Next Week: Retirement Insurance for LOLcats.

While the US Supreme Court goes about the serious business of recognizing real and valuable individual rights, the Spanish parliament has gone and:

voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

Try looking at it this way. Your average EU country doesn’t really recognize individual rights; there are just some facets of human existence Brussels hasn’t gotten around yet to regulating fully. So why not give “rights” to chimps? It’s not like they’ll gain much, when half or more of Europe is already one very posh, very nice zoological garden where people are kept on display in a semi-natural state.

Heck, Madrid, or even Brussels, could extend the franchise to dogs who think they’re people, at it wouldn’t make one bit of difference to how the place is governed.