Sigh. The headline on this story about the big compromise in Washington is, "Payroll tax cut deal: Something for everyone?"
Republicans were the ones who made the major concessions - that was giving up their long-held insistence that this payroll tax cut had to be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere.
Tuesday’s Associated Press report that President Obama is considering large cuts in our strategic arsenal is just the latest of this week’s grim news about the president’s national-defense plans.
I've been contending for some time that the subject of same-sex marriage is headed for the Supreme Court and that how it turns out depends solely on the opinion of one person -- Justice Anthony Kennedy. This interesting article from the Witherspoon Institute tries, without much success, to figure out where Kennedy might stand on the issue:
Couple of interesting items elsewhere in the Indiana blogosphere. The propsoal on creationism died in the House after passing the Senate, and Doug at Masson's Blog notes that the Associated Press continues to misreport the story thusly: "A bill that would have specifically allowed Indiana’s public schools to teach creationism alongside evolution in science classes has been shelved by the leader of the Indiana House of Representatives."
Remember Ryan Jerome, the ex-Marine from Indiana who could face more than three years in prison for trying to turn his legally-registered-in-Indiana gun in at the Empire State Building? Apparently realizing what a public relations disaster they have, prosecutors are offering a no-jail misdemeanor plea. But Jerome and his attorney, Mark Bederow, want an even better deal:
When everybody was gushing about all the effects from the Super Bowl that would spread out all over Indiana, this probably wasn't what they were thinking of, huh?
That epicenter was the Super Bowl which took place in Indianapolis on February 4th.
Since then, there have been 13 reported cases of measles.Dr. Bohlin said patients won't see symptoms for about 7 to 14 days after they are infected.
Not exactly a stunning revelation:
CHICAGO (CBS) — A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country.
Chris Chocola, former Indiana congressman and president of the Club for Growth, writes in the National Review that it's time to bring Richard Lugar home:
Chris Chocola, former Indiana congressman and president of the Club for Growth, writes in the National Review that it's time to bring Richard Lugar home:
Gonna be a lot of turnover in the General Assembly this year. In the House, 12 Democrats and seven Republicans have decided not to seek re-election, and on the Senate side, two Republicans are retiring. The Indianapolis Star editorial board this this presents "an opportunity to reshape old discussions and perhaps change a culture, especially in the House, that has devolved into partisan bickering and gamesmanship."
Talk about being in a tough spot -- having to depend on your adversary for help. After disputed signatures on his petitions were thrown out, Rick Santorum came up eight votes short of the number of signatures he needed in Congressional District 7. But state law still leaves him on the ballot unless at least three of the four members of the Indiana Election Commission vote to kick him off:
Wow. Grover Norquist certainly has a low opinion of the GOP presidential field:
I've finally moved the "About" and "Mission statement" pages from the old blog site if there are some of you who never got around to reading them and still want to. I wouldn't change anything about them from the wording I came up with in 2005, except this, in the section on the things I hoped to accomplish with the blog.
I intend to open up the editorial-page process a little . . .
Earlier this month, we learned that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wouldn't recommend our own Constitution as a model for other countries considering one, because, you know, it's really too old to be relevant today, and it doesn't guarantee nearly enough rights, and it's much too hard to change. That seemed to me to betray a complete ignorance of what a constitution should be -- a bedrock of principles upon which the law is erected.
Sorry, campus cowboys; you'll have to keep leaving the shootin' irons home:
A bill that would have allowed guns on Indiana college campuses is dead.
The bill authored by Sen. Jim Banks, of Columbia City, failed to get a hearing in the Legislature. Banks said students have a constitutional right to protect themselves and pointed out that Wisconsin passed a similar measure.
Further proff, if anybody still needs it, that we live in a culture that sometimes values style over substance, the symbolic over the real, the aesthetic over the functional, appearances over meaning . . . well, you get the idea. After a prolonged controversy over an abbreviated quote on the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, the National Park Service has announced it will replace the abridgment ("I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness") with the full quote -- "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice.
In its "Weekly scorecard" feature on the Saturday editorial page, the Journal Gazette put this item on Richard Lugar in the Tossups catetory instead of the Losers category:
The senator’s lack of a true residence in Indiana is legal – but it looks bad in an election year, particularly after disclosures that taxpayers paid for his hotel rooms when he visited the Hoosier state.
If the bible your profession goes by is "silly" and "worrying and dangerous," how valuable is the service you provide?
Millions of healthy people - including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives and people with fetishes - may be wrongly labeled mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists said on Thursday.
It was William F. Buckley Jr. who said he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty at Harvard. In that spirit:
Federal spending outrage of the day:
