Politics and other nightmares

The line just keeps getting longer. Two Indiana congressmen want Washington to remember that cars aren't the only things on the road:

Congratulations to state leaders, who seem able to recognize a crisis long enough to set aside partisan differences. Though a recent fit of fiscal responsibility has left Indiana better prepared than most, everybody seems to agree with Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels that even deeper spending cuts are needed. And there is this reassurance:

Behind every great man . . .

In a complaint released Tuesday, prosecutors say the 52-year-old Blagojevich plotted to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. In the criminal complaint against him, his 43-year-old wife emerges in recorded phone conversations as a scheming woman who tried to punish those who got in her way.

I was looking around to see what others were saying about Fort Wayne's new anti-annoying-lights measure when I came across this, which I missed the first time around, from the My Hud House blog in August:

Representatives from the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, today announced their bold initiative to replace all city sidewalks with silly putty within the next two years. This is being touted as another huge step towards making Fort Wayne a truly unique city.

I never, ever thought I would see this. It's the actual concluding paragraph from an actual editorial on the actual Journal Gazette editorial page:

It's often said that party labels don't matter as much at the local level, and generally that's true; there's no Pepublican or Democratic way to fill a pothole. But sometimes it does matter -- even at the local level, Democrats probably have a tendency to favor "fixing" things, and Republicans are likely to look more skeptically at change.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial captures the essence of the Blagojevich scandal:

The list of crooked politicians is long, and the list of stupid politicians even longer. But if the criminal allegations made yesterday against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich are proven in court, rarely will a politician have combined the two qualities with such efflorescence.

They never learn, do they?

Westfield » For three months, no new development will occur in the city's downtown, pending the outcome of a long-awaited presentation set for next week.

[. . .]

You have to love Illinois politics. The rest of us think we know what corruption looks like, but only a sitting Illinois governor can get arrested on charges the U.S. attorny says are of "staggering" breadth. Rod Blagojevich all but put a "for sale sign" on the operation his office. And there is this especially nasty allegation:

N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine takes the marbles out of his mouth long enough to explain the economic crisis:

"Now the piper is coming home to roost," Corzine said. "We have to pay that piper."

But why did the piper cross the road, and will he find a place to roost there, and do we have to pay him then, too? I think the piper in New Jersey has flown the coop.

But don't count your pipers before they hatch.