If this is accurate, it's pretty encouraging:
Hours before the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, a showdown that will focus on domestic issues, a new national survey indicates that Americans have undergone some major changes on the basic questions concerning the size and role of the federal government.
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For the "questions we never thought to ask" file:
It’s the first week of fall—or perhaps I should say “autumn.” How did autumn become the only season with two names?
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Thank you, Evan Bayh, and good riddance:
One of the tragedies of the Obama Administration is the historic political accident that it had 60 Senate Democratic votes in 2009. The ability to break a filibuster without Republican votes empowered the left to think it could pass anything, and so it steamrolled ahead with ObamaCare, which needed every one of those 60 votes to pass.
Well, Mr. Lugar, we know there's at least one person who's gonna miss you:
U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren went at each other like prizefighters in this Golden Gloves town, jabs and roundhouses over her Native American heritage claims, his ties to the GOP and who really cares about the middle class.
[. . .]
Think twice the next time you play a videogame or surf the Net: ‘Internet-use disorder’ is set to be added to the list of mental illnesses in the worldwide psychiatric manual. Kids are identified as being especially at risk.
Yes, there is a libertarian case to be made for Mitt Romney:
Obama sees it as his job to add every day to the Rube Goldberg device that Washington has grown into, while simultaneously throwing sand into its gears. If that seems like a contradictory notion, or even a sick notion — it is. But we’ve watched Obama do just that for four years now. How much more can it, can we, take?
I got a kick out of this report on WANE-TV about the Verizon outage Friday morning:
For five hours Friday, several Verizon customers in the Fort Wayne area didn't have service. Service has since been restored, but without the use of a cell phone, many people had a tough time communicating.
Frankly, I'm surprised even 9 percent cooperate:
For decades survey research has provided trusted data about political attitudes and voting behavior, the economy, health, education, demography and many other topics. But political and media surveys are facing significant challenges as a consequence of societal and technological changes.
For the "now I've heard everything" file:
The former pastor of an Indiana megachurch has admitted having three sexual encounters with a parish girl, but told a judge he didn't realize at the time that his actions were illegal.
Jack Schaap, who's 54, told a judge during Wednesday's plea hearing that he first had sex with the girl when she was 16.
Holy cow, an honest-to-goodness newspaper war in New Orleans:
When The Times-Picayune decided to print three days a week, a nearby publication saw a chance to expand in the newspaper's backyard and fill a void that for some in the New Orleans area is as much a part of the morning routine as beignets and French coffee.
What with obsessing over the replacement refs (hey, a guy has to have priorities) and interviewing the first batch in the horde of candidates for the November election, I fear I may have missed some major news events I should have blogged about this week. But I'm certainly glad I caught this one, and all I can say is, "Whew!"
From a thoroughly depressing analysis by The Associated Press:
Richard Mourdock became one of the tea party's biggest winners of the 2012 primary season when he knocked off veteran Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar in a brutal campaign built on his contention that Lugar was too old, too out of touch and too friendly with Democrats – a RINO, Republican in name only.
It's confirmed -- 45 percent of New Jersey residents are morons:
It’s by a narrow margin, but New Jersey voters actually do support a proposed law that would require dog owners to put their animal in a safety restraint or crate when in the car.
The Journal Gazette is upset that recent state restrictions on local gun control make it "more likely people will be carrying guns when they vote."
Most citizens with gun permits know that the Second Amendment exists to protect a person’s right to self-defense. It’s not intended to encourage people to display guns brazenly in public in a way that will intimidate or frighten innocent people.
This week's sign that End Times are near:
If this is true, it's a reason to be at least a little hopeful for the future of this country:
This is a pretty big deal, huh?
An influential Indiana lawmaker intends to sponsor a bill next session that would reduce penalties for people found in possession of small amounts of marijuana.
What could possibly go wrong?
CHICAGO — When Karen Freeman-Wilson was elected the mayor of Gary, Ind., last year, she found herself confronting some grim truths about her hometown. Revenues in an already emaciated city budget were shrinking by millions of dollars. About a quarter of the buildings, she said, were empty. All the while, people were moving away.
Om CBS's "60 Minutes," Sunday, President Obama responded to Steve Kroft's mention that the national debt has climbed 60 percent on the president's watch by claiming that the defict increase is only 10 percent his fault: "When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90% of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren't paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren't paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depressi
Some things are just so breathtakingly stupefying that it's hard to even know what to say:
In remarks this morning to the Clinton Global Initiative, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed a radical idea: a global tax on elites around the world.
