I just got a voice mail from Kathy Bayes of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, who had just received an e-mail from someone in the state public defender's office, to the effect that: Judge Allen Sharp of the Northern Indiana District Court has reversed the death penalty of Joseph Corcoran, charged with killing his brother, his sister's fiance and two of his brother's friends in Fort Wayne in 1997.
We have always been taught there are two sides to every question. In the are of public policy, they are usually in the form of "enact the tax" or "don't enact the tax" or "undertake the project" or "don't undertake the project." It is legitimate to take either position, with an obligation back up one's claim with the best available evidence.
Can there even be anything like a blind date these days? By the time of the first meeting, we can find out just about everything there is to know about the other person:
In some ways, having a social networking page — or pages — has become the new calling card. It's a way for people to check out photos and find out what they have in common, even when they've already met in person.
We know, because John Edwards has told us so, that there are "two Americas." Apparently, they are right across from each other:
RALEIGH -- Elizabeth Edwards says she is scared of the "rabid, rabid Republican" who owns property across the street from her Orange County home -- and she doesn't want her kids going near the gun-toting neighbor.
[ . . .]
So you don't like the fussy city laws about shooting guns in the air, so you move to the country, where you can fire off as many rounds as you want to. But, guess what? When the city moves its lines, it wants to bring all the rules with it:
Indianapolis - A city county councilor wants to expand the city's gun law. She says it's about keeping residents safe, but opponents see it as an infringement on rights.
Jesus Arrieta wants a translator, and he thinks we should pay for it. The Indiana Supreme Court is thinking about it:
This is one of those "it's not the money, it's the principle" things. Senior citizens have been able to fish for free in Indiana. New legislation, already signed by the governor, means they will have to pay the same as everybody else, $3 a year for a license or $17 for a lifetime privilege. The reason:
Hip-hop may be a powerful cultural phenomenon and an understandable and necessary expression of alienation, but, please; it's not music. The fact that it's taught as such in universities is a sign of, well, I don't know what:
They have discussed the evolution of hip-hop comedy, and how events of the day seep in the edgy routines of performers such as Dave Chappelle.
In "The Bridge Over the River Kwai," Lt. Col. Nicholson (the Alec Guinness character) refuses to make his officers help enlisted-men prisoners build the bridge between Bangkok and Rangoon that the Japanese Col. Saito needs -- it's in the Geneva convention that officers can't be made to do manual labor. Saito doesn't care about that -- he just needs the bridge, and they are all his prisoners, after all -- so puts the British officers in the "ovens," metal hot boxes. But Saito eventually backs down, so desperate is he for the bridge.
This will be a terrible disappointment to some of you, but the world is getting more civilized all the time:
In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.
It's all over! The last little shred of freedom is being lost to a desire for safety! Just call the Commies up and give them the keys to the country:
CONCORD, N.H. - The Live Free or Die state's days of unrestrained driving could be numbered.
New Hampshire would give up its status as the only state without a mandatory seat belt law for adults under a bill the House approved Thursday in a 153-140 vote. The bill next goes to the Senate.
I don't know about some of these clueless kids today. We haven't had a really good flag-burning incident in years. And here these three college students take all the trouble to burn an American flag and don't even bother to make it a good First Amendment controversy:
Could it be that those of us insisting that Indiana get in step with the rest of the nation on daylight saving time might have been wrong? Here is a definite case of real harm caused by DST:
I can't add anything to this, except to hope his conclusion is right:
What the Democrats object to, however, is the idea that it is a "global war." In particular, they are trying to sell the fantasy that Iraq is a discrete problem with no relation to any broader conflict--so that surrendering in Iraq would have no deleterious consequences for U.S. national security.
You have to give Birch Bayh credit for his stubborn persistence. Political columnist David Broder writes that Evan's father is still at his crusade to do away with the Electoral College and institute a popular vote for president 40 years after his failed attempts to get the change into a constitutional amendment.
Let's see. I have an aversion to killing and participating in war. "Blood lust" upsets me, and even profanities bother me. The "sanctity of life" forms my moral center. What ever should I do with my life? Oh, I know, I'll volunteer for the Marines.
What? What?! I wasn't even thinking about this:
WASHINGTON (AP) — None of the contaminated wheat gluten that led to the U.S. recall of pet food went to manufacturers of food for humans, the ingredient's importer said Tuesday.The Chinese wheat gluten imported by ChemNutra Inc. all went to companies that make pet foods, Stephen Miller, chief executive officer of the Las Vegas company, told the Associated Press.
George Will wrote an interesting column recently about how angry we get these days and how the rage takes on a life of its own and "derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason." Wait a minute, says Dahlia Lithwick, who agrees with Will about the effects of anger but takes him to task for his take on the causes:
After replacing a ridiculous law (you can buy fireworks if you promise not to use them here) with a wildly unpopular one (make big noise all the time!), the General Assembly finally gets it right:
I happen to disagree with Dr. John Crawford's coming near-total public smoking ban, because it uses wildly exaggerated claims about secondhand smoke to control people's behavior in places where the government has no business controlling their behavior.
