At the same time we're worrying about what enemies like North Korea and Iran are up to, maybe we could expend a little effort trying to get our allies to join the modern world:
A Saudi newspaper says the kingdom's religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles but only in restricted, recreational areas.
I'm sorry if you think is a silly post. Wait, actually I'm not:
Why the Indiana Supreme Court's decision to uphold the consitutionality of the state's voucher program is a landmark in the school choice movement:
While this is just one victory in a single state, combined with other developments elsewhere it may not only be the beginning of the erosion of the government education monopoly but a change in the way we define the term public education.
The commentator who posted about this called it an "absurd" decision. A "gutless and heartless decision" seems more appropriate to me:
Last Friday, the U.S. Army formally decided not to award Purple Heart medals to the victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which claimed 13 lives and wounded 32 people. The Army preposterously claims that handing out medals would damage Major Nidal Hasan’s “ability to receive a fair trial.”
The whole world is going digital. Whether it's music or books or movies or this newspaper, you can get it faster and easier by just skipping the hardware. But here's one group that actually seeks to go the other way:
The problem with gun-purc hase background checks few seem willing to talk about:
WASHINGTON — About 4,000 Hoosiers could not pass a federal background check to buy a gun because of mental illness.
In Delaware, a state about one-seventh the size of Indiana, a background check would block nearly 19,000 people with mental illness records from getting a gun.
The "Freedom in the 50 States" study measured economic and personal freedom using a wide range of criteria, including tax rates, government spending and debt, regulatory burdens, and state laws covering land use, union organizing, gun control, education choice and more.
Unbelievably, the Supreme Court has been considering other issues besides gay marriage. In a apparent victory for privacy rights, it ruled this week that using a trained dog to sniff for drugs on the porch of a home constitutes a seach and if it's done without a warrant it violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition again unsreasonable searches. I say "apparent," because some legal analysts are unhappy with how narrowly the case was decided:
You really don't have to get into politics to explain the decline of newspapers today. People are abandoning print as they turn to the Web and other alternatives. The more people quit the paper, the fewer resources the paper has, so the more it cuts back on coverage, and the more people stop reading because of the decline in quality. Vicious circle.
Gotta hand it to Justice Sotomayor. She asked the most pertinent question about gay marriage of Ted Olson, one of its advocates arguing before the Supreme Court:
Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you're being asked -- and -- and it is one that I'm interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.
The Indiana Supreme Court on the state's school voucher program -- Ain't saying it's good, just saying it's legal:
The state Supreme Court agreed with that, saying in a 22-page opinion written by Chief Justice Brent Dickson that the program primarily benefited parents, not schools, because it gave parents choice in their children's education.
TACOMA, Wash. — John Connelly leaned forward on his barstool, set his lips against a clear glass pipe and inhaled a white cloud of marijuana vapor.
A handful of people milled around him. Three young women stood behind the bar, ready to assist with the preparation of the bongs, as the strains of a blues band playing downstairs sounded faintly off the exposed brick walls.
Go ahead and set that phaser on "kill," Capt. Kirk:
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) wants to create a "virtual Congress," where lawmakers would leverage videoconferencing and other remote work technology to conduct their daily duties in Washington from their home districts.
I've been trying, without much success, to figure out exactly what the big deal is for those opposed to Indiana deer preserves. The state Department of Natural Resources outlawed "canned hunting" in 2005, and there is proposed legislation to allow five operations that were already in existence to continue, thus ending an eight-year-old lawsuit.
War on drugs, the conservative view:
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A sweeping plan to overhaul Indiana's criminal sentencing laws will go before a legislative committee after Republican Gov. Mike Pence said last week he worried the proposal wasn't tough enough on low-level drug offenders.
[. . .]
The attorneys general of 21 states, including Indiana, have filed briefs before the Suprem Court in defense of the right of states to ban same-sex unions. The attorneys general of 15 states have filed briefs on the other side of the issue. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller explains his actions:
The federal government and states across the country have spent billions of dollars in recent years on sprawling, privately run halfway houses, which are supposed to save money and rehabilitate inmates more effectively than prisons do.
I never had all that much faith in the Supreme Court, and my opinion of it turned more negative after John Roberts' inexplicable and indefensible embrace of Obamacare. I've wondered if others had the same reaction. Seems so:
This is a very good Wall Street Journal editorial about the federalism issues at state in the two gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court:
This week the Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage, amid shifting American mores and a healthy debate about equality. Yet the two cases before the High Court are less about the institution of marriage than the sanctity of democratic institutions and the proper role of the courts.
