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

Glad to be here

Amvet_2 Happy Veterans Day. Would it be unlibertarian of me to wish the federal government would require that veterans get the day off with triple pay? Oh, well. Just send me money, and I'll toast you at the local VFW. Wait, I forgot. I don't belong.

You call this art?

Art_1 When the two "sculptures" were first installed at the site of the art museum, I savaged them in editorials and columns as examples of what wanna-be sophisticates in a small city would put up with in order to think of themselves as worldly.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Oops

Something you'd think a school principal would know: If you're going to call somebody a thief and a liar in a very public way, you'd better be right.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Don't buy her book or her line

Mary Mapes has it all wrong when she insists that:

"no one has proved" documents discredited by Internet weblogs were not authentic . . .

. . . Mapes tells ABC News she is continuing to investigate the source of the controversial documents. But she insists she had no journalistic obligation to prove their authenticity before the "60 Minutes II" report.

"I don't think that's the standard," she says.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Our population should be exploding

The sex researchers at Indiana University are at it again. I don't know if this survey is a knock against Hoosier men or rural men or just the lethal combination of the two, but it's kind of scary:

Condom use errors, such as putting it on wrong or wearing one only part of the time, were frequently reported during a recent survey of rural Indiana men.

How dumb do you have to be to put it on wrong?

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Mayor Whippersnapper

These kids today, I tell ya: If they're not into drugs or sex, they're out trying to find some other way to get in trouble:

Sessions, who turned 18 on Sept. 22, ran as a write-in candidate because he was too young to get on the ballot in the spring. The young politician used $700 from a summer job to fund his door-to-door campaign in Hillsdale, Mich., a town of about 9,000.

No fiscal discipline? Shocking

It took Mort Kondracke until now to figure this out?

If Washington, D.C., politicians were serious about fiscal discipline, especially to prepare for the baby boom retirement crisis, they'd raise taxes and cut spending. But they aren't serious.

As the debate on budget reconciliation right now shows, Republicans are trying to cut spending some and cut taxes more. Democrats want to raise taxes some and spend a lot more. And the twain shall never meet.

Go ahead and shoot me

San Francisco residents must have a death wish. In a voter referendum this week, they voted overwhelmingly to ban handguns. Furthermore,

Residents would have to turn over handguns already in their possession by next April.

There are potential victims, and there are the people who want to prey on them. All this does is disarm the potential victims. That is insane.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Come together

Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma has appointed Rep. Phil Hinkle, R-Indianapolis, and Rep. Jim Buck, R-Kokomo, to lead a group that will study and possibly make recommendations for a general framework that would allow "local communities could develop a consolidation plan and then put it before residents in the form of a voter referendum." (From the Evansville Courier Press via Masson's Blog)

Posted in: Hoosier lore

Run and hide, Steve

An Indiana man, Steve Wallace, has lost the lawsuit claiming he wrote the Britney Spears hit "Sometimes." Believe it or not, I'm not a Spears fan, so I went online to see what all the fuss was about. Here are the lyrics to "Sometimes," including the refrain:

Posted in: Hoosier lore

The media war

If the war in Iraq has distracted you from the overall War on Terror, please read this. It's lengthy, but every word is worth it.

Posted in: Current Affairs

Krossing over

If you don't understand the Kookie family tree, you don't know television history, and if you don't know television history, you're missing a lot of the current state of American culture.

No more mush from the wimps

A couple of days ago, I linked to a thoughtful essay about the Republicans' need to reshape their philosophical approach. It's hard to find something similar for Democrats, since they don't even have a philosophy these days except "Bush bad." At least some people are starting to realize that:

It would be a shame if the Democrats' quest for something to say produced only focus-group driven sloganeering and mush.

Praying for votes

I've made light of the ICLU's attempts to rein in prayer in the Indiana General Assembly, calling it a waste of time with no real purpose -- Hoosiers' lives aren't affected by the prayers, however sectarian they might be, and won't be affected by any change. Masson's Blog has a different take: There already is a policy calling for non-denominational prayers; House Speaker Bosma just declines to enforce it, for his own craven political reasons.

Posted in: Uncategorized

Strong coffee for tough men

I tried to work up a modicum of the outrage some seem to feel at prionsers having an espresso machine, but it just wasn't in me. We want prisoners to come out with some idea of how to cope in the outside world, right? This is a way to get them ready to encounter a Starbucks on every corner.

Posted in: Current Affairs

No more fishwrap

I've written here before about true convergence, the day when we can carry around a lightweight, handheld device that will do everything. That day keeps getting closer and closer:

But it is the potential for boosting mobile Internet use that makes electronic paper displays particularly attractive, said Karl McGoldrick, Chief Executive of Polymer Vision.

Posted in: Web/Tech

How about a nice Christmas suit?

I hate it when the season is rushed. Could we please have a rule that nobody is allowed to sue until after Thanksgiving?

Communities and courts have long fielded protests against municipal creche displays and school Nativity pageants, based on strict views of church-state separation and sensitivity toward religious minorities.

Posted in: Religion

Judge for yourselves

The letter to the editor from Ken Brown of Delphos, Ohio, who complained about the trailer for a child-prostitution movie shown at a PG family-friendly film, has generated some interest. Indiana Parley links to it and includes mention of some kids in a New York theater who thought they were going to see "Chicken Little" but saw something very different.

Who you gonna call?

Of all the institutions that have declined in America, volunteer firefighting has most represented what is best in us, so its problems say the most about what we've lost in the way we live today:

Posted in: Current Affairs

You are what you . . . never mind

The British Heart Foundation is appalled that about a third of 8-to-14-year-olds don't know that chips are made from potatoes or that cheese is made mostly from milk. This seems especially clueless:

Peter Hollins, the director general of the British Heart Foundation, said: "Kids have lost touch with the most basic foods and no longer understand what they are eating . . . "

Posted in: Science
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