In the aftermath of a school bus crash into a bridge that killed the driver and a 5-year-old, Michael LaRocco, the Indiana education department's director of school transportation, says he would love to require safety belts on every school bus, but the state just can't afford it:
Happy Pi Day! You've read the numbers, now watch the video.
Sadly, this isn't exactly shocking, merely dismaying:
President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.
This is rich. Jane Fonda is one three "feminist activists" who think the government should crack down on Rush Limbaugh:
Their argument is that Mr. Limbaugh’s use of the words “slut” and “prostitute” to describe Georgetown University Law student Sandra Fluke is par for Rush’s rhetorical course. He uses words like that all the time, they say.
Good thing the Supreme Court has already upheld Indiana's voter ID law -- the Justice Department is serious about challenging states who have more recently adopted the requirements. About the fight in Texas, this observer notes that neither side's claims ring completely true. Fraud surely isn't as big a probelm as Republicans claim, and disenfranchisement on the scale claimed by Democrats is preposterous. And all that aside:
Over at the Daily Beast, an account of Richard Lugar's "first tough primary camaign in his Senate career."
Point made:
Mourdock and his followers have been highlighting the fact that although Lugar votes in Indiana, he hasn’t actually lived there since 1977, when he sold his home in Indianapolis, where he’d served two terms as mayor, and bought one in the posh Washington suburb of McLean, Va.
Mitt Romney is trying to turn into a Southerner for the upcoming Albama and Mississippi primaries, "learning to say 'y'all' and 'I like grits.' " But he's struggling a tad:
He greeted voters in Jackson, Miss., last week with a hearty "Morning, y'all!" and said he started the day with "a biscuit and some cheesy grits."
Here's the odd story of the day. Dark and dour Richard Nixon had a gushy, mooshy side:
Nixon shared the stage with Patricia Ryan in a community theater production and six of the dozens of letters they exchanged during their two-year courtship will be unveiled Friday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum as part of an exhibit celebrating the 100th birthday of the woman Nixon playfully called his "Irish gypsy."
This isn't exactly the most startling revelation of the year:
In fact, two-thirds of the 34 people killed in the catastrophic March 2 tornadoes in Indiana and Kentucky died in mobile homes. Such housing makes up only 14 percent of the housing in Kentucky and 6 percent in Indiana.
[. . .]
Predictions about the future are best taken with a grain of salt -- you've seen some of the ones from the past that have been spectacularly and sometimes hilariously wrong about what today would be like. Still, they're fun to read, and Michio Kaku is not someone to dismiss lightly:
Assisted suicide cases usually involve acquiescing to a loved one's request for help in ending unendurable pain or misery. Then there's the case of former Harrison County police officer John Britton, who has reached a plea agreement in the assisted suicide of his wife:
Thirty years after a powerful gun-control movement swept the country, Americans are embracing the idea of owning and carrying firearms with a zeal rarely seen since the days of muskets and militias.
Two legal scholars debate whether we should have a new constitutional convention and start from scratch. University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson says yes, noting that Thomas Jefferson himself warned against treating the Constitution as "too sacred to be touched." But I'm more persuaded by the arguments of New York University law professsor Richard Epstein, who says a convention would introduce a degree of uncertainty that would make matters worse rather than better:
Juxtaposition of the day. Make of it what you will.
Thursday’s squeaker of a Senate vote on the Keystone XL pipeline serves both as a warning to President Barack Obama that a majority of both houses of Congress supports the pipeline and as encouragement to Republicans to keep pushing the issue.
On Sunday, it will be time to set your clocks an hour ahead, but don't wait till then or you'll be doomed!
To keep your sleep schedule on track through the time change, Loyola University sleep specialist Dr. Sunita Kumar recommends gradually pushing your bedtime earlier in increments of 10 to 15 minutes on the days leading up to it — it’s how astronauts prepare for space travel.
Nice to see we have our share of the wealth. Four Hoosiers are among the new Forbes list of the world's top billionaires:
Ranking the highest among Hoosiers, Gayle Cook, 78, the widow of medical device maker and philanthropist William Cook, took the place of her late husband in the 330th spot with a fortune of $3.4 billion.
Did you feel the effects this morning of the solar storm that shook our magnetic fields "like a snow globe"?
After hurtling through space for a day and a half, a massive cloud of charged particles is due to arrive early Thursday and could disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services, especially in northern areas. But the same blast could also paint colorful auroras farther from the poles than normal.
I'm always against absolutism! Sorry, couldn't resist. This is an interesting and persuasive article in defense of Grover Norquist-style antitax absolutism:
This little bit of fluff at Forbes is under the headline, "How Peyton Manning got Indiana Kids To Think Football Is Cool":
