Hoosier lore

Wow, for a minute there, I thought we were going to be famous:

Another Hoosier is traveling to distant parts to give us all a bad name:

We will still be afflicted with rogue, unlicensed interior designers, but at least those scandalous massage therapists will have to shape up:

The fall from grace in Washington of one of Indiana's own raises an interesting issue:

The Indianapolis Star's Dan Carpenter tries to push about every guilt button there is to make us understand what bad people we are for resenting illegal immigration (based, he says, "less on a purist reverence for the rule of law than on peculiarities of the people breaking it" -- so take that, all you racist nativists):

The Evansville Courier & Press has an interesting editorial about capital punishment that wonders, as I have, whether relatives of the victims really get "closure" when someone is executed after two decades on death row. The editorial focus on Nicholas Harbison, accused of killing three people in a corn field, who has agreed to plead guilty in return for not facing the death penalty:

I swear to God Stonehenge, this is getting ridiculous:

For the second day in a row, a Hanover Central High School freshman came to school with pagan symbols sketched on her face and was sent home by school officials.

Hanover Superintendent Michael Livovich said the symbols on the girl's face are disruptive to the educational process, and she will be sent home each day if she refuses to wash them off.

[. . .]

We've just come off one of the biggest nanny-state sessions of the General Assembly in recent memory (buckle up!), and the Indianapolis Star clearly wants more:

No bringing your best friend as a date at this school:

Marian High School student Amanda Howe, 18, planned to bring Justine Werley, a 2006 graduate of the Catholic school, but was informed by school officials that she could not bring a same-sex friend to the formal event.

''We're not trying to go as a couple or anything,'' Howe said. ''So I don't see why they're having a problem with this.''

If David Leon Woods is executed on schedule Friday morning, five of his victim's children will be there to watch, since Indiana has joined the majority of death-penalty states in having "right to view" legislation:

Gene Placencia hopes to find closure by watching the man who fatally stabbed his father 23 years ago die by lethal injection early Friday.