Politics and other nightmares

Anna Quindlen makes a whole big Old-Fogy-Steps-Aside and Passes-Along-the-Torch deal out of quitting her very part-time gig of writing one lousy column every two weeks for Newsweek. But at least she leaves me a going-away present, a sentiment so manifestly wrongheaded that it has to be answered:

Richard Nixon's Revenue Sharing program was a misguided assault on the very idea of federalism. The federal government collected money from states, then dribbled it back, minus administrative costs and the usual waste, fraud and abuse. And states actually started feeling grateful for the handouts. Barack Obama seems to have succeeded where Nixon failed:

Gun enthusiasts seem to be, um, shooting themselves in the foot. Apparently worried about the future availability of ammunition under a not-so-gun-friendly Obama administration, they are rushing out to buy said ammunition, driving up the price and, ironically, creating the very shortage they feared. This is having an adverse affect on police departments:

Officer Knoll said as the demand rises for ammo, so does the price.

An employee of the Marion County Clerk's Office has been fired after accusations she tried to sell prescription drugs, and now the city officials are being questioned about why they didn't check her Facebook.com page as part of the screening process:

"Im bein charged wit a d n b felony haha {expletive} u will get yers," read a posting on Straw's page. "{Expletive} u will get yers it called karma."

Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Or, as the president likes to say, "Happy Cuatro de Cinco!"

On the eve of the Mexican holiday, Obama on Monday had an event in the East Room of the White House with Mexico's Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan (sahr-oo-KHAN').

"Poverty in America" update:

MUNCIE -- The sign near the door of Papa Murphy's Take 'n' Bake Pizza is subtle but noticeable.

Food stamps gladly accepted."

No conclusion offered, except what you might infer from the fact I'm putting both these stories in the same post. First up:

A 52-year-old Swedish woman has been left out of pocket after she was lured into handing over her cash to secure an imaginary lottery win.

At least one good thing came out of state legislators' incompetence in failing to pass a new state budget in the waning days of this General Assembly session. It took so much energy to fail there that they didn't even get around to a measure to give Indianapolis revenue options for the money-hemorrhaging Capital Improvements Board, which will now have to call an emergency meeting:

With swine H1NI flu sucking up all the news space, let's not forget to pause and observe another newsorthy event -- a milestone, even -- from this week:

Congress signed off on President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget largely along party lines Wednesday night, handing him a legislative victory that paves the way for a health care overhaul.

Supreme Court nomination hearings are fascinating looks at how the judiciary (often the most important force in our lives) is shaped. And the hearings for whomever President Obama selects to replace David Souter should even be fun, since they won't really matter. Souter is a liberal justice, and Obama will try to replace him with a liberal justice.