) of Indiana code C35-46-3-14.

Ok, ok, ok. Too much legal mumbo-jumbo.

C35-46-3-14 deals specifically with bestiality. From one of the best snoopers on the web:

Concerned that an ex-boyfriend had used her laptop to search for child pornography, the Indiana woman asked police to search the computer for illegal images, but had her plan backfire when cops discovered two videos of her engaged in illicit acts with a dog. [Michelle] Owen, 24, was charged last week with two felony bestiality counts in connection with the video files, which a detective found in the laptop's "recycle bin."

It looks like Owen could be in the dog house for six months to three years because of one bad (inebriated) decision. Poor Owen has been shamed enough. Prosecutors should drop all charges and instruct her to get a cat. Owen's crime is victimless. She didn't violate any rights.

Here's a good snippet from Reason Contributing Editor Cathy Young's 2001 piece:

As philosopher Tibor Machan argues in a 1991 essay on animal rights, human beings have rights because they are "moral agents," capable of distinguishing and choosing between right and wrong. There is, writes Machan, "no valid intellectual place for rights in the nonhuman world … in which moral responsibility is for all practical purposes absent."

Maybe Owen makes poor personal choices. But that's not reason enough for a felony.

In case you were curious, it was a beagle. His name is Toby.

High Five: Jonathan Turley