Reliable Source: Lindsay Lohan takes on human rights

"To the surprise of anyone who actually studies crime and punishment, Lindsay Lohan weighed in on the subject Wednesday night via Twitter:

"It is clearly stated in Article 5 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights that ..... 'No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.' " She then quoted from a 2002 Cato Institute paper by legal scholar Erik Luna decrying unfair sentencing guidelines: "Scores of federal defendants sentenced under a constitutionally perverted ..... system that saps moral judgment through its mechanical rules."

The folks at the D.C.'s libertarian think tank were tickled by the unlikely shoutout, but Cato senior fellow Walter Olsen says the jail-bound actress missed the mark.

"She needs to be more careful in her legal research -- too much time in bars and not enough in law libraries," he told us. The Supreme Court struck down those sentencing guidelines in 2005, and the UN declaration has nothing to do with her case. "Not now or ever has the Geneva Convention protected the right to flip off the judge."

(Speaking of which: Lohan claims the F-bomb inscribed on her middle finger manicure "had nothing to do w/court.")

Anyway, Olsen believes she got a fair hearing. "Compared with the justice most people get, she's been treated gently and carefully," he said. "She's gotten second chances that many people aren't given."

Lohan, sentenced Tuesday to serve 90 days for probation violations, clearly doesn't agree: Her last tweet linked to a Newsweek story about an Iranian woman facing death by stoning.


(2010-07-11/Washington Post )