Hoosier lore

Indiana Parley is reporting that President Bush will speak at Bethel College in Mishawaka on Feb. 23.

Holy cow: According to the Beer Institute, beer has an annual "economic impact" in Indiana of $2.36 billion a year. That group has an incentive to make the figure seem as big as possible, but, still, that's a lot of suds. Never mind all these other silly economic-development ideas like downtown hotels and football teams and luring new companies. Let's just put a place on every corner where we can buy beer. Oh, wait, we've done that. Then maybe we should do the reverse of Gov.

Gosh, I wish a Fort Wayne gal would win the Miss Indiana pageant so I could write a gushy editorial like this one:

"We're very excited that one of our own has accomplished this," said Noblesville Mayor John Ditslear, who participated in a mock interview with Guilkey to prepare her for judges' questions just weeks before she left for the pageant Jan. 10. Guilkey had about 100 supporters with her in Las Vegas, and thousands more of us rooting at home.

House Bill 1383, which would limit aid to illegal immigrants, is going to get a lot of grief from the "let's just accept that these undocumented workers are here and help them adjust" crowd. Advance Indiana, for example, goes so far as to equate the effort to "the KKK of the 1920s. Back then the targets were Catholics, Eastern Europeans, Jews and blacks.

Even free-market believers predisposed to like the idea of the privatization of government services can get a little skittish when we start talking about something so long associated with the public sector, like roads. And, naturally, people who are against privatization on general principle will think of lots of reasons to oppose Gov. Mitch Daniels' plans to lease the Indiana Toll Road for nearly $4 billion and 75 years.

Well, this ought to kick the toll-road-sale debate up several notches. Indiana got a bid from Australia's Macquarie Infrastructure Group, and it's huge -- $3.8 billion:

The bid [...] marks the most a U.S. municipality has ever been offered for any asset, according to state officials.

``It's unprecedented,'' said Charles Schalliol, Governor Mitch Daniels's budget director, in a telephone interview. ``This is a blowout bid for the state.''

[...]

It's a great idea to spiffy up the Indianapolis airport terminal with works of art, and it's an idea we might consider here. But there's one part of it they might want to rethink:

The Indianapolis Airport Authority and Writers' Center of Indiana are asking poets to submit writing that could be incorporated into works created by Martin Donlin.

A young fuddy-duddy complains that Indiana's basketball tournament has too much class, and notes that Illinois is about to make the same mistake:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced its final plan for time zones in Indiana. Eight counties will be moved into the Central zone to join the 10 already there, leaving 74 counties in the Eastern zone. St. Joseph County's petition to switch from Eastern to Central, the most controversial aspect of the issue, was denied. That seems sensible, leaving Michiana a cohesive unit.

I'd say the headline on this story -- "Assisted suicide law not likely to cross Indiana in near future" -- could be the understatement of the year so far. We're not likely to have such a law here in your childrens' lifetimes.