Politics and other nightmares

Things get tricky when politics and public education collide:

College professors have to walk a fine line when showing support for a political candidate or party at Indiana University and other college campuses.

It's the battle of the bands, country vs. rock, the aging redneckand the faded hippie! Johnny Cougar gives Cranky John what for!

We're a little behind here in Indiana. We're still debating the merits of all-day kindergarten, and elsewhere they're already on to the universal-preschool debate:

Advocates argue that public investments in early education will pay dividends over the long term. Critics point out that the evidence from states that have universal preschool programs shows that whatever benefits kids receive from those programs fade out by the fourth grade.

Maybe, maybe not:

Opponents of a referendum question on the Nov. 4 ballots in three Hamilton County townships say taxpayers may not see much savings if it passes.

If I wrote this, you'd consider it just another rant from a libertarian-leaning crank. But it's the opening of a Washington Post editorial:

Joe Biden, fearless prognosticator:

"Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. . . . I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help," Biden said, though he added that anyone who tests Obama will discover he has "a spine of steel."

Rule No. 1 in the criminal-justice arena should be that you don't get to plead guilty and still go on and on about how you were framed. Matt Kelty's most ardent supporters have always wanted his legal problems to be about a Democratic-moderate Republican-media conspiracy to "get" Kelty because he had the audacity to challenge orthodox views. I hope they all especially pay attention to this paragraph in Kevin Leininger's column:

I love ya, Mitch, but this is one of the silliest responses to a serious problem I've ever seen:

INDIANAPOLIS | Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter joined Gov. Mitch Daniels Monday to announce plans to begin suspending the fishing and hunting licenses of child support deadbeats.

Jill Long Thompson's campaign sent out an e-mail -- I suspect I'm not the only one who got it -- promising that for a donation of $25, we could see this before anybody else did!

Democrat Jill Long Thompson will begin airing her first general election television ad in weeks on Tuesday in her campaign to oust Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Long Thompson says in the 30-second spot that Daniels "would have us believe Indiana is doing as well as can be expected," but she thinks the state could do much better.

Randy Balko grew up in a "particularly conservative" part of Indiana, but he's a senior editor for Reason magazine, so dismiss his observation as a libertarian rant if you want to. But he makes a lot of sense to me: