Hoosier lore

I've posted before that I've been all over the map on the death penalty. When I was in college, I was firmly against it, which is one reason I voted for Otis "Doc" Bowen for governor in the first election I was eligible to vote in here (and the second one ever -- I cast my first vote as a soldier in Texas). He opposed capital punishment because all of his training as a physician was aimed at saving lives. He had even voted in the General Assembly in 1965 to abolish the death penalty.

Gary's can't attract businesses, but it does have a clever plan to grow:

Mayor Rudy Clay wants his city to be able to count Gary residents incarcerated outside the Northwest Indiana city as residents on the 2010 census.

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Who can be against tax breaks for businesses if it means more jobs will be created? How about the businesses that don't get the breaks? How about the taxpayers, when the game of tax-break roulette goes the wrong way?

When the economy boomed, Indianapolis handed Navistar International $18 million in tax breaks for new machinery. But the recession has soured the tax deal for the city.

Lock and load, boys and girls:

Most Hoosiers could take a gun to work as long as the weapon is stored out of sight in a locked vehicle, under legislation enacted Thursday to the delight of gun-rights advocates and the alarm of Indiana businesses.

At least 12 other states, including Kentucky, have passed similar legislation.

Just hanging around, waiting for federal dollars. That'll be just what we need. Oops. Didn't get the high-speed rail money we were hoping for. It's pretty much a fool's dream anyway, some say:

A Kentucky man who lost big in Indiana adds a new twist to the "I'm a gambling addict and the casino should have stopped me" argument:

A gambler lost $75,000 at the former Caesars Casino in Indiana back in 2004, and now he is fighting to have the debt wiped out. Jimmy L. Vance, from Indiana, has sued the casino, claiming they took advantage of his drunk state.

Jasmine Watson is already at the Univeristy of Massachusetts and apparently having a good freshman year, but the Indiana High School Athletic Association case involving her is still alive. When her parents moved from Elkhart to South Bend, the IHSAA ruled her ineligible to play for South Bend Washington because she moved "for athletic reasons," a violation of IHSAA rules. But a court bought her parents' argument that they moved for economic reasons.

There's an interesting dispute going on in the Danville school system, where parents are complaining about the grading scale being too tough. They say they aren't trying to dumb down the schools, but their children are at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to getting into college and that the school system should use the same grading scale as most of the schools around them:

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Homeless people who are living beneath a railroad overpass on Indianapolis' near-east side will be evicted on Monday, three days after Mayor Greg Ballard toured the camp.

[. . .]

Deputy Mayor Robert Vane said the city is not being cold-hearted, but simply putting the safety of area citizens first.

Unless something surprising happens, it looks like U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who represents the Evansville area, will be the Democratic replacement for Evan Bayh in the U.S. Senate race. He campaigns as a centrist and says Congress taxes and spends "wildly and furiously. We need to watch your dime like we all watch our own dime." But then he says, about health care reform: