Hoosier lore

The surest way to keep Asian carp from gaining a foothold in the Great Lakes is to cut the link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River Basin, the navigational locks at Chicago. That would protect the $ 7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry from the carp invasion. But it would not please the barge operators who move millions of tons of commodities on the Chicago-area waterways each year. So the Obama administration has come up with a $78.5 million plan that nobody likes:

Dan Coats is getting pounded by Democrats for not being a "real Hoosier" because he votes and pays taxes in Virginia and has to move back to Indiana to run against Evan Bayh, leasing a house in Indianapolis. "Evan Bayh has an Indiana driver's license; Dan Coats has a Virginia driver's license," says Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, as if that settles everything.

Bobby Knight is giving the commencement address at Trine University, and a lot of sportswriters are having a lot of !$%^#&* fun with the idea. Here's, for example, via NPR, is the "10 Greatest Bobby Knight Soundbites."

It's official. Dan Coats is in the race against Evan Bayh:

"I'm going to put my heart and soul into this, because I don't think Hoosiers are supporting what's going on in Washington," Coats told the Indiana radio station WOWO. "I think they need an alternative and that's why I'm here."

Hang in there, Colts! Even though you lost the Super Bowl, we still love you! We are proud of you, and we can't wait to . . . Oh, never mind:

The end of the Indianapolis Colts' season came down to 11 people.

Those mean old taxpayers just don't understand that we need their money to do good things for them. But if that's what they want, sniffle, sniffle, well, all right, guess we won't fight it. Boy are they gonna miss us when we're gone:

State legislators didn't waste much time this year before deciding to put Indiana's property tax caps on the November ballot.

Indiana is a leader!

Indiana has about 6,000 public pedestrian and highway railroad grade crossings, which is more than all but four other states. Because of the high number of highway-rail conflict points, Indiana is consistently among the top states with the most railroad crossing crashes. During 2008, there were 139 highway-rail crashes in Indiana, resulting in 44 injuries and 19 fatalities.

I've figured out why the Colts lost the Super Bowl. It's amazingly simple when you think about it, and it all goes back to this one play:

The Saints coach made all the right moves, most notably calling for an onside kick to start the second half, depriving the Colts of the ball when Indianapolis had a 10-6 lead and changing the tone of the game.

The prospect of Dan Coats running against Evan Bayh is getting predictable hoots of derision from the lefty blogosphere. But there are some grumblings on the right, too, as in this post from redstate.com:

If the best the Republican Party of Indiana can do is retread old horses who put themselves out to the pasture to begin with, we're screwed.

Sometimes when I get mired in the relatively boring politics of northeast Indiana, I miss the gleeful graft and corruption practiced routinely in The Region. The latest case is from East Chicago, where Mayor George Pabey is accused of getting a little extra out of city employees: