Today's chicken-or-the-egg question: Does being involved in politics make one arrogant, or are arrogant people drawn to politics? Case in point, the Terre Haute city councilman who decided to take the law into his own hands:
Jury selection for 74-year-old Ramon "Turk" Roman is set for March 29 in Greencastle before a special Putnam County judge because a Vigo County judge has recused himself from the case.
Our hyperpartisan divide is starting to spill over into everything. A Hoosier pervert pleaded guilty to posting an obscene message on a 17-year-old female's MySpace page, the and the judge got creative:
As part of his punishment, the judge ordered him to walk up and down Main Street in Petersburg, Ind., wearing a sign of shame.
The sign read, “I sent an obscene message to a minor, and I am truly sorry.“
What a great defense -- the "my affections were not alientated, I was always a cheater" argument. Cynthia Shackelford sued Anne Lundquist, the mistress of her husband Allan, under North Carolina's odd "Alienation of Affection" law for the breakup of her 33-year marriage and was awarded $9 million by a jury:
Enough with the trivialities of health care, the deficit and unemployment! Let's talk about something really important:
I hate giving The Journal Gazette attention so early in the week, but its Political Notebook writers brought up something too good to pass on. It seems Gov. Mitch Daniels challenged some reporters' cultural literacy when he said the General Assembly had played defense more than offense in what turned out to be a "Hippocratic session":
Ah, well. Health care has been reformed, and I feel better already. But "Obamacare" doesn't have quite the ring of "the New Deal" or "the Great Society," does it? In the weeks to come, we're probably going to get as tired of hearing all that's wrong with the package as we got tired of hearing about the ups and downs of its congressional progress.
On ABC this morning, they were babbling about President Obama's "full-court press" on health care reform, and I wondered how many others were using that figure of speech.
I had wondered whether Gov. Mitch Daniels was going to show himself more business-friendly or more Second Amendment-friendly regarding HEA 1065, the legislation allowing employees to keep guns in their locked cars at work. Now we know. He signed the bill today and made a few remarks about it. His statements are in an-email, so I'll just cut and paste the whole thing:
Well, ain't we special?
Mississippi, which has built much of its marketing for more than a decade around being the third largest gaming destination in the country, lost that title in 2009 to Indiana.
The state slipped to fourth place in terms of adjusted gross revenues from commercial gaming. In 2009, Mississippi reported $2.46 billion to Indiana's $2.58 billion.
[. . .]
Chief Justice and Hoosier native John Roberts might be too controversial for Butler University, but he's apparently just fine for Indiana University. On April 7, he'll become the third justice -- but the first chief justice -- to give the annual James P. White Lecture on Legal Education:
