Politics and other nightmares

"It's a strange old world" department:

It has been said there are three kinds of lies --  lies, damned lies and statistics. Maybe we should add a fourth worse than the other three -- the "stolen valor" kind, which, at least as far as an appeals court panel is concerned, are not unconstitutional.

A three-year-old federal law that makes it a crime to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military is unconstitutional, an appeals court panel in California ruled Tuesday.

A little quiet corruption (Shhh! We wouldn't want to upset anybody) apparently accepted as "business as usual" throughout the Indiana legal system: Civil asset forfeiture is, at best, a morally questionable practice by authorities in seizing the property of people not even convicted of a crime (who then find it almost impossible to get their property back even if they're cleared).

Those of us who are either worried or ecstatic about the prospect of a one-term Obama presidency should calm down, says The Journal Gazette's Tracy Warner. Other presidents have looked bad halfway through their first terms and recovered quite nicely:

In August of his second year as president, his approval rating dipped to 39 percent, partly because he was so heavily criticized over his plan for health care reform.

Fort Wayne is one of several Indiana jurisdictions considering a ban on the synthetic marijuana know variously as K2, Spice and Mr. Smiley, and pressure is building for Indiana to join the eight other states that have banned it. But South Bend Prosecutor Michael Dvorak says the substance fits the description of an "analog drug" and is therefore already illegal under state law:

We do not need to wait for a legislative fix in Indianapolis," Dvorak said during a news conference in May.

Former Fort Wayne mayor and prominent gun-control advocate Paul Helmke thinks a "leaderless ATF" has chosen the wrong target:

As I've mentioned before, terrorists have ludicrously easy access to guns in this country.

[. . .]

Got an e-mail about Purdue University from CampusReform.org, which does profiles of university political leanings. Purdue, the group says, has 15 liberal student groups and eight conservative groups. It invited Bill Ayers to be a distinguished guest speaker. In the 2008 election, its professors gave 85 percent of their political donations to Democratic candidates and just 15 percent to Republicans.

I thought The Journal Gazette's editorial Sunday on traffic tickets was thoughtful and well-said, and I found myself largely in agreement with it right up until the unfortunate last sentence.

Oh, for Pete's sake:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Protesters have been rallying outside Target Corp. or its stores almost daily since the retailer angered gay rights supporters and progressives by giving money to help a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. Liberal groups are pushing to make an example of the company, hoping its woes will deter other businesses from putting their corporate funds into elections.

But with all due respect, a majority of Americans are also saying "no" pretty loudly and clearly: