The Journal Gazetee had an editorial Saturday that contained much I agreed with concerning the ill-conceived No Child Left Behind Act, which was supposed to ensure all students reached state-defined proficiency levels in reading and math by 2014. Such a stunning overreach was bound to fail:
In the end, a great deal of time and money was wasted with little benefit to students, as the national test scores show.
"Birthright citizenship" is irrational public policy, but it doesn't have to remain policy. We just :
Remember Reynolds, Ind.? Gov. Mitch Daniels in 2005 touted it as BioTown USA, the state's first project to make a community "produce enough energy to be self-sufficient." It hasn't quite gone as planned:
Former Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, now president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, is deeply disappointed in his home state:
Helmke's organization recently awarded Indiana just six out of a possible 100 points on its annual state scorecard ratings, which judges each state's gun laws by awarding points for specific categories.
Just whittlin' away here while the world goes by faster and faster. First there was Earth Day. Now, for those with short attention spans:
Icons including the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower and China's Forbidden City will be plunged into darkness on Saturday as millions take part in "Earth Hour", a rolling grassroots movement aimed at tackling climate change.
We ran a George Will column today that mentioned one possible positive outcome from the health care debacle:
During the Democrats' health care monomania, the nation benefited from the benign neglect of the rest of their agenda. Now the nation may benefit from the exhaustion of their appetite for more political risk.
Quick, who is the highest-paid state employee in Indiana? Certainly not the governor, who gets a paltry $95,000; he's not even in the top 3,000 when it comes to base salary (4.5 percent or 3,601 of the state's 80,161 employees make $100,000 or more) No, not Purdue University President France Cordova; she makes $450,000 a year. Indiana Supreme Court justices get $151,328 a year. Give up?
This is more than a little scary:
An East Chicago businesswoman got a hefty tax return this year -- nearly $300,000 -- but federal officials say the money belongs to her clients.
Francesca Foster, 32, and Rosetta Yvonne Buchanan, 35, face charges of stealing information from about 60 clients to file false tax returns, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond.
As noted here earlier, because of Indiana's get-tough-on-crime policies, our state led the nation in the percentage increase in prison population last year, but our legislators won't spend money to add more bed space. That combination (or a judge's order) could lead to the same result here that fiscal problems have brought to the West Coast:
Lord knows I hate sticking up for Joe Biden, but too many people are making way too much of his latest verbal mishap. Especially annoying are those who say he somehow ruined what should have been a momentous occasion:
Experts weigh in:
