Predictably, there isn't much comfort for newspapers in the latest Pew study of Americans' news habits. The Internet is said to be the third most popular news platform, behing local television news and national television news. Of course, much of what's consumed on the Internet comes from newspapers, but we still haven't found a way of making money on it.
But the study does provide a hint that worries about people turning away from the news may have been overstated:
They're going to have a "community conversation' in Evansville beween veterans and civilians about their "varying relationships with combat" and their "loss of loved ones" or struggles "to support a veteran who has returned." The sessions will be "facilitated" by someone "trained in dialogue," which gives the exercise a strange 1970s encounter-group feel:
I wondered when they would get around to this:
The head of the Fort Wayne Community Schools' teachers union reacted cautiously today to a call for his members to join the district's administrators in accepting a pay freeze as part of $15 million in spending cuts.
Today's game is "spot the liberal."
The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened.
The purpose of the ex post facto clause of the Constitution is to prevent authorities from punishing people for acts that weren't a crime at the time they were committed. That seems as straightforward a principle as can be. "Just think about it in terms of olden days when a king could suddenly banish everyone who wore red the day before."
The claim that these are the funniest headline fails "of all time" may be a bit of an exaggeration, but they're worth checking out for a yuck or two. My favorite:
Hundreds of less-than-progressive Harlan residents show up at a meeting on incorporation and say no thank you to the idea of becoming a town:
Opponents feel the costs would outweigh the benefits.
They say incorporation would mean higher property taxes but services, like fire and police protection, wouldn't improve much.
When it comes to assisted suicide, most jurisdictions in this country still make it a crime (34 states, including Indiana, explicitly by aw, and nine through common law). Three staters (North Carolina, Utah and Wyoming) have abolished the common law of crimes and have no statutes criminalizing assisted suicide. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court has ruled that assisted suicide is not a crime. In Virginia, there is no clear case law, but there are civil sanctions against assisted suicide.
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto on Scott Brown:
If Scott Brown is a RINO, any conservative with a semblance of sanity should drop to his knees and say a prayer of thanks for the creation of RINOs. If the species didn't exist, Sen. Martha Coakley would be the 60th vote in favor of ObamaCare. No, scratch that. She'd be the 62nd vote for ObamaCare, the 60th and 61st coming from the Maine Democrats who would have soundly defeated whatever "real" Republicans ran in place of Snowe and Collins.
Public service advertising campaigns that use guilt or shame to warn against alcohol abuse can actually have the reverse effect, spurring increased drinking among target audiences, according to new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
[. . .]
The message here seems to be somewhere between "no thanks, mind your own business" and "we're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore":
Within hours of Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-Ind.) retirement announcement last week, establishment Democrats in Indiana and Washington were signaling that Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) was their preferred favorite to succeed him. And by Friday, the last day to file for office, Ellsworth had announced his intention to run for the Senate seat.
Looks like no land-based casinos in Indiana, at least for now. The argument for letting "riverboat" casinos move to dry land was that it would protect the revenue stream we already have, projected to decline by about 35 percent from increased competition in adjacent states. But the argument that won the day was that allowing the moves would amount to continuing the "slippery slope of gaming expansion."
I'll just do the juxtaposing, and you can come up with your own comments. Story 1:
In a sign of possible differences among top military officials, Army and Air Force chiefs voiced concern Tuesday about ending a ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces while the country is in the middle of two wars.
And story 2:
So sad. But once they've matured a little and started using their minds as well as their hearts, they'll come around:
Younger adults, who turned out in unprecedented numbers to help elect Barack Obama to the presidency, say liberalism helps define their generation, a poll found.
Evan Bayh says maybe what Washington needs are more lawmakers like Scott Brown:
Brown's upset victory over a Democrat who held a double-digit lead a week before Massachusetts' special Senate election last month signaled that voters wanted “more practical problem solving,” Bayh said in an interview Monday on ABC-TV's “The View.”
Further proof that we should take what "the experts" say with, well, a grain of salt:
For all the talk about the growing menace of sodium in packaged foods, experts aren't even sure that Americans today are eating more salt than they used to.
[. . .]
WANE-TV had an interesting piece last night on the 700 or so new GM employees who will be starting at the plant. Some of the people who have been working for GM elsewhere in Indiana are taking a wait-and-see attitude about moving here:
"This is my first day so I'm trying to get a feel of it to see what its going to be like" Mike Eley said.
These are heady days for 2nd Amendment fans. Under a new federal law that took effect yesterday, when you're packing for a trip to a national park, you can include heat:
Visitors now can pack heat in any national park from Gates of the Arctic to Everglades, provided they comply with the firearms laws of the park's home state, according to the new law that was passed as an amendment to credit-card legislation.
Goshen College, a "pacifist" school with ties to the Menonite Church, isn't the sort of place I would have gone or recommended my children go to. Its long history of not playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (for some, because it's a "martial" song, for others because it puts country above God) is not a posture I would embrace. But now that the college is going to institute a compromise by playing an instrumental version of the national anthem before some sporting events, I have more sympathy for the protesters than I do for the school. The reason for the compromise is sadly familiar:
