Hoosier lore

People are freaking out over revelations that the Lucas Oil Stadium's food service has been cited 42 times and fined $3,900 for, among other things, the presence of mice and mice feces.

If I get the flu, I should stay home so I don't infect my co-workers. But if I do that, I might make my cats sick:

EVANSVILLE, IN (WFIE) - A cat in Iowa has the H1N1 flu, most likely caught from it's owners. The cat is recovering, but as 14 News found, viruses are spread much easier between pets and their owners than most people think.

[. . .]

Hoosiers are just a bunch of anti-tax yahoos. We dare not give them the power of a referenum and actually let them vote on scool building projects or big tax increases -- nothing would ever be approved again!

Voters in Indiana's fastest-growing community have overwhelmingly approved a referendum giving its school district an extra $5.5 million a year in property tax revenue for the next seven years.

So, next year, Mark Souder is going to face a primary challenge from somebody running to his right:

. . . to hear Phil Troyer tell it - it's time to lower the curtain on a supposedly conservative politician who has forgotten his roots.

Is Mark Souder, who just this week blasted a possible government takeover of the health care industry, really a liberal? Troyer, who announced his candidacy for Souder's 3rd District congressional seat, seems to think so.

Is Elkhart noisier than all other Indiana cities, or are they just obsessed about the issue?

Drivers in the northern Indiana city of Elkhart may want to think twice about pumping up the volume on their car stereos.

The city is aggressively enforcing its noise ordinance, which carries a fine of up to $2,500 for repeated violations. More than 1,100 citations have been issued so far this year.

Hey, just in case you were worried about the old Memorial Stadium not having a useful future:

INDIANAPOLIS -

Hundreds of vehicles destined for the scrap heap are filling what once was the outfield of the former minor league baseball stadium in Indianapolis.

Oprah's TV efforts have always seemed just a heartbeat away from being a freak show, and now she dives into the slime bucket head first:

WESTVILLE -- A month from the day he is set to be executed at the Lakeside Correctional Facility, Matthew Eric Wrinkles will appear on national television, confronting the family of his victims and Oprah Winfrey.

Jenny Kephart, the woman with the "How dare you not do your duty to keep me from hurting myself" lawsuit, keeps plodding along, and her case against the casino that took her for $1 million will be heard by the Indiana Supreme Court. UPI dug up a professor who says there must be something about the case that distinguishes it from similar cases in which the casinos have won. But it sounds like the same old "everybody's fault but mine" argument to me:

19-year old Alison Lesch of Auburn faces a preliminary charge of attempted murder for putting her hours-old newborn daugher in a garbage bag and leaving her in a Dumpster. It is being suggested that she could have avoided the whole unpleasantness of being arrested if she had just been thinking clearly:

It's not absolute, but we have something called the "American bystander rule." (pdf file) In the United States in general, we do not have have a legal duty to intervene if someone else is in danger (regardless of whatever moral duty we might or might not have). Would we be better served with something like the Good Samaritan rule in Europe and some jurisdictions here that requires intervention, at least of the level of reporting a crime?