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

Brain waves

I have offended Cathie Humbarger, executive director of Allen County Right to Life. I wrote an editorial brief saying that House Bill 1172 would require doctors to lie to patients considering an abortion by telling them that a fetus can feel pain and that life begins at conception.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Dog rules

I'm not sure what I think about Bloomington's new requirements for dog-tethering. They can't be tied up for more than 10 hours in a row or more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period. I have cats, who bascially just roam around the house when they're not eating or sleeping. But it seems reasonable. What's the point of having a pet if you're just going to tie it up in the back yard and ignore it half the time? For what it's worth, here's what the Fort Wayne city code has to say:

Posted in: Uncategorized

A glorious effort fails

Residents of a New Hampshire town have, unfortunately, refused to kick Justice David Souter out of his house to make way for the Lost Liberty Hotel. But it was a glorious effort to call attention to eminent-domain nonsense:

Chocolate delight

Posted in: Food and Drink

Rate yourself

Do the math and find out how your finances would look in a debt-to-income-ratio analysis:

Of course, mortgage lenders have long used ratios to determine whether applicants are credit-worthy. Typically, they like to limit your housing expenses to 28 percent of your gross income, and your total debt payments to no more than 36 percent of your income.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Happy Lombardi Day!

Alombardi_1 Oh, why not? This group wants to make Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday, with the Monday after designated as a "day of observation" (read: three-day weekend).

Posted in: Sports

Orthodoxy according to Quindlen

I have a subscription to Newsweek, which I consider a wonderful time-saver. If I want to keep up on liberal orthodoxy, I don't have to read the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. times and all the rest or watch any of the major network newscasts. Newsweek has the distilled essence of liberal thinking, reported and commented on by likeminded people who think they're being dispassionate and objective because they talk only to each other. They exist in a bubble, you might say.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Nobody likes junk

How out of touch are these people? They needed fancy polls to tell them that today's music stinks. All they had to do was listen to the radio.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Two world views

The struggle for the future of the world goes deeper than "the West" trying to persuade "Muslim moderates" to disavow the tactics of a bunch of extremists. It should be obvious by now that there is a deep, fundamental difference over the very idea of self-government.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Honey, I'm here

I'm surprised the subject of "office spouses" hasn't gotten more attention. My work experience has always been better when I've had a close confidant of the opposite sex. Office politics have become so treacherous that it's vital you have someone you can say absolutely anything to and who can say absolutely anything to you. I don't know why it seems to work out better with the opposite sex, although I have a theory or two.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Da Bears

BearsSince the Colts and Bears are both out of it, I have zero interest in Sunday's Super Bowl. I'm sure they'll be playing the best commercials on Monday-morning TV, so I don't even have to watch it for them. I don't much care about someboy's list of the top 10 Super Bowl teams of all time, either.

Posted in: Sports

A nice, warming drink

Bourbon Now maybe all you global-warming alarmists will shut up:

A number of environmentally oriented Web sites even have begun raising the alarm that global warming could threaten the future of Kentucky bourbon itself.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Another way to drive us crazy

Ah, leave to the bureaucrats. They finally decide to relieve our boredom while waiting at the license brances by putting in big-screen TVs. But do we get to watch soap operas or Judge Judy or even Oprah? Of course not:

Bureau of Motor Vehicle Commissioner Joel Silverman believes, "It could be a great opportunity of providing some great information for our customers, helping us to manage the branches better and a new and different way of talking to them."

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Boom!

AfireworksFireworks can be dangerous. Whether the state should protect us from them would make for a fascinating and unpredictable debate (we MUST wear seat belts, but never mind the motorcycle helmets). But legalizing them would at least give us a coherent law, whether you agree with it or not.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Another illuminating study

Gosh, this is a shock:

The study found that between 2001 and 2003, homeless people died at the rate of 2,192 per 100,000 people. This figure is twice the death rate of normal adults in New York City.

Posted in: Current Affairs

1984, over and over again

Inch by inch, our zone of privacy shrinks:

Mayor Daley on Monday embraced a radical plan to require every licensed Chicago business open more than 12 hours a day to install indoor and outdoor cameras.

[...]

Posted in: Current Affairs

Heavy metal

Anything that becomes valuable enough will eventually be stolen:

Thieves have made off with dozens of hefty manhole covers and sewer grates in the last few days, leaving gaping holes scattered in streets across the city.

City officials believe the high price of scrap metal is spurring the thefts and have been warning area scrap yards not to buy any manhole covers they might be offered.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

One of their own

Like some of the troops in Iraq, I've also felt the coverage of Bob Woodfruff's wounding just a tad excessive:

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

Posted in: Current Affairs

He campaigned only at night

Let's hear it for Marion County prosecutors -- they're keeping even Minnesota politics safe:

Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, 41, of Princeton was arrested Monday night on two felony counts from Indiana, said Mike Smith, the Mille Lacs County jail administrator. One warrant was for escape, another for stalking.

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Fool's game

We're so lucky having the state look after us, hitting a lottery scammer with a 50-year sentence (!!) so it can "deter inside jobs that threaten public confidence in the Hoosier Lottery." Heaven forbid we should lose faith in the lottery. We might start thinking it's a fool's game that can be won only by scammers.

Posted in: Hoosier lore
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