Politics and other nightmares

The Postal Service wants to make drastic changes in its operation, including ending Saturday deliveries, with what can be fairly described as an overly optimistic goal:

It's too bad the stall of a $10 billion bill was engineered by someone with as nasty a personality as Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning. So much of the coverage was focused on the "meanness" of his actions that the underlying point has been all but missed. It was just last month (while, by the way, the debt ceiling was increased to a record $1.9 trillion) that Congress reinstated "pay-go" rules requiring any new spending plans to be offset by equivalent cuts somewhere else.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Homeless people who are living beneath a railroad overpass on Indianapolis' near-east side will be evicted on Monday, three days after Mayor Greg Ballard toured the camp.

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Deputy Mayor Robert Vane said the city is not being cold-hearted, but simply putting the safety of area citizens first.

Unless something surprising happens, it looks like U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who represents the Evansville area, will be the Democratic replacement for Evan Bayh in the U.S. Senate race. He campaigns as a centrist and says Congress taxes and spends "wildly and furiously. We need to watch your dime like we all watch our own dime." But then he says, about health care reform:

Hoo, boy, nobody I'd rather meet on the road early on Monday morning than a bunch of liquored-up Colts fans:

The provision on Sunday bar hours would allow establishments to remain open until 3 a.m. instead of the current 12:30 a.m., a change motivated by Colts games that have ended late on Sunday nights.

Now that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has opened the door on a presidential run "just a tiny crack," people are trying to stick their feet in and open that door a little wider.

Sorry, Brian, I'm with Pat and Dave on this one:

Indiana House Minority Leader Brian Bosma says it's more important to pass sound bills on key issues than it is to adjourn the legislative session.

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Democratic House Speaker Patrick Bauer of South Bend wants to adjourn by Thursday.

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So does the state need an "upskirting" law, or is state Sen. Tom Wyss just going to clutter up the legal code with an "offense" that can already be handled by existing statutes? Last year, Wyss decided the state needed to specifically prohibit the practice of using a video camera (usually attached to a shoe) to look up women's dresses.

I wondered when they would get around to this:

The head of the Fort Wayne Community Schools' teachers union reacted cautiously today to a call for his members to join the district's administrators in accepting a pay freeze as part of $15 million in spending cuts.

The purpose of the ex post facto clause of the Constitution is to prevent authorities from punishing people for acts that weren't a crime at the time they were committed. That seems as straightforward a principle as can be. "Just think about it in terms of olden days when a king could suddenly banish everyone who wore red the day before."