If this is really true, good for them:
If they take over the Indiana House, Republicans will launch a major campaign for competitive-oriented education reform in next year's General Assembly.
Look for a big push for grants to low-income families so they can have school choice, and a big boost for charter schools in Indianapolis.
[. . .]
Help, help, the Amish are coming:
People in the Indianapolis area don't see many Amish, but a new study by the Indiana Business Research Center shows Indiana already has a higher concentration than Pennsylvania or any other state.
As someone with libertarian instincts, I probably have some survivalist in me. Sometimes I feel like just getting off the grid, hanging out in the wilderness beyond the reach of government. It never occurred to me, though, to stay in society and merely pretend the forces around me, like the law of the land, didn't apply to me:
Another milestone in the annals of government "job creation":
WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.
[. . .]
The videotaping-cops controversy comes to Indiana:
SOUTH BEND — The recent arrest of a University of Notre Dame student for allegedly fighting with police after trying to videotape a crime scene has raised questions about the legality of recording crime events.
Police say it is increasingly common for people to videotape crime scenes, especially as cell phones and pocket-sized camcorders become more popular.
Criminal genius of the week:
A woman on probation for drunken driving was arrested when she showed up intoxicated to a court-ordered DUI awareness event, police said.
Kristen Hudson, 26, of Edinburgh, smelled of alcohol and was slurring her words when she arrived at the Advocates Against Impaired Driving panel Tuesday evening, police said.
President Obama says the intended Quran burning by that freak and his nutjob followers in Florida would be a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida:
"This could increase the recruitment of individuals who'd be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities."
This is a strange one. From an Indiana University new release (full report is here -- pdf file):
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Cigarette use by Indiana sixth through 12th graders continued to decline, but findings from the 20th Annual Survey of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use also pointed to increases in marijuana use and in tobacco use in pipes.
Boy, bet they'd really freak out over North Side Redskins:
SOUTH BEND — The Saint Joseph's High School Indians could be getting a new mascot.
Vince LaBarbera, spokesman for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, confirmed Tuesday that a meeting will soon take place between Mark Myers, superintendent of schools for the diocese, the principal of the high school and Brian Collier, a local Native American historian who initiated the talk.
[. . .]
To be discussed, he said, is the appropriateness of the mascot.
If you're an older adult planning on emulating the lieutenant govenor and going back to college for that degree, good luck on getting help from the state:
After two decades of consistent growth, adult students -- defined by most educators as those 25 and up -- are now the majority in Indiana.
This story lost me at the very first sentence:
Richard M. Daley's 21-year run as mayor will end next spring with the city broadly reshaped by his vision and unprecedented grip on power, but with his image as Chicago's sure-handed leader increasingly challenged.
Yes, Bush got the ball rolling, but his deficit crimes were mere misdemeanors, and Obama is the felon:
Every time some university reasearchers come out with a whopping big survey designed to show us a great truth based on what several thousand people say they feel about things, it just underscores what a silly designation "social scientist" really is:
They say money can't buy happiness. They're wrong.
At least up to a point.
I think The Journal Gazette's editorial page has discovered a new sin to pin on conservatives: hypocrisy by association. The JG doesn't think much of efforts by a local group to have Allen County Superior Court Judge Ken Scheibenberger thrown off the November ballot:
I've always admired people who are willing to pick themselves up time after time and still try to make something productive out of their lives, no matter how far down they are or how late in life they start the effort:
South Bend firefighter Jordan Jostes is being fired for having a knife at work, and we're talking Crocodile Dundee ("Now, THIS is a knife") proportions:
Jostes, in a written report filed a few days after the knife was discovered, wrote he brought the knife because the duty manual banned firearms and he wanted to have something available for self-defense.
Is Evan Bayh looking smart for getting out so early, or what? A video from "Morning Joe:
We regularly run columns by Indiana Policy Review adjunct scholar Andrea Neal, and I usually find her conservative Hoosier common sense compelling. But she wrote something in her most recent column about wind power that bothered me. She is properly skeptical of wind power's potential, citing the Heritage Foundation's concerns that it is very costly and doesn't reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
When the Brown County Playhouse season closed Aug. 22 with "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," it might truly have been the last.
Indiana University has said it will announce on Friday the closing of the playhouse
