A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

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FWJG – Not so fond of Rokita

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial in which it discusses the upcoming Democratic convention during which the party will, among other things, select a Secretary of State candidate. Says the Journal Gazette:

The secretary of state nomination is important for the party in several ways. Republicans have a lock on all the statewide elected offices except for Evan Bayh’s U.S. Senate seat, and winning an office in Mitch Daniels’ Statehouse would be not only a boost for the party but help provide a watchdog on the GOP-controlled state government. The incumbent, Todd Rokita, should be vulnerable – he strongly supported an unnecessary voter ID law, and he refused to intervene in problems surrounding voting machines until it became politically expedient to do so.

Joe Pearson of Hartford City is so far the only Democrat to seek the position and is, therefore, the presumptive nominee.

Memorial Day

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It’s Memorial Day. I don’t have any real interest in commenting on Indiana politics this morning, so I’ll just add my voice to the chorus of thanks for the men and women who have given their lives fighting in America’s wars.

According to the Wikipedia entry linked above, Memorial Day was formerly known as “Decoration Day” and began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the Civil War. After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action. I wonder if that includes the southern rebels who committed treason by fighting against the union for the Confederacy, killing the Union soldiers for whom the holiday was originally enacted. Along those lines, the Wikipedia entry goes on to state:

Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army, which it was commemorating. Many Southern States did not recognize Memorial Day until after World War I, and even after continued to have a separate Confederate Memorial Day, with the date varying from state to state.

I’m not sure if it’s proper to honor our military dead in this fashion, but when so many are dying in Iraq, I’m reminded of Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. The traditional image of Memorial Day is the brave soldier dying for a noble cause. But with the war in Iraq, the Charge of the Light Brigade seems more appropriate — brave soldiers dying for their country, but in a futile cause because their superiors have misused the honor and loyalty of their soldiers.

1.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

The VA’s Religious Bias

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Ed Brayton has an interesting post up about the V.A.’s refusal to allow soldiers buried in military cemeteries to have Wiccan symbols on their headstone, despite the V.A.’s tendency toward religious inclusiveness — they allow headstones with religious symbols for atheists and obscure religions such as the United Moravian Church. But no Wiccans.

One prominent member of the religious right, Paul Weyrich encourages Christians to boycott the military until it refuses to allow Wiccans to serve their country.

Ignorantia juris non excusat

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The Palladium-Item has a repugnant editorial on the subject of the Toll Road lawsuit wherein Judge Scopelitis has issued a decision requiring a $1.8 billion bond for the citizen’s challenge to be heard on its merits as to the constitutionality of the Toll Road privatization. The Pal-Item labels this decision “a victory for representative government and a setback to those who would seek to derail democratic processes by way of judicial fiat.”

I’m sorry that the fine editors at the Palladium-Item get annoyed by constitutional limitations on the authority of the legislature. But that’s the Republic into which they were born. I do not think it does our democratic institutions any good to bad mouth the processes by which we test whether the legislature has acted within its authority. “Judicial fiat” indeed.

The paper concludes:

If protesters don’t like their vote, elect different legislators.

Next case.

That’s fine advice, but it won’t get Hoosiers their Toll Road back once their right to manage it has been sold for the next 70 years. Thankfully, our forefathers left a legacy of democratic elections and judicial review. It’s not an either/or proposition.

BOOM BABY BOOM

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The South Bend Tribune has an editorial on the new fireworks law. I think they’re pretty accurate with their opening:

Indiana’s old fireworks law was ridiculous. Indiana’s new fireworks law is dangerous. We wouldn’t call that an improvement.

They stated that the purpose of the new law is to raise money for the state, not to limit the use of dangerous fireworks. I can see where fireworks safety advocates wouldn’t like the new law. You can set off pretty much anything in your own back yard. On the other hand, the old law was so deliberately unenforceable that I don’t think the new law is really a step backward.

Personally, I haven’t really made up my mind on what the law’s approach to fireworks ought to be. I was certainly no stickler for safety when I was a teenager with bags full of bottle rockets. So the new law won’t influence my vote. But certainly those for whom a strong fireworks safety policy is important have cause to be disappointed.

Over the Edge of the World

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I recently finished reading Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen.

Nothing earthshaking, but for me it was a nice, accessible account of Magellan’s voyage. I was particularly glad to read a fuller account of Magellan’s death than I had known of before. In high school history classes, I’d sort of vaguely been told that he’d been killed by savages in the Phillipines. Turns out, he’d taken one tribe’s side over that of another and, furthermore was on the attack and trying his hand at converting the natives to Christianity. Not really advisable activities when you’re half way across the earth from your home base with 3 ships and 150 men or so. I had also been unaware of the bad blood between Magellan who was sailing for the Spanish and the Portuguese who, by virtue of the Pope’s Line of Demarcation, had dibs on the half of the world east of Brazil and west of the Phillipines. This made it difficult for the remainder of the expedition to get home once they left the Spice Islands.

IN-02: Donnelly, Chocola, and Medicare D

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There was an article from May 19 by James Wensits in the South Bend Tribune on the debate between Joe Donnelly and Chris Chocola on the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit plan.

Donnelly’s main critique of the plan was the provision that forbids the federal government from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to obtain a lower price for the drugs. He is also in favor of eliminating penalties for seniors who did not sign up for the complicated plan by the May 15 deadline. Chocola apparently was unwilling to take a strong stand on whether he was for or against such an extension.

Chocola criticized Donnelly’s criticism, suggesting that Donnelly would have voted against the plan had Donnelly been in Congress at the time. While Donnelly has retorted that he would have worked for a better plan, the suggestion that Donnelly might have voted against the plan may actually endear him to erstwhile conservatives in Chocola’s district.

One of the recurring criticisms I hear about the Republicans in power from my fiscally conservative friends is that the President and the Congress are spending like drunken sailors. The Medicare Part D prescription drug program is Exhibit “A” in their indictment of the fiscally reckless spending policies of the past few years. Hearing from Chocola that Donnelly would have voted against the program would be music to their ears.

Slowing the privatization train

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial about the attempts to outsource the FSSA eligibility operation entitled “Slowing the Privatization Train.”

The main issues are that Mitch Roob had connections to one of the two companies, ACS, in the hunt for the billion dollar contract and that one of the companies, Accenture, has had problems in Texas severe enough that Texas legislators threatened to fire them from Texas’s working on its benefit-eligibility system.

The Journal Gazette also takes the administration to task for its apparent indifference to public input, demonstrated by its initial scheduling of the public hearing one day after the contract was to be finalized and five days before it was to be signed — all over the 4th of July Holiday.

IN-09: DCCC pledges more attention to Baron Hill in ’06

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There is an article in The Hill on Baron Hill’s race against Mike Sodrel. Apparently the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2004 spent a ton of money on losing efforts attempting to help incumbent Democrats survive Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting (which was of dubious legality and which is one of the thing that caused his fall from power.) The National Republican Campaign Committee spent $1 million more on Sodrel in the last two months of the 2004 campaign than the DCCC spent on Hill. This year the DCCC has promised to make Hill a priority.