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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Ho, ho, ho

This is one of those stories in which each reader can choose the villain, depending on one's philosophical predilection.

All nine Christmas trees have been removed from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested.

[. . .]

Posted in: Current Affairs

What's yours is ours

No, no, a thousand times no:

Is now the time for the Indiana General Assembly to consider a progressive income tax? When Gov. Mitch Daniels proposed a one-year higher tax rate for upper income households, his idea died faster than the annual hopes of a Cubs fan.

More than 30 states already have some form of a progressive income tax, which in good times builds government reserves that can be used when revenues decline in bad times.

Memorize this

I don't know the intimate details of Everyday Math, so I can't argue for against it with any certainty. But it sounds an awful lot like the New Math, another one of the reinventions of math teaching we seem to want to go through every 20 years or so:

Posted in: Current Affairs

A blue-law holiday

Omigod!

Liquor stores will be closed this year on a day that is traditionally one of their busiest - New Year's Eve - because the holiday falls on a Sunday.

Indiana prohibits all take out liquor sales on Sundays. This year both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve fall on Sundays, and liquor stores must also be closed for the Monday holidays of Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Real toys

The National Toy Hall of Fame. I had about half of these at one time or another, so I guess my childhood wasn't as deprived as I might have thought. If you'll notice, not a single one of them requires electricity, let alone microchips. This one is probably my favorite, because it cost nothing and was able to become almost anything:

Green onions

I didn't mind the lettuce or the spinach, but now the careless farmers are messing around with my favorite vegetable:

The scallions suspected in the E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell came from a Southern California grower, an official with the company that washed, chopped and packed them for the restaurant chain said Thursday.

Posted in: Food and Drink

A dog's life, and death

You can tell a lot about people by the way they react when things don't go exactly as planned. A friend from work, Mary, and her husband, facing the Empty Nest syndrome, decided they wanted a couple of dogs for companionship, so they got a brother-sister pair of Shih Tzus, which they named Rudy and Gracie. Things began to wrong with Gracie almost immediately. After numerous trips to the vet, they learned that her kidneys never did develop properly. They spent months doing everything they could, but the battle was lost Wednesday.

On call

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Mideast therapy

I love this recommendation, tucked inside the report of the Iraq Surrender Study Group:

This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq's neighbors. Iraq's neighbors and key states in and outside the region should form a support group to reinforce security and national reconciliation within Iraq, neither of which Iraq can achieve on its own.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Fat attack

I know many libertarians will decry this move as another attempt by the nanny state to protect us from things we might not want to be protected from:

Following the New York City Board of Health's unanimous decision to phase trans fats off the city's restaurant menus, experts say the move could be an important step in saving many people from heart disease.

Posted in: Current Affairs

That's the way the cookie crumbles

Here's a controversy we're not likely to have in Fort Wayne:

SAN FRANCISCO - Apparently, not everyone enjoys the smell of oven-fresh chocolate chip cookies while waiting for their bus.

Posted in: Current Affairs

In the long run

My colleague Bob Caylor wrote a good editorial for last night's paper looking at both the seductive appeal and flaws of the "do the deluxe version now to save money in the long run" argument for government projects:

Posted in: Our town

Muddling through

Has any report in recent memory delivered so little after being anticipated so much?

A commission on the war in Iraq recommended new and enhanced diplomacy Wednesday so the United States can "begin to move its combat forces" out of the country responsibly.

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," the commission warned after an eight-month review of a conflict that has killed more than 2,800 U.S. troops and grown increasingly unpopular at home.

Flying his flag

Another brave American takes on the despicable neighborhood-association tyrants:

World War II veteran Robert Goergen knows he's breaking the rules at his home in Lino Lakes, yet he vows to fight for his right to fly his beloved United States flag as it was meant to be flown -- high and free in the wind.

Posted in: Current Affairs

McSwanky's

I'm not ready for an "upscale McDonald's." Don't think the world is, either:

At 4:30 a.m. Thursday, McDonald's will open its first Fort Wayne restaurant that comes complete with four 42-inch plasma-screen televisions, two drive-through ordering windows, an upscale décor and free wireless Internet access. The store is located at 1103 Goshen Ave.

Posted in: Our town

Tobacco talk

Not all small towns in Indiana are the same. Valparaiso goes the smoking ban route:

A task force formed earlier this year distributed 2,500 surveys to Valparaiso-area residents, 915 of whom responded largely with a desire for a smoking ban in restaurants and the workplace.

The council also approved a four-point amendment to the ordinance, one point of which called for another study by the ordinance task force to further discuss the percentage of smoking rooms that may be included in hotels.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Beyond the pale

Speaking of the Constitution, isn't it supposed to be the Bible from which the Supreme Court fashions its rulings? Justice Breyer doesn't think so:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer says the Supreme Court must promote the political rights of minorities and look beyond the Constitution's text when necessary to ensure that "no one gets too powerful."

Standing on ceremony

Conservatives are supposed to cherish and promote the values and institutions that make America uniquely special. It helps when they know what those values and institutions are, as this one clearly does not:

The first Muslim elected to Congress hasn't been sworn into office yet, but his act of allegiance has already been criticized by a conservative commentator.

Drink up

Isn't it interesting that just as there are becoming fewer places to smoke, there are more places to drink?

A lot has changed since 1982, including restrictions on where residents can drink alcohol. Three parks facilities — the Community Center, Fort Wayne Children's Zoo and Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory — all allow alcohol at private events.

Posted in: Our town

Thought police

I've always been a little unclear on the thinking behind "hate crime" laws. Until police develop a mind-reading tool, they really don't know what anyone is thinking. That means authorities can only punish phsyical manifestations of that thinking, such as intimidation or vandalism, which are already crimes. So the fact that Indiana is one of only five states without specific hate-crime laws doesn't necessarily make us backward.

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