Hey, whaddaya know? It has only happened a couple times, but this morning I learned that I agree with Attorney General Jon Bruning on another topic: eliminating the insanity defense for a voluntarily intoxicated person. The insanity defense as a whole is a tricky subject, but in my mind, eliminating this piece of it is a no-brainer. A person who makes the decision to alter his state of mind must take responsibility for his actions while in that altered state.
As for the insanity defense in general, well, good luck to the politicians who wade into that mess. "Insanity" isn't what it used to be. The more we learn about the brain, the fuzzier the distinction between sane and insane becomes. Heck, even the concept of free will is thrown into question. Seriously, check out some of the research sometime. It's fascinating stuff. Anyway, we as a society are in a pickle. Any line we try to draw between "sane" and "insane" for the purposes of the law is arbitrary and therefore flawed. But if we don't draw a line -- that is, if we get rid of the insanity defense altogether -- we will undoubtedly find that lumping together all mental health statuses on the same moral plane is fraught with its own unpleasantness and ethical quandaries.
Ahh, the brain. It's always fun to think about what's going on inside somebody else's noggin. I wonder if we'll ever know for sure?
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I will be reading the LJS comments tonight, to see what reasons the Bruninghaters have to bash Bruning on this.
...and I see there are a couple good comments already! 😊
Darn, not that much good stuff today. Now that Bruning isn’t running for Senate anymore, the anti-Bruning web movement seems to have chilled a little bit. But one of the Bruninghaters found their way to the story:
Quit grandstanding Jon. You already chickened out of the Senate race. Stay in your office and let the real lawyers at your office do their jobs. That would be the best thing you could do for this State short of resigning.
Banning Salvia divinorum is another part of the AG’s legislative package.
Aside 1: Personally, I find the War on Drugs an exercise in futility, an incredible waste of economic resources, and ignorant of history: this country didn’t collapse in on itself when everything under the sun was legal prior to 1906.
Aside 2: Is there any coverage about the first day of the Unicameral in the paper version of the LJS? There’s none to be found online.
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