Politics and other nightmares

In this day and age, when anybody can be with anybody else without fear of embarrassment or recrimination, it's odd to see a story about two people who kept their marriage secret for five years. But that's what Mishawaka Schools Superintendent R. Steven Mills and Joann Shaw, the district's director of literacy programs, did, and for the most old-fashioned of reasons, that people should not supervise people they are married to and people in supervisory positions know this very well.

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and the leadership of the Indiana State Teachers Association are making Washington Democrats and Republicans look like dope-smoking old hippies singing kumbaya around the campfire:

Indiana will bow out of the federal Race to the Top competition after a highly public feud between public schools chief Tony Bennett and the state's teachers' unions.

[. . .]

They're trying to sneak up on it, aren't they?

President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

OK, now this is funny:

Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

In a severe economic downturn, everybody has to make sacrifices. But not everybody deals with it equally. There's the civil, gracious way:

John Dickerson, executive director of Arc of Indiana, says the recent announcement of nearly $90 million in state funding cuts to services for people with developmental disabilities is a call to action. The cuts can spur much-needed change in the delivery and oversight of those services.

To address Indiana's "undereducation" problem (just 16.5 percent of adults between 25 and 64 have a bachelor's degree), Gov. Mitch Daniels has asked more of the state's colleges and universities to offer three-year degree programs (only Ball State and Manchester now do):

Today's doubletalk award:

President Obama said today he doesn't have a "litmus test" for the next Supreme Court nominee, but he supports abortion rights and his choice must "take into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights."

I believe Obama doesn't have a litmus test on abortion rights about as much as I believe the county commissioners weren't aiming at abortion with their registration-of-outside-doctors proposal.

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, a good time for a reminder that a respect for private property, not massive government intervention, is the best prescription for a healthy environment:

There they go again:

Would you let the government take your car and give it to someone else? How about your computer, television set, house, or business? What if the government said you would be paid  yet you had no choice?

Gerald Foday, executive director of the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission, has announced a settlement of the investigation into Ricker Oil Co.'s unfortunate "No Burmese people allowed" sign at a southside laundry: