Hoosier lore

Guess all of us with the penny jars might be the smart ones. We can take them to the nearest casino and have hours and hours of fun:

The penny slot machine, once a joke among serious gamblers, is the hottest form of betting during this recession.

This is one I never heard of before:

After an upswing in claims of prescription drug thefts, the Greenwood Police Department is no longer taking most reports of the crime.

Investigators said the majority of the claims are actually from people abusing the drugs, because a police report paves the way for a doctor to issue more prescription medication, 6News' Ben Morriston reported.

People often say of government employees, "Oh, they're nothing but a bunch of crooks." Occasionally, they are right:

Richmond city officials are still unsure how a woman who spent six months in prison for theft and forgery in Madison County, Ind., was hired as office manager at the Richmond Street Department eight months after her release.

What if you invited legislators to a town hall meeting, but nobody came? Well, improvise:

Cardboard cutouts of Senators Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar, who were not present, were carried up to the podium so attendees could address them.

[. . .]

David Long is against a casino in Allen County and, furthermore, has not noticed "any major economic development improvements in any of the cities the casinos have been installed." But, on gambling in general:

Speaking of gambling . . .

It's interesting to periodically take up the books we read as children and teenagers. Lately, I've been revisiting some of Robert Heinlein's juvenile titles. The one I'm reading now is "Podkayne of Mars," which has, among other things, a skewering of capitalism run amok ala Las Vegas. There is a certain Dom Pedro Casino on Venus that claims to have "EVERY KNOWN DIVERSION IN THE UNIVERSE." It has the following sign outside the gambling sector.

Just because you have the right to possess in one state, that doesn't mean you have the right to carry in another. No, not guns:

 A Michigan man learned the hard way that a medical marijuana card doesn't apply to individual bags and a cereal box of pot in Indiana.

The Indianapolis Star notes in an editorial that the state's two racinos are pleading poverty and asking for a tax break, the second time they have "tried to escape an agreement they freely entered into last year." I have no special love for the racinos, and I think gambling has done more harm than good in Indiana. But I wonder about this reasoning, in the editorial's final paragraph:

At Mark Souder's health care town hall meeting Friday, former City Councilman Dr. John Crawford succinctly identified a major problem with Obamacare and similar proposals:

Suppose we have a higher percentage of women living in trailer parks than most states?