Politics and other nightmares

From Hot Air, no elaboration needed.

From Salon, via Reason, a report on a wave of "pretentious, talentless, ironic, beard-wearing 'artists' charing their stupid and expensive began diets to the taxpayer."

She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away."...

I've disagreed with Kathleen Parker a few times in the last year, but it's hard to argue with this:

Deem and pass -- or sneak and sprint -- may be legal, but is it right?

It's right only if your goal is to beat a deadline and pass something -- anything -- regardless of how imperfect the result. Even the majority of Americans who oppose the bill don't know the half of it, because almost no one does.

There is at least one trend Indiana is bucking. The number of inmates in U.S. prisons has dropped for the first time since 1972. There were 1,403,091 prisoners as of Jan. 1, down 5,739 or .4 percent from a year ago. The number of prisoners decreased in 27 states and increased in 23. Guess which group we're in:

In 23 states, the number of prisoners increased in 2009 — notably in Indiana by 5.3 percent and in Pennsylvania by 4.3 percent.

[. . .]

So, if I say this health care reform plan, as big and monstrous as it is, is just a foot in the door for the statists who want to rule our lives, that it will just be the beginning of what they intend to do, I'm probably just a rightwing paranoid crank, right? But what if Nancy Pelosi says it?

Teacher salaries are believed to be a major sticking point in Fort Wayne Community Schools efforts to cut $15 million from the budget, even if giving up raises and step increases would save a certain number of teachers' jobs. But they seem to have gotten over that hump in Kokomo:

This ought to raise a few eyebrows.

Could it be that Indianapolis is even more prudish than Fort Wayne? The Marion County Alcoholic Beverage Board unanimously voted against a permit for the Show-Me restaurant and sports bar:

Lot of people in the news lately because they feel their rights aren't being respected. In Fort Wayne, some Burmese are mad because a laundromat put a sign on the door telling them to keep out, and a city councilwoman is upset because she can't get her proposal introduced to add the transgendered to the city's anti-disctrimination ordinance. Elsewhere in Indiana, a high school valedictorian wants to stop a student-led prayer at graduation because it would violate his First Amendment right to be free from religion.

Somebody apparently forgot to tell Judge Jennifer Evans-Koethe of LaPorte about the need for dignity and decorum and that "I'm sorry" doesn't cover everything.

Evans-Koethe's troubles began in December 2008, shortly before she was to be sworn in as judge.

After a night of drinking, Evans-Koethe and her husband, Stephan Koethe, got into an argument.

She said she accidently shot herself after retrieving a gun to make her husband think she was contemplating suicide.