I'm afraid someone is going to have to explain this one to those of us in the slow lane:
What was to have been a simple renewal of the historic Voting Rights Act has become snarled in the heated debate involving immigration issues.
Conservative House members tried Wednesday to end a requirement in the 1965 law that bilingual ballots and interpreters be provided in states and counties where large numbers of citizens speak limited English.
Careful what you put in writing -- it will come back to haunt you. Greg Walker, mainly an anti-abortion candidate, didn't really make public flogging part of his successful campaign to unseat longtime Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Robert Garton. But he did, once upon a time, speak favorably of it in a letter to the editor in the Columbus Republic. Now, it's all anybody wants to talk about:
Let's hear it for Allen Superior Court Judge Nancy Boyer. She is one of the eight judges who have agreed to be a part of an 18-month Indiana Supreme Court pilot program to allow trials to be covered with one still camera, one video camera and up to three microphones. Indiana is a little behind the curve on this one; lots of trials in other states have already been opened up to the public by technology.
I think this is right:
Yesterday's immigration protests will be remembered as a turning point. The pro-amnesty, zero-enforcement coalition gambled that it could take to the streets and intimidate the majority of Americans into backtracking on their plans to toughen immigration law. It was a bold gamble for the open-borders bunch - and they lost.
Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards took her time and in the end made the right decision to seek the death penalty against Simon Rios. The death penalty isn't automatic in Indiana just because you kill someone in cold blood -- there have to be aggravating circumstances, in this case the fact that Rios is alleged to have killed more than one person and killed children younger than 12.
This is an issue that has gone unaddressed too long in our legal system:
Until now, the high court has avoided challenges to insanity defense laws, even as states around the country toughened their laws following John Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in the 1981 shooting of President Reagan.
I've always wondered about methadone. It's just as addictive as heroin but doesn't provide the high. What junkie really wants to go for that? It seems like replacing a case-of-beer-a-day habit with O'Doul's. Yeah, please, give me something that tastes awful and makes me pee all night but doesn't give me a buzz.
I can live with this:
The proposal allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty for sex offenders who are convicted twice of raping a child younger than 11.
Currently in South Carolina, murder is the only crime eligible for the death penalty.
For those who wondered how far public officials would try to go in eminent-domain seizures following the Supreme Court's outrageous Kelo decision, the case to watch is the one involving the exclusive Long island country club. Officials want to take it because they think it's a darn nice place and they want to run it themselves, as a public golf course.
There have been so many "teachers having sex with students" stories lately that we tend to skim right over them. But if we stop and read one once in a while, we might find a couple of points to ponder:
