Hoosier lore

The juxtaposition of the day is for all you dog lovers out there. First, we have the story of a brave woman's demise:

Police in western Indiana say a woman trying to remove her injured dog from a highway was struck and killed by a vehicle.

Bobby Knight might have a promising second career as an ESPN analyst if only he can learn to speak his mind once in a while:

"People ask me,

Quicher whining, Gary, and learn how to cope with the property tax caps:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wants struggling cities like Gary to consider merging with other local governments to become more efficient and reduce costs.

We've wasted a lot of time here talking about consolidated government that's probably never going to happen. The way things have been shaping up over the "shared space needs" fiasco, we'll be lucky if city and county officials don't start killing each other. In the meantime, Evansville and Vanderburgh County residents seem to have realized that current fiscal restraints might be a good reason to consider changing business as ususal:

On January 5, the public will get its chance to sound off on the issue.

A "self-proclaimed vampire leader" (can there be any other kind?), despite claiming to follow vampire law and therefore being "exempt from traditional laws," has been sentenced to more than two years in jail for threatening to impale and dismember a judge and decapitate the judge and his wife and children.

It's nice that Indiana House and Senate leaders finally seem to be serious about ethics reform, but House Speaker Pat Bauer has to go and spoil the moment with a statement so absurd that at first it seems like an attempt at surrealist humor:

Go for broke, I say:

Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts have been down this road before: unbeaten after 13 games, chasing perfection and wondering what to do next. . . .

Back off or keep pushing? . . .

A 12-year-old boy in Gary left home with a gun, and he was later found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Now, everybody is trying to figure out what happened to someone who "never showed any signs that he was troubled."

Dateless? Can't get to sleep? TV boring? Go to school, then:

Ivy Tech Community College says it will offer "moonlight madness" classes at its downtown Indianapolis campus this spring semester, which begins Jan. 11. Classes will run from 9 p.m. to midnight.

I've written several times, the most recent being Saturday, that we can't ignore the death penalty:

One thing I do know for sure is that we should pay attention to every execution, to all the details mundane and profound, from the last meal to the last words. The death penalty is carried out in our name. The executions are done because we (a large majority, according to polls) want them done. We can't just let them pass unnoticed.