When Is It Legal To Go All Non Compos Mentis On Your Scrawny Ipso Facto?

We're coming to you today from the Legal Department here in the marbled halls of IM Central. Now, generally we have more...erm...practical reasons for consulting the crack Ironicus Maximus legal team, like the time we had that misunderstanding with the police officer about who owned the fifty dollar bill we'd found just as he was about to write us a ticket for...ah..an over exuberance of velocity, but today we are here on a more theoretical matter.

We see by the interwebs that the trial of Scott Roeder,the fellow who walked into a church and shot Dr. George Tiller because--well, isn't that what you're supposed to do when you disagree with someone--is beginning and we have a few questions.

OK, so the party of the first part discharges a firearm in the general direction of the party of the second part, resulting in the party of the second part being deprived of the means by which the party of the second part sustained his existence. The authorities take a dim view of this and arrest the party of the first part, accusing him of acting outside of the bounds of polite society by committing an act laymen refer to as "murder."

So far so good.

Then we get to court and we find that, far from committing the heretofore mentioned act called in the popular press, "murder," the party of the first part, hereinafter referred to as "the accused" has not committed said "murder," in fact has not transgressed the mores of the aforementioned governmental authorities at all, but has instead acted to preserve a safe environment for entities that may or may not exist.

Roeder has admitted in news media interviews that he killed Tiller, shooting him in the face as Tiller served as a church usher. But Roeder has said his actions were justified in order to prevent Tiller from performing further abortions.

Right. Now in fifth grade the class bully was Vernon. When he took Dale's lunch money could we have shot him because we expected that at some date in the future he would take our lunch money?

Well, if we'd had a gun, that is. And if we'd known how to use it. And if Dale's big brother hadn't beat the crap out of Vernon with a tennis racket thus ending Vernon's bully career. We're talking theoretically here. A hypothetical scenario if you will.

We'd be the first to admit that we didn't always pay attention in Civics class, but our last understanding was that committing an illegal act (the so called "murder") to protest a legal act (getting an abortion) is not an appropriate way for a fully functioning adult member of society to spend his morning.

Perhaps we just aren't picking up on the finer legal points though. Let's take a step back and look at the big picture.

The slaying of Tiller intensified the debate in the United States over abortion and the actions taken by people who want it to be illegal.

Yes, yes we see now. So, referencing our earlier statement concerning the law enforcement representative and the orphaned fifty dollar bill, if we had just said we wanted 35 to be an illegally determined speed, and 70 to be a lawful speed corresponding to a higher authority (namely us) would we have been excused from what eventually turned out to be a fairly hefty monetary deduction from our entertainment account (the one Mrs. IM doesn't know about)? Or would we have been justified in shooting the officer because there was a high probability that he would go on enforcing the speed limit that we did not want on other drivers who may or may not want the government intruding into their lives and making the roads safe from people like...well, us?

Hmm...We're beginning to see some potential flaws in that line of reasoning.

Which is probably why we weren't asked to be part of Roeder's defense team.