Hoosier lore

A very small story in the Indianapolis Star, but I'm guessing it will sending shockwaves through the whole state:

Members of the Indiana Beverage Association, conducting meetings statewide to put pressure on the General Assembly to legalize video gambling, tell a compelling story about struggling Moose lodges and VFWs that might have to close or stop all their charitable good deeds if they can't county on the gambling revenue. But this paints a very different picture:

The state attorney general's attempts to stop automated phone calls is getting a lot of coverage, mostly because he's a Republican going after a Republican group and because of who that group is:

Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter filed a lawsuit yesterday against a national political organization, accusing it of making illegal automated phone calls to voters in the 9th Congressional District.

This Indianapolis Star article suggests that, while Ford's drastic measures will hurt Indiana, they may be all the company can do to save itself. But what if, suggests this provocative commentary, Ford is speeding its own decline with its employee buyout program?

I'm not sure how much the popularity of someone not on the ballot matters, but Republicans are probably right to worry more about the poll numbers of Mitch Daniels than about President Bush and his Iraq war policies:

In the telephone survey of 800 likely voters, WISH-TV found that nearly a quarter of Hoosiers rated his performance as poor and a third rated him as only fair.

Gale Sayers has had a fabulous life in Chicago and has his principal residence there, a posh condo off Michigan Avenue. But 10 days a month, he and his wife retreat to their home in tiny Wakarusa, Ind., south of Elkhart:

''I first met him in here about 33 years ago,'' said Steve Cook, who operates the restaurant with his brother Stan. ''I was about 18. He was my childhood idol. I couldn't even talk.

"Now he's just Gale."

Give the college kids a hand: The way most newspapers do corrections, it's hard to tell what the original story was even about. "A story Tuesday should have said county resident John Smith spent two days in the hospital." So, what DID the story say that was wrong, huh, huh? That John Smith was a city resident? That he spent five days in the hospital? That he was arrested for spitting on the sidewalk? That this whole thing, whatever it was, happened to John Jones?

Your federal dollars, hard at work, right here in Indiana:

The Indiana Licensed Beverage Association is having a series of public meetings to put pressure on the General Assembly to legalize video gambling machines. And here's a prediction from someone who should know:

This editorial in the Anderson Herald-Bulletin, deploring the whole idea of "covenant marriage," finally gets around, in the antepenultimate paragraph, to revealing the faulty premise on which its conclusion is based: