News Roundup

It's time for the first news roundup of the new year! There have been quite a few interesting stories recently, including the following: 1. The New York Times reports that cell phones are widespread in prison. One Georgia inmate reports that "almost everybody has a phone," usually a smartphone. In addition to playing FarmVille on Facebook -- seriously -- inmates also use them to communicate with family and friends on the outside, or even in other prisons. The phones may be brought in by guards or shot over prison walls. I wonder if removing electric power outlets from most inmate-accessible areas would make a difference. 2. A News and Observer story indicates that Durham is planning a ballistics lab. The story contains mixed messages about the relationship of that decision to the situation at the SBI lab. In any case, it should lighten the SBI's workload: Apparently, the Durham Police Department is "only one of about 500 law-enforcement agencies in the state, but it submits about one-third of all the firearms analyzed by [the] SBI." Durham will be one of only a handful of law enforcement agencies in the state with its own ballistics lab. 3. The Charlotte Observer has this interesting piece about a Wesley Chapel physician with a machine gun that he fires regularly at his home range. His neighbors don't like it, and there's some controversy about whether he's legally entitled to have a machine gun under G.S. 14-409, which generally prohibits the possession of such weapons. 4. Judge [...]