Without making any judgments about either cause, we can say that here in this letter to the editor we have a “pot calling the kettle black” situation:
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently made the news again by suggest-ing that the president have compassion on a fly that was bothering him.
[. . .]
Had any of these same people ever taken one step toward protecting other life — human life?
PETA is a group that will brazenly use the flimsiest of news pegs on which to hang one of its pro-animal rights polemics. Anti-abortion activists likewise use any excuse to get the message out. They can probably teach each other a lot about how to get media attention, although I do hope the insect lovers don’t start using Holocaust comparisons.
He says, “We’ve been doing this show for 19 years now and I’m really sorry for that. No one had any idea that it would last all these years.”
And Springer can’t help but cringe when he watches back his very first episode: “That was pretty pathetic but it’s not as if it’s got any better, it’s still awful.”
Maybe he should go back into politics, where “awful” is even less remarkable than on TV.
Michael Jackson’s death lures one of the Big Boys from the Los Angeles Times, who otherwise would probably never consider getting within 100 miles of Gary:
Michael Jackson fans are convening all over the world to mourn a superstar. But to residents who gathered this afternoon near his childhood home in Gary, Ind., Jackson was a once-beloved neighbor.
A man walked down Jackson Street sobbing uncontrollably to someone on his cellphone. A woman carrying a bouquet of flowers wore sunglasses to mask the tears. Stuffed animals and signs commemorating the music star were placed near the door to the home.
[. . .]
Paul Warner, a freelance photographer whose shots are featured by Getty Images and the Associated Press, lived nearby the Jackson home in the humble neighborhood. (Describing it as humble is, in fact, a serious understatement.)
Yeech. That’s even more gag-inducing than the drivel sent back and forth between Mark Sanford and his Argentinian honey. A “once-beloved neighbor”? Neighborhood kids are not beloved, even ones who later become “troubled geniuses.” They are pains in the ass, at best. And all those people “sobbing uncontrollably” into cell phones and wearing sunglasses “to mask the tears” — I think I’d dread running into them more than I would the sorts of people who ordinarily inhabit such a “humble” neighborood (the kind, as one person told the Times writer, of which it is said, “You don’t want to be here at night”). You know, where the streets are probably “mean.”
I dunno. The Jackson house looks very much like the one my parents had near Anthony and McKinney on the southeast side, and I think “humble” overstates the case. A “humble” neighborhood would be like, “Oh, I’m not worthy, thank you SOOO much for choosing to live here.” I think “modest” neighborhood would be more like it: “I know I’m not flashy, but I think we’ll get along.” And the streets aren’t mean so much as surly. “Hey, slow down, you jerk, or I’ll snag you with a pothole.”
It is noted in the piece that “Gary isn’t normally a place where big dreams are made.” Finally, at least, one thing that rings true.
Worry about what you serve your kids in your own home, not about what they might get at the new McDonald’s that just opened up, say IUPUI researchers in Indianapolis:
It was found that the addition of fast food restaurants to neighborhoods did not have a significant impact in children’s obesity rates. Restaurants located within one tenth of a mile from home were associated with slight elevations in obesity rates within certain high school ages.
After a shopping excursion Sunday, we had lunch at a Steak & Shake, which was wonderful as always, but it just reminded me that the only fast-food place I have within walking distance is the Wendy’s at Oakdale and Broadway. It’s a fine place — I stop there on occasion — but a little boring in the long run. It seems to get a lot of traffic both from downtown and from people coming across the Bluffton Road Bridge.
So the corner across Oakdale from Wendy’s would be just perfect for another restaurant, the only slight drawback being that the space is now occupied by a dentist’s office. But I bet the office barely gets 20 or 30 visitors a day rather than the hundreds a restaurant would get. Therefore, I would like it if city planners would please condemn the dentist’s office through eminent-domain proceedings and arrange for a Steak & Shake to go in there. It would be a logical economic-development move, and it would keep me happy.
It wouldn’t even add to the obesity of neighborhood children, so there is no excuse for the city not to act, as far as I can see.
Could they please hype the downtown hotel a little more? This was almost too subtle for me:
The long-delayed construction of the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at Harrison Square officially began Monday with a groundbreaking overlooking the construction site.
Representatives of Fort Wayne city government, local lenders, civic leaders and White Lodging, the company building the hotel, gathered for the groundbreaking and expressed their enthusiasm for the project.
Deno Yiankes, president and CEO of the Investments and Development Division of White Lodging, didn’t settle for mere enthusiasm. He gushed about the prospects for the hotel and Harrison Square.
“It’s a great day in downtown Fort Wayne,” he said. He praised local officials and leaders in the effort to advance Harrison Square.
It is a pretty good day in one way: A new hotel downtown is much better than an embarrassing hole in the ground. And I do hope it works out. Trying to lure more out-of-town visitors seems like a better economic-development idea than just moving sports fans from one part of town to another.
But I’m skeptical. I go back a long way with that particular corner. I worked at McDonald’s while I was in high school. I also worked briefly at the Jefferson Theater, just up the block one way, and spent a lot of time at the pool hall just down the block the other way on Jefferson. The lunch counter at the Greyhound station across the street was another of my haunts. The area was bustling back then, if starting to turn a little seedy around the edges. It had, above all, character, the kind that comes with the accumulated comings and goings of businesses and patrons. It had a history you could sense and appreciate.
The new corner will be something all new, sprung from the imaginations of earnest planners. It will have no accumulated character, no history. Whether it works or not will depend entirely on whether the amusements there can briefly entice people more than the amusements they can find elsewhere. They’ll spend their money, and some of it will stay in Fort Wayne. I guess that’s progress of some kind, but “great”? Don’t think so.
Good grief. In an MSNBC/Elkhart Truth tearjerker, we read in the first four paragraphs about how hard the recession is on Angel Rodriguez. Finally, in the fifth paragraph, they get around to telling us what we’d already begun to suspect:
“Us illegals, we don’t have unemployment,” said Rodriguez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City. “If I had unemployment, I wouldn’t have had to give up the trailer.”
The story notes that those “undocumented immigrants” are “particularly vulnerable” because, without “proper documentation.” they can’t access “government benefits.” Some of them are even considering the unthinkable, going back to Mexico. But, get this:
But there’s a catch to consider. With tightening border security and the increasing difficulty of making a clandestine crossing from Mexico into the United States, a return south of the border may not be easy to reverse should things improve.
How many more sob stories like this are we going to have to endure in the run-up to President Obama’s plan for amnesty comprehensive immigration reform, which will be 3,000 pages long and introduced at 2 p.m. on the day he says it has to be done by 5 p.m. to avert a catastrophe of unimaginable magnitude?
If Hoosiers had voted for Jill Long Thompson for governor instead of Mitch Daniels, this man would have been our lieutenant governor:
Dennie Oxley Jr., a former state legislator and last year’s Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, avoided arrest on alcohol-related charges early Friday by telling police he was serving in the General Assembly, according an Indianapolis Police report.
Oxley, 38, of Taswell, appeared intoxicated with “extremely slurred” speech, balance problems and bloodshot eyes when police found him walking away from a woman lying in the parking lot of a downtown Indianapolis gas station, the report said.
Apparently, authorities are looking into charging Oxley now that his deception has come to light, and the incident might also complicate the ease with which he gets out from under a dui and traffice accident in February. Plenty of news stories about all this, and a lot of action in the blogosphere. Hoosier Access calls it “Int-Oxley-Cated II, the Sequel,” and Advance Indiana says “Oxley Meltdown Continues.” Some of the stories and blog posts refer to the constitutional provision providing immunity for legislators in session, but only the Blue Indiana blog (as far as I can tell) questions it by saying it needs to looked at because it “creates a class of citizens above the law.”
I think that’s the interesting angle. Article IV Secion 8 of the Indiana Constitution: “Senators and representatives, in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, shall be privileged from arrest during the session of the General Assembly, and in going to and returning from same.” So getting falling-down drunk or driving under the influence aren’t breaches of the peace? How about killing someone while driving under the influence?
I’m not sure this immunity is as extensive as people seem to think it is. “Breach of the peace” can cover a lot of ground, as the Wisconsin Court of Appeals has held. That state has the same exemption provision we do and even has the “except treason, felony and breach of the peace” wording. The term “breach of peace,” the court held in 2002, refers to all misdemeanors. Our courts might see it the same way.
The opening Wednesday of “Public Enemy,” the new movie with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, seems to be renewing Hoosiers’ fascination with the romanticism of Depression-era gansgters. This AP story captures the flavor:
The grave of Depression-era gangster John Dillinger is seeing a surge of visitors at its Indianapolis cemetery days before the opening of a new film that stars Johnny Depp as the man considered by some tobe an American Robin Hood.
[. . .]
Dillinger had become something of a Robin Hood for some Americans who had lost their savings when banks failed during the Great Depression, and federal agents narrowly missed capturing him several times.
Americans did have an adversarial relationship with banks back then, which led some of them to cheer Dillinger on. But if I remember my myths & legends, Robin Hood robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Dillinger robbed from institutions that held money for the rich and poor alike, and kept it so he could avoid an ordinary life and honest labor. And, oh, by the way, he killed a police officer in the process; he was a thug and a killer, and romanticizing him is sick. This Indianapolis Star article says the new movie portrays Dillinger as “a violent — yet principled and charismatic — crook.” Yes, sir, that’s certainly what makes violent crooks tolerable to me, if they’re principled and charismatic.
There are those of us who still cling to the “celebrities die in three” myth because guessing who the third might be in any given triad is an interesting way to pass the time. We were cheated out of our game last week when Ed McMahon’s death was followed so closely by Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson checking out within hours of each other.
But things are back on track this week. Gale Storm (is that a heck of a celebrity name, or what?) , the “perky” and “wholesome” star of “My Little Margie” on TV in the 1950s, succumbed at 87. That’s a tough one — for us to have a legitimate threesome game, her death had to be followed closely by the death of someone who is a also a minor celebrity. Then we can speculate on the third minor celebrity.
And now we’ve had the second, because BILLY MAYS DIED! HE WAS A TV PITCHMAN!! ONLY 50!!!
BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!! HE HIT HIS HEAD WHEN A PLANE LANDED ROUGHLY! HE WAS SHOWN TALKING ABOUT THE LANDING!! WENT HOME AND WENT TO BED, AND HIS WIFE SAID HE “DIDN’T FEEL GOOD!!!”
Sorry. That was a long way to go for a one-joke post and in very bad taste, but I couldn’t help myself.
The administration and Congress are trying to ram through as much as they can as quickly as they can — the massive cap & trade bill and health care reform, for example, bills that will be so big and complicated that even those doing the voting won’t know what’s in them. So thank goodness for small favors:
President Obama and his top aide conceded Thursday they lack the political muscle to pass immigration reform this year on an already overcrowded legislative agenda.
“There’s not by any means consensus around the table,” Obama admitted, while hosting a bipartisan gathering of 30 lawmakers at the White House.
But “after all the demagoguery, we’ve got a responsible set of leaders who want to get things done” for a possible immigration compromise next year, Obama said. He singled out former foe John McCain (R-Ariz.) as an ally.
They won’t get near the actual word, but “immigration reform” means amnesty. Obama’s use of “demagoguery” is a big clue.
New York has become the first state to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to pay women for giving their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, a move welcomed by many scientists but condemned by critics who fear it will lead to the exploitation of vulnerable women.
The Empire State Stem Cell Board, which decides how to spend $600 million in state funding for stem cell studies, will allow researchers to compensate women up to $10,000 for the time, discomfort and expenses associated with donating eggs for experiments.
This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? All those who argued that we were headed this way were dismissed as being part of the religious-nut crowd. Or isn’t $10,000 enough to persuade a woman to get pregnant just so she can donate the embryo? Can I order my body parts now?
Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are “categorically distinct” from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.
In a case that had drawn attention from educators, parents and civil libertarians across the country, the court ruled 8 to 1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.
Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil.
Souter said it would be reasonable to search the girl’s backpack and outer clothes, but it was a “quantum leap” to take the next step. Such “quantum leaps” have become commonplace in the era of zero tolerance. No distinction is made between vague reports of a student having Ibuprofen and reliable reports of one having cocaine, or between a student having a real gun or drawing one on paper, or a student having a hunting knife on his person or a table knife in the trunk of its car, or . . . pick your overreaction. The lone dissenter in the 8-1 decision was Clarence Thomas, who said the student would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments, “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.” That sounds like he’s deciding based on a real-world consequence instead of what the law and Constitution require, something an originalist isn’t supposed to do.
And on the empathy front, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has complained that her male colleagues’ comments at the time of oral argument made it sound like they didn’t appreciate the trauma such a search would have on a developing adolescent. “They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” she told USA Today. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.” But, as the Washington Post story notes, the opinion recognized just that. “Changing for gym is getting ready for play,” Souter wrote. “Exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers” and is so degrading that a number of states and school districts have banned strip searches.
While everyone’s been talking about health care and arguing over what President Obama should or shouldn’t say about Iran, cap & trade is sneaking up on us. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants it introduced tomorrow and passed before the Fourth of July recess. This is a bill that has grown from 900 pages to nearly 1,200 just in the last few days, and they’re still making changes. It’s doubtful many legislators will have even read the thing before they vote on it. But the broad intent of the bill is clear, and those who take comfort in recent studies, including one by the CBO, about how minimal the cost will be for Americans, should take a closer look, as The Wall Street Journal did:
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
[. . .]
Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn’t take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others — manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.
“Certain regions” that are manufacturing states and rely on coal. That would be Indiana.
When I got back from overseas, I started dating a nurse here in Fort Wayne. Well, “dating” may be a bit strong, since I still had a year and a half to go in the Army and could see her only when I came home on leave. Anyway, it didn’t work out, and I remember being hurt and angry and writing a blistering letter, telling her what a wonderful guy she was stupid enough to take a pass on, and slipped it under her door. Time has dimmed the memory of exactly what I wrote (thank God for small blessings), but I certainly recall the tone — something an emotionally overwrought fifth-grader would be embarrassed to admit to. This was way before e-mail (thank God for big blessings), and if I’m lucky, she long ago burned that letter.
If I’d written something so dreadful these days and been stupid enough to send it electronically, it would be around to haunt me forever. So, take a lesson from Mark Sanford, paramours, and keep your lunatic lustfulness a little more private. We are now seeing the governor’s missives to and from his “dear friend” from Argentina, and they are such awful drivel.
You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that is so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!
[. . .]
In all my life I have lived by a code of honor and at a variety of levels know I have crossed lines I would have never imagined. I wish I could wish it away, but this soul-mate feel I alluded too is real and in that regard I sure don’t want to be the person complicating your life.
This is a man who is supposed to be an intellectual, or at least as close as a politician can get. He went on “Hardball” a couple of weeks ago to defend his libertarian ideas and held his own with Chris Matthews. And yet he can write such juvenile tripe. It really is true that love and lust make idiots of us all, especially when we can’t keep the two sraight. Yes, I’ve written a letter or two like Sanford’s in my time, too. I don’t remember the exact wording of those, either, but “adore” sounds uncomfortably familiar. But if I’d ever written “by the faded glow of night’s light,” I trust the woman would have just taken me out and shot me.
The newspaper that unearthed this timeless prose subjected Sanford and the woman to the ultimate indignity of writing (sic) after all their mistakes, which e-mailers are prone to make. The worst one was in her P.S. in which she alluded to fact that she didn’t want to turn back the clock, no matter how complicated things had gotten — “I don’t want to put the genius back in the bottle.” Futile effort, that one, trust me.
Transpo, the South Bend public bus line, didn’t have a policy about what ads it wouldn’t take, except that it would deny space for ads deemed “controversial,” which was thought to be constitutionally challengeable on grounds of vagueness. So it felt compelled to let atheists put up a bunch of ads, which upset everybody. So now it has a new advertising policy:
Reportedly, they will deny ad space for the promotion of ”cigarettes, churches, politicians, guns or porn.”
Well, you certainly can’t say that’s not specific. Some people might object to politicians and churches being lumped in with cigarettes, guns and porn, but, hey, you can’t be too careful if you want to avoid controversy. But what happens if somebody like PETA wants to put one of its very graphic posters, which don’t have anything to do with cigarettes, churches, politicians, guns or porn? What if somebody wants to put up a poster promoting the use of medical marijuana? What about animals’ right to use marijuana, huh? Well, you can see the problem with being too specific.
State legislators have gotten themselves into a tight corner. They have only until June 30 to pass a budget during the special session or risk seeing much of state government shut down. The House and Senate have each passed a version of the bill, so they now have five days to reconcile the two. You’d think they’d be feverishly meeting at all hours of the night and day to make sure they don’t blow the deadline. But House Democrats apprarently have more important things on their minds:
. . .but most of the hearing was spent taking public testimony from university presidents, social services advocates and others worried about seeing their funding cut.
That frustrated Republicans on the panel, who said there had been ample time devoted to public testimony throughout the year.
“Time grows very short and we need to get down to the nitty gritty of working out these details,” said Senate Tax Chairman Brandt Hershman, R-Wheatfield.
OK, you’ve made your point. Education is vital, and you love educators. All those people waiting for state money are going to be hurting. You’re compassionate! We get it. Quit the damn posturing (you’ve done quite enough to ensure continued money and support from the teachers’ union) and get to work on the budget.
City Council President Tom Smith: Let’s try not to use our electronic devices during council sessions; people find it distracting and disrespectful.
Council member Tim Pape: Shut up and quite bothering me while I’m reading my text messages.
That’s what he was doing, too. He even seemed amused that, during Smith’s request, he got a text from a constituent expressing disapproval of such an unreasonable request:
Tension grew as he questioned Smith’s request, wondering if anything and everything that could be considered poor decorum should fall under this request, or just the use of electronic devices.
“I’m just asking for this one element [of decorum],” answered Smith.
“So, if someone sighs because they’re tired of someone going on too long, that’s a different element of decorum?” Pape challenged.
Well, the difference, if I may, between sighing sarcastically (which Pape happens to be very good at) and other breaches of decorum is not in the degree of rudeness. It’s that using electronic devices is a way of saying that whatever is going on at the moment is not worthy of one’s full attention. And, guess what, people who can’t give up their devices for even a minute tend not to give their full attention to anything. You don’t have to look very far in government to see evidence of a whole lot of politicians not paying attention to w whole lot of things. The last thing we need is for a council member to go out of his way to not pay attention.
Turn the damn thing off during the meetings, Tim. Your constituents will give you all the love and adoration you deserve, even if they can’t text you right this very instant.
Whoops! Looks like the 2012 presidential field just got thinned by one:
South Carolina’s wandering governor, Mark Sanford, said today he had an affair with an Argentine woman and that was why he disappeared without telling anyone he went to South America.
“The bottom line is this: I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” he said. “I’ve developed a relationship with a dear dear friend from Argentina.”
Speaking at a nationally televised news conference, Sanford apologized to his wife, his four boys, his family and the people of South Carolina for his disappearance and for leaving his staff and family to make up excuses for his absence. Sanford’s staff had insisted at one point that he was off hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
Mark, Mark, Mark, how many times you gotta be told? You bring your “dear friend” from Argentina to see you; you don’t go see her, especially if you think it might be neat to just take off without telling anybody. As I’ve said befoere (notably during the Clinton administration, when there were so many opportunities to say such things), it’s not the sex, it’s the judgment. I have to admit, though — flying off for a fling beats hiking any day.
It’s nice to learn that public officials in northwest Indiana still take their civic responsibilities seriously:
Former Mayor Robert A. Pastrick owes East Chicago damages totaling somewhere between $3 and $108,998,876.30, say attorneys in the landmark civil racketeering case against the legendary Northwest Indiana political boss.
Wow — $3 or $109 million. That’s quite a spread even taking into account the brazen posturing of each side. I’d think the former mayor would be embarrassed to even use the $3 figure — that barely counts as miscaluclation, let alone corruption. After the demonstrations started in Iran, one wag commented that the leaders might be regretting having “overstolen” the election. Pastrick may end up regretting that his legal team oversold his innocence.
Two Muslim inmates in the Terre Haute federal prison are getting some help from the ACLU:
Two Muslim inmates held in a special unit at the federal prison in Terre Haute say they aren’t allowed to pray in groups as often as their religion commands and have asked a federal judge to ease worship limits imposed by the Bureau of Prisons.
[. . .]
Muslims are required to pray five times a day, but the lawsuit, filed on behalf of inmates Enaam Arnaout and Randall T. Royer, says inmates in the CMU are allowed to pray as a group just one hour a week. The ACLU claims that violates a federal law barring the government from restricting religious activities without showing a compelling need.
And Terry Nichols – you remember him from the Oklahoma City bombing — thinks the quickest way to God is through his stomach:
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols is asking for a court-appointed lawyer to help him with a lawsuit complaining about the food he gets in prison.
Nichols claims in his suit that the federal Supermax prison in Colorado is causing him to “sin against God” because he doesn’t get enough whole grains and fresh food.
I don’t know what sins against God Nichols is committing now, but I’m sure we can all think of one he committed back when he could get all the whole grains and fresh food he wanted. But it certainly is nice that all these prisoners are so concerned about God. Who says prison can’t rehabilitate people?
People writing about the newly released Nixon tapes seem to be focusing either on his creepy abortion views (they foster permissiveness and break up the family but are sometimes necessary, “like when you have a black and a white or a rape”) or else Watergate and all the intrigue surrounding the Saturday Night Massacre. But this is what I found really disturbing:
Several conversations center on the pressure Nixon placed on South Vietnam’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept the cease-fire agreement. Ken Hughes, a Nixon scholar and research fellow at the Presidential Recordings Project at the University of Virginia, said he was struck by listening on one of the new tapes to Nixon’s telling his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, that to get Thieu to sign the treaty, he would “cut off his head if necessary.”
Mr. Hughes said the conversation bolstered his view that Nixon, Thieu and Mr. Kissinger knew at the time that the cease-fire could not endure, and that it was not “peace with honor,” as Nixon described it, so much as a face-saving way for the United States to get out of the war. In 1975, North Vietnam would violate the cease-fire and conquer South Vietnam.
Speaking of cutting off heads, I wouldn’t mind seeing Kissinger’s on a stick. None of us ever believed the “peace with honor” nonsense, and it’s been clear for a long time that saving face was all that mattered. Oh, well, just names on a wall.
Here’s one of those cases that will have some on my side howling that a criminal got off on a technicality. But if I’m ever suspected of anything, I’d like all those technicalities to be observed:
The Indiana Court of Appeals has reversed a woman’s cocaine possession conviction because the court says the search of her purse by police was unjust.
Tamica Webster was arrested in September 2007 during a traffic stop in South Bend in which an Indiana State Police officer pulled over Webster and her boyfriend on suspicion of speeding.
Pulling someone over for a traffic violation doesn’t give the police carte blanche to do whatever they want to. A police officer first let the woman walk away but later called her back because he believed “she had the car’s registration in her purse.” What would lead him to believe that, since she wasn’t the driver? It was then noticed that the purse “appeared to be stretched,” and the officer “believed she might have a gun.” A stretched purse means it has a gun? That’s, well, a stretch. This sounds like a case in which police went on a fishing expedition, then came up with a lot of after-the-fact cya nonsense.
I didn’t know there were so many brave people in Indiana. A Muncie Star Press editorial praises the fearless in that part of the state:
Five of the seven Delaware County Council members demonstrated courage that is sometimes too rare among public officials Tuesday when they approved a wheel tax. It’s now up to us to ensure our money is spent wisely.
Oh, well, if they’re going to spend it wisely, I guess it’s OK then. The Journal Gazette, meanwhile, is quick to note a “courageous vote” in this corner of the state:
Raising taxes when the economy is in the tank is unquestionably difficult. And Allen County Council members Bob Armstrong, Larry Brown, Roy Buskirk and Maye Johnson deserve praise for making a politically difficult vote in favor of raising wheel taxes to ensure all county bridges remain safe.
[. . .]
Armstrong, Brown, Buskirk and Johnson made the courageous decision to pull the trigger.
Raising taxes “when the economy is in the tank” is NOT “unquestionably difficult.” It is undeniably stupid. If spending other people’s money is all it takes to be honored as brave and courageous, count me in. I could do that all day long.
Now that we’ve cheapened those words so much, what can we possibly call the men and women who put on uniforms and are willing to risk their lives for this country? Just wondering.
The Indiana Senate tweaked a budget proposal Monday and changed a backup plan that would keep state government running even if lawmakers don’t enact a new budget by the June 30 deadline.
[. . .]
The Senate changed the backup plan so that government spending at current levels would continue for two years if a budget agreement isn’t reached. Outnumbered Democrats said the contingency plan should only last one month to pressure lawmakers to pass a new state budget.
One month or two years — not much difference there! Wonder why they couldn’t agree on a budget?
Hoosier lawmakers can’t get together because of all the bunk they spew. “Bunk” is a little-used word these days, probably because it sounds so quaint and old-fashioned, but we really ought to bring it back for exclusive use in describing politics, which is the word’s origin. It comes from Buncombe, a county in North Carolina. When Congress was contentiously debating the Missouri Compromise, all representatives were asked to keep their comments short and to the point. Felix Walker of N.C. declined:
It was then that North Carolina Representative Felix Walker rose to address the House. His colleagues, knowing Walker’s reputation for prolonged and irrelevant oratory, pleaded with him to cut it short — at which point Walker infamously confessed, “I shall not be speaking to the House, but to Buncombe”. It was remarked that his pointless speech “was buncombe,” the saying stuck, and soon “buncombe” became synonymous with vacuous, irrelevant speech. As the new meaning of buncombe grew in use, its phonetic spelling “bunkum” was adopted and eventually shortened to the now familiar word “bunk.”
Our geniuses in Indianapolis can’t speak to each other because they’re too busy speaking to us — the constituents in Allen County or Marion County or Lake County that can get them re-elected. We can only disabuse them of such bunk at the ballot box.
