Current Affairs

As a Monday morning brightener, we have a new record holder. This is Enistein, who weighed just 6 pounds when he was born Friday in Barnstead, New Hampshire. He's small even for the minature breed he is. Apparently, the Guniness Book of Records lists the smallest newborn horse as weighing 9 pounds.

Sylvia Smith had an interesting column in Sunday's JG about how many kids are unfit for military service, and I found myself agreeing with much of it.

As a veteran nearing the age when getting medical care will likely be a regular activity, I'm very interested in the back and forth between 3rd District congressional candidates Bob Thomas and Mark Souder over VA hospitals. As Thomas tells it, Souder didn't care all that much about the local hospital until a veterans' group put pressure on him. The way Souder sees it, Thomas wants to close all the hospitals and callously put veterans in a "Medicaid-like system."

A letter to the editor from a Jeffersonville woman takes on Indiana's attorney general over health care:

As a citizen of the United States and resident of Indiana, I am surprised that the Attorney General of the State of Indiana, Greg Zoeller, would even entertain filing a lawsuit. His reasoning is based on the constitutionally of health care reform.

They're trying to sneak up on it, aren't they?

President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Today's doubletalk award:

President Obama said today he doesn't have a "litmus test" for the next Supreme Court nominee, but he supports abortion rights and his choice must "take into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights."

I believe Obama doesn't have a litmus test on abortion rights about as much as I believe the county commissioners weren't aiming at abortion with their registration-of-outside-doctors proposal.

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, a good time for a reminder that a respect for private property, not massive government intervention, is the best prescription for a healthy environment:

There they go again:

Would you let the government take your car and give it to someone else? How about your computer, television set, house, or business? What if the government said you would be paid  yet you had no choice?

We can't seem to get people interested in condos downtown. In Indianapolis, meanwhile:

A sprawling Mass Ave. condo with a vibrant skyline view has sold for $1.7 million, the highest price paid for a Downtown condo so far this year.

The one-level, 4,064-square-foot unit at 333 Massachusetts Ave. is one of only 10 condos in Central Indiana that have sold for more than $1 million in the past five years, but demand for higher-priced homes has increased from last year.

Happy anniversary!