Hoosier lore

When he ran for his first congressional term in 1994, Mark Souder made a big deal about people going to Washington and staying too long. In fact, he made a self-imposed 12-year limit on his service the cornerstone of his campaign. So guess when that 12 years is up? If Souder really meant it back in 1994, he shouldn't even be running for re-election next year.

Evan Bayh has now come out against John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. Well, not against, exactly. From a Bayh office press release:

Regrettably, therefore, I cannot vote to confirm, not because I oppose John Roberts, but because we simply do not know enought about his views on critical issues to make a considered judgment.

The latest dispatch from the field by libertarian correspondent Mike Sylvester:

Last year I decided to research the annual average cost per student for K-12 education in Indiana.  I used two sources for all of my statistics -- Stats Indiana and The National Teachers Association.  Below is a summary of the average cost for 2004:

Expenses per student (not counting capital outlays or debt service) = $8,592 per year.

Those rubes known as Hoosiers have gone and done it again. The Auburn City Council has voted not to enact a public-smoking ban. Fort Wayne, of course, has one. Columbia City does not. Bloomington does. Indianapolis doesn't but will have as soon as the approved one kicks in. You see where this is going. If you drove through Indiana from the Michigan line to the Kentucky line, you'd go in and out of smoking bans.

You won't believe this -- a writer who doesn't hate Joel Silverman. It's RiShawn Biddle, writing on the Indy Star's Expresso blog.

Silly, silly, silly:

We need to have as many Indiana counties as posible in the same time zone.

Whatever for?

Welcome back to school, kids. Football games, band practice, boring food in the cafeteria and, oh, yes, your ISTEP tests. Sharpen your pencils and get lots of sleep, but don't worry. It's just your entire future that's at stake.

People keep missing the point of Indiana's time-zone debates: Oh, we'll have an even-more-confusing patchwork of zones, and people will still make fun of us rubes, boo-hoo. Certainly that might be true if the federal Department of Transportation were to grant all the requests from counties that want to switch zones. It won't. It will consider patterns of economic activity, which means the burden of proof will be on those who want to change.

Even in Indianapolis, home of the dreaded UniGov, not everyone is an enthusiastic supporter of consolidated government. It's worth noting that the sheriff seems more opposed to the interim committee than consolidation itself. The General Assembly gave its permission for the merger of city and county police, but the office of sheriff is a constitutionally mandated one, so the sheriff would end up in charge of the consolidated police departments.

John Roberts has finished his testimony, and nobody touched him or made him flinch. The only question remaining is how many Senate Democrats will vote for him. It had better be quite a few, or the party will show itself to be completey out of touch with that "mainstream" everybody keeps talking about.