The Indianapolis Colts are giving us a false sense of hope by taking Peyton Manning off hte "physically unable to play" list:
Manning himself puts little importance on his current consecutive played games streak. He wants to play, and play at a high level.
So, the media hyped the hell out of Hurricane Irene, and then the whole thing sort of fizzled:
The media and the United States federal government [are] trying to live up to their own doom-laden warnings and predictions while a sizeable number of ordinary Americans just carried on as normal and even made gentle fun of all the fuss.
I've always admired Justice Clarence Thomas. Disagree with his judicial or constitutional philosophy, but if you think he's a fool or a poor thinker, you haven't bothered to actually read the things he's written.
The town of Burns Harbor, Ind., is being justifiably criticized for the law it enacted earlier this summer requiring non-residents to get fingerprinted, undero a criminal background check and get a $100 permit before they're allowed to make or sell anything in town, whether on the street, door-to-door or in a brick-and-mortar business:
Further evidence that many Republicans are still hoping for a Superhero Candidate to swoop in to save the day and don't think Rick Perry is the one: For our weekly poll question (results in tonight's paper), we asked readers for their GOP candidate preferences, listing the three front-runners (Perry, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann) and "Someone else" as the fourth choice.
Only Monday and we already have two strong contenders for most preposterous argument of the week. First is this case being made here for the addition of a new civil right -- and, no, it's not from The Onion but From The New York Times:
A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?
Well, this is better than using them to line birdcases or wrap fishes:
The Internet is delivering a slow death to newspapers, but many of us still have piles of the stuff around the house that a microbe called TU-103 will convert to butanol, a biofuel that is nearly as energy dense as unleaded gasoline.
Mike Dooley, a reporter who covered Fort Wayne for 25 years before his retirement in 2006 and worked for both The Journal Gazette and The News-Sentinel, has died at 65:
Reporter Kevin Leininger worked with Dooley at The News-Sentinel and competed against him during Dooley's time at the Journal Gazette.
Andy Downs of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at IPFW has an opinion piece in the Indianapolis Star exploring the obvious but dismaying (to many) fact that "Public policies are the result of compromise."
How much should we consider a presidential candidate's religious beliefs? Writing in The New York Times, Bill Keller thinks it's a very big deal and would like candidates to answer a whole series of questions. Sample:
4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?
He also has candidate-specific questions, such as this one for Mormon Mitt Romney:
With the greater availability of cheap recording devices and the growth of the "citizen journalist" movement, there are more and more clashes between authorities and those trying to document their activities.
I, uh, well, you see, the thing is, um, you know, this means, oh, rats:
Sometimes, a public outcry can have an effect:
Officials at Indianapolis International Airport are reconsidering a decision to take down a three-story sculptural painting and replace it with a video screen that will show advertising.
Plans had been to remove the glass-and-canvas piece called "Chrysalis" from the prominent spot over the main escalators where it has been since the airport's new passenger terminal opened in 2008.
Vice President Joe Biden, on the importance of brevity:
"And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to your own people, it is even more impressive when you have the capacity to do that and communicate your ideas, especially as future business and political and moral leaders of the world in the language of the people to whom you are speaking."
Time for the annual "Boy this makes me feel old" self-flagellation ritual:
The current freshmen entering college who will make up the Class of 2015 have no remembrance of what life was like before the Internet, what this whole Communist Party fuss was about in Russia and that Amazon was once just known as a river in South America.
With Steve Jobs' retirement announcement, a lot is being said about his tremendous successes. But he had a lot of spectacular failures, too, like the Apple I and Lisa. We could learn something by concentrating on those:
This is pretty cool. We're always being told how many species are being made extinct by our damn selfish human behavior. So it's nice to know there's another part of the story:
For centuries scientists have pondered a central question: How many species exist on Earth? Now, a group of researchers has offered an answer: 8.7 million.
Looks like The News-Sentinel and the Indianapolis Star differ slightly on the case of the Rushville teen who barely escaped prison time for what was intended as a harmless prank. Here's our editorial, which is in line with my earlier blog post stressing the consequences of his prank:
A General Assembly study committee is having a hearing today on what to do about the Indiana Supreme Court's hotly denounced ruling that the state's castle doctrine doesn't apply to police acting in good faith, even if they aren't acting lawfully. A Democratic lawmaker reacts a little hysterically:
I hope this Washington Post writer's interpretation is wrong. It's from a blog "with a liberal slant" (their description), so maybe I should take his analysis of a conservative politician with a grain of salt. A lot of us are hoping for a little more than politics as usual this election cycle, and this sounds like anything but:
