Good to see Indiana freshmen congressmen are getting in on the vote buying earmarks:
Good to see Indiana freshmen congressmen are getting in on the vote buying earmarks:
You should be able to find Opening Arguments at this new address. We're still working on some things, such as getting the archives moved, so posting will be light today.
News-Sentinel blogs are moving to a new service on Monday, which means there will be a new address for Opening Arguments. If things go as planned, there should be a post here sometime Monday that provides a link to the new site. All the archives are supposed to be transferred as well, so you should still be able to find all the stupid things I've written over the last two years that you might want to beat me up over. As a bonus, I'll have control over the sides of the blog, where the blog roll, among other things, goes (it's a long story; don't ask).
The only reason for this post is that is No. 2,500. Whew! If you have read all of them, thank you, but shouldn't you get a life?
Studies keep giving us astonishing revelations:
A study done by researchers at the University of Missouri, using a test developed at the UI, has correlated heavy binge drinking with diminished decision-making over time.
Over time? Like between the first drink of the binge and the last?
We, the two-headed snake, has died. I bring it up only because of the local angle:
Sonnenschein said he bought We from a snake breeder in Indiana for $15,000 when the reptile was just a few weeks old.
I can just imagine that breeder seeing he had a two-headed snake and going, "Hoo boy, big payday!" Lots of two-headed snakes still in Indiana, by the way, but I wouldn't give you a quarter for one of them.
The Indiana Chamber has released its legislative analysis (pdf file) of the last session of the General Assembly, and the news isn't very good from its perspective:
While some positive legislation was painstakingly guided to success, too many pro-economy, pro-jobs bills derailed due to frequent partisan politics, shortsightedness and too many anti-business legislators.
Old New Hampshire: Live free or die!
New New Hampshire: Ban smoking, or we'll die!
Governor John Lynch signed a law yesterday banning smoking in New Hampshire's bars and restaurants.
"The science is clear -- secondhand smoke poses a dangerous health risk, and that is why this new law is so important," Lynch said.
In case you doubt that our civilization is just one step ahead of barbarism, consider this scary Texas story:
Celebrants at an informal Juneteenth party in a crowded public housing complex parking lot turned into an angry mob that beat a man to death after the car he was riding in apparently struck and injured a child.
Trying to shore up the energy supply by messing with the food chain is just not a very good idea:
The boom in prices for corn, milk, beef and other food products is only getting louder.
While it's old news that corn prices have nearly doubled over the last two years - think ethanol - now experts say corn could move sharply higher still, pushing prices up further for milk, beef, pork and a host of other commodities.
The redistributionists have always promoted the idea that the way to solve poverty is to just give poor people money. But few of them have been as brazen as this:
Somebody sent me this short quiz, "A test for professionals," that's been making the e-mail rounds. Bet you don't get one of the four right.
Give the Hillary Clinton campaign credit. This campaign-ad spoof of the Sopranos is pretty funny. Not sure about Celine Dion's "You and I" as the campaign song, though. It's sappy enough ("You and I were meant to fly"), but not quite catchy enough to stick in people's minds. It's no "Can't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow," that's for sure.
This is just sad:
Linda Pelzman appreciates the beauty of the outdoor world, sometimes pulling her children into the yard to gaze at a full moon or peer into a dense fog. An educator and founder of a summer camp, she only wishes her enthusiasm was fully shared.
Not in the running for Father of the Year:
The mother of a Sept. 11 victim is trying to prevent her son's absentee father from trying to collect half of the $2.9 million awarded by the Victim Compensation Fund, the Daily News has learned.
Elsie Goss-Caldwell will be petitioning a Brooklyn Surrogate's Court judge tomorrow to keep her ex-husband from financially benefiting from the death of a son that she said he had little contact with for 28 years.
Well, we saw this coming, didn't we?
For 2009, Clarian is going all out, in a way that some lawyers might construe as trampling on people's right to privacy. If HIPPA makes health care confidential, how can Clarian get in its workers' faces? And I'm sure they are not the only ones...
They're REQUIRING employees be screened for blood sugar, blood pressure, LDL cholesterol and BMI (body mass index).
All those who like to call me an anti-government crank, get ready. The city's new Southeast Area Development Strategy involves lots of planning and incentives, encouraging certain types of businesses and discouraging others:
It targets several areas for commercial and residential development, and even suburban development, Holocher said, because some southeast residents said they would like suburban housing, but no new suburban developments exist on the southeast side.
Gee, do ya think?
Infants most at risk among children injured by elevator incidents, Indiana University study finds
The Allen County Election Board has decreed by a 2-1 vote that Republican mayoral candidate Matt Kelty violated no campaign finance laws by initially failing to report that a personal loan he made to his campaign was, in fact, originally a loan from one of his campaign workers to him. And the vote -- sit down for this one -- was along party lines, with the two Republicans voting to clear Kelty and the Democrat saying there were enough questions to forward the whole thing to the prosecutor's office.
The BBC is infected with liberal bias, and that affects its news coverage. That's not the opinion of a rightwing crank but the finding of a report commissioned by the BBC itself:
Their review hit out at programme-makers for misjudging where "cultural mainstream" opinion stood and for wanting to "swim" against popular opinion.
