Politics and other nightmares

The Washington Post decides that people should be charged with actual crimes, not just possibly hinting that they might be willing to commit crimes:

I'm Episcopalian. No, I'm Baptist. Wait, I'm both. Oh, it doesn't matter. This is one reason people don't trust John McCain:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has long identified himself as an Episcopalian, said this weekend that he is a Baptist and has been for years.

Man, when you can't even get attention by dying en masse, what's the world coming to?

The arrests came after protesters lay down on the Capitol lawn in what they called a "die in" — with signs on top of their bodies to represent soldiers killed in Iraq. When police took no action, some of the protesters started climbing over a barricade at the foot of the Capitol steps.

This editorial is so unfocused that it's hard to decide how to attack it. The first paragraph tells us that recent reports show Indiana lags behind the nation in income and housing prices. That proves that we are falling behind in areas important  to attracting businesses:

How would you like to be an economic-development official in Indiana trying to attract businesses and knowing that those reports are in the wings?

You know, of course, that there is no food "shortage" in the world. There is just a distribution problem caused, among other things, by political turmoil. Apparently, the same thing applies to parking spaces. First, we have this:

Have you had trouble finding a parking place in downtown Fort Wayne recently?  A group made up of different downtown attractions is working to fix that!

Richard Aregood was famous for writing short, pithy editorials when he was with the Philadelphia Daily News. One of his most memorable was (in its entirety): "They say only the good die young. Generalissimo Francisco Franco was 82. Seems about right." I thought about that when I read this:

Indiana may soon stand alone:

BOISE -- Two women are among the final four candidates to take the seat on the Idaho Supreme Court left vacant by the August retirement of Linda Copple-Trout, who was the first woman on the state's highest court when she was appointed by former Gov. Cecil Andrus in 1992.

State Sen. Tom Wyss was quoted recently giving an honest assessment of why Indiana requires seat belts but not motorcycle helmets: Car drivers don't organize, but any legislator who proposes helmet laws will suddenly find scores of motorcycle riders circling his block in protest. Wonder what the senator thinks of this:

Amen:

The farm legislation proceeding through Congress symbolizes much of what's wrong with Washington. It's government by inertia. We do today what we did yesterday, because politicians draw their power from distributing benefits and various interest groups feel entitled to receive them -- even if they serve no defensible public purpose. Our extravagant farm programs capture the absurdity as well as any other.

This bites:

City Clerk Sandy Kennedy told the Fort Wayne City Council on Tuesday she plans to introduce a proposal to reduce the amount of time people have to pay parking tickets before they double.