This week's contender for "most inane court ruling"

I can't imagine how peaceful it must be in Quebec's court system . . . they've taken care of all the real issues, so they're down to making rulings about whether a father can ground his daughter:

If you deny your children access to TV or withhold their allowance, can they take you to court? And win?

That implausible scenario emerged after a judge in Gatineau, Que., sided with a 12-year-old girl who challenged her father after he refused to let her go on a school trip for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet.

Experts in family law and child welfare say they were dumbfounded by last Friday’s ruling by Superior Court Justice Suzanne Tessier.

So, at least in Quebec, it's now perfectly acceptable for the courts to review any parental decision regarding that parent's children. As they say on Fark.com, "this should end well".

Can of worms? Check. Opener? Check. Loony tunes judicial precedent set? Check. The Crazy Years have officially begun.

Update: The Volokh Conspiracy treats the news with exactly the right kind of seriousness:

Another Great Satire from The Onion: Court Reverses Father's Decision to Ground Daughter by Keeping Her from a School Overnight Trip. I just love it how the Onion can take real practices and extrapolate them three steps forward to the utterly absurd.

The article is on what must be some mirror site for The Onion — something in Canada called TheGlobeAndMail.com. And it's odd, but the other stories on the site don't seem that funny.