Welcome to the wonderful world of the unfiltered Internet, where legitimate history resides side by side with vicious fantasies:
A video showing a longtime supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton using slurs to describe Hoosiers spread through the Web like a virus Friday, triggering a firestorm of protest before the video was finally exposed as a hoax.
It was just the latest example of how the Internet is changing politics.
Well, I'm 0 for 2, sort of. I predicted a year ago that John McCain would be the first candidate on the discard pile. Then, last week, I said The Journal Gazette would most likely endorse Barack Obama. But I didn't exactly lose that one:
The Indianapolis Star follows The News-Sentinel's example and endorses Hillary Clinton:
As impressive as Obama appears, he is still in his first term in the U.S. Senate, and only four years ago was serving as an Illinois state senator. His inexperience in high office is a liability.
I frequently criticize the ACLU of Indiana, so it's only fair to give them credit when it's due. Remember Keith John Sampson, the IUPUI student employee who was brought up on racial harassment charges for daring to read a book that his colleagues didn't think he should be reading in front of him? The school backed down after all the embarrassing publicity but not in a way that admitted any wrongdoing. In fact, it sort of hinted that Sampson had better watch it in the future.
Hoosier superdelegate Joseph Andrew, as all political junkies know by now, has violated the rule of sticking with the one you brought to the dance and ditched Hillary for Barack. Lots of people have lots of things to say about that, so I'll just remark on his unintended perfect description of what the Democratic Party is about these days:
It's always interesting to see ourselves as others see us. This is from The Economist magazine of England:
Tony Zirkle, the Republican congressional candidate who didn't see anything wrong with speaking to a bunch of Nazis in Chicao on Hitler's birthday, is the gift that just keeps on giving for Hoosier Democrats:
Zirkle, who is seeking the GOP nomination for the state's 2nd Congressional District, believes — among other things — that whites are victims of a "genocide," that the races should be segregated into different states and that pornography is a Jewish plot against women.
Usually, when it is said of a woman that she really has a set, this isn't the mental picture we get:
I've gotten a lot of feedback on our editorial "endorsing" Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, including some from a good friend who has given up a large part of her personal life to volunteer for Obama. (I offered her a guest column spot if she wanted to write a rebuttal, so stay tuned for that possibility.)
I don't believe in miracles, but, damn::
SUFFOLK, Va. - It was a scene of haphazard destruction that stretched for 25 miles: Row upon row of homes reduced to sprays of splintered lumber, shopping centers stripped to bare metal, parking lots turned into junk yards.
And yet no one died.
"The only thing I can say is we were watched over and blessed," Fire Chief Mark Outlaw said.
