Mother Jones has a story on Jared Miller, the man who murdered two Las Vegas police officers as some sort delusional anti-government revolution. In that story, Miller’s comments on SB 1-2012 are referenced. SB 1-2012 was the legislature’s response to Barnes v. State wherein the Indiana Supreme Court declined to recognize a common law right to resist unlawful entry by law enforcement officers. On SB 1-2012, Miller said:

“I live in Indiana and recently a law was passed named the right to resist law. As i can make out from it, if a police officer kicks in my door and is not there legally, then I may shoot him.”

My criticism of the law then and now is that the person resisting law enforcement might have a very tenuous grip on what was legal and what wasn’t. Miller seems like a poster child for a certain willful ignorance of the law.

Indiana has been called the middle finger of the South thrust up into the Midwest. The 2012 Presidential electoral map bears this out. And, after the state elections, that finger just got even redder. But, there were unexpected spots of blue. It’s as if election 2012 was an electoral hammer that smashed down on Indiana.

The election that I think will have the most impact on Hoosiers is that of Mike Pence to governor. He is a Congressman who seems to have done nothing but unsuccessfully pursue conservative social legislation while in the House of Representatives. He hid his socially conservative light under a bushel for most of the campaign against John Gregg, but – though I am no Nate Silver – I predict that within the next 60 days, you will see this side of him emerge with a vengeance as the General Assembly — now even redder with some legislators of an almost Dominionist bent — will regard themselves as unleashed.

I don’t think David Long or even, particularly, Brian Bosma have real fire in their bellies for religiously motivated legislation. But, the Democrats lack any real power for them to use in maintaining discipline in their caucuses. So, they’ll have to let such things go and likely embrace a lot of the nonsense. Certainly the Constitutional marriage inequality amendment will come through and go to the ballot. (Unfortunately for my gay friends, I think this means it will show up in 2014 which isn’t as electorally advantageous to them as would be having the question on the ballot in a Presidential election year.)

The spots of blue would appear to be a cautionary tale against going off the rails to the right. Richard Mourdock, about whom I’ve been no fan because of his Chrysler antics, lost in no small part because of his rape and abortion comments. Joe Donnelly would have stood no chance had the more centrist Sen. Lugar remained in the race. Consequently, the Democrats retained control of the U.S. Senate. The other spot of blue was something I didn’t see coming at all until maybe the final week or so. Glenda Ritz beat Tony Bennett for the race to be Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Bennett has been aggressive in his efforts to restructure Indiana’s school system in a way that I believe allows more profit opportunities for some private entities. Certainly a lot of out of state money flowed into Bennett’s campaign war chest – which leads you to believe they were looking for a return on their investment. However, Bennett had gone too far. He outraged teachers in a way that made them talk convincingly to those around them. I know a number of reliably, usually unwavering, Republican votes that were cast against Bennett because teachers they knew convinced them that Bennett was bad for schools. If Bennett had not overreached, he too likely would have been safely re-elected. The Republicans haven’t lost a statewide executive branch office since the mid 90s when <strike>Hogsett</strike> <b><a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Modisett#State_Attorney.27s_offices”>Modisett</a></b> became Attorney General.

But, these cautionary tales will not be heeded. (Notwithstanding the Journal & Courier’s wistful, almost cute, hope of Gov. Pence avoiding social legislation in its endorsement.) So, for the next several years, I predict the State should increase its budget line item for paying ACLU-Indiana’s court mandated attorney fees. And, as this blog enters its 9th year in a couple of days, I expect I will once again have plenty to write about.

To protect Hoosiers against the peril of gay license plates, the General Assembly took decisive action. It created a study committee. The Interim Study Committee on Special Group Recognition License Plates. The committee was charged (pdf) with studying “policies and procedures concerning the issuance of special group recognition license plates.”

Answering the bell in this, our time of need, the committee issued a report. (pdf) (Technically, it could be a draft, I guess. It’s dated November 1, 2012, so I don’t exactly know what’s going on.) The committee’s recommendation?

The Committee made no findings of fact or recommendations.

But, on the upside, various non-profits testified that it was o.k. for the State to use license plates to raise money for non-profits. Nice work everyone.

(And, yes, I spent way too much time sourcing this post.)

Dave Bangert, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier has a good column on the Indiana State Teachers Association endorsement of Republican state representative Randy Truitt over former ISTA employee and current Democratic challenger Rick Cornstuble.

On paper, Bangert is correct, it looks like a no-brainer that ISTA would endorse Cornstuble; particularly given that Rep. Truitt has cast some votes in favor of some legislation that I expect made ISTA very unhappy. But, as Bangert also points out, given the dynamics involved, it makes a certain amount of sense.

I try to stay out of local politics on this blog, so I won’t get too deep into the weeds here, but being somewhat familiar with the local territory, I’m not shocked by the endorsement. First of all, Rep. Truitt is probably going to win. And I don’t think ISTA’s support would change the outcome one way or another. Second, he’s not an ideologue. Within certain broad parameters, Rep. Truitt is someone you can work with. He’s not likely to buck the party on big issues and, and I’m sure he has philosophical preferences he won’t lightly abandon. But, beyond that, I’ve had the opportunity to work with him on non-government issues, in those areas, he struck me as pragmatic and as having his hometown’s best interests at heart (even if I don’t personally think the recently passed education reform legislation did West Lafayette any favors.)

With all those factors in play, ISTA’s support makes sense. When they come knocking, he’ll at least listen and, he might be able to lend a hand when their interests are not opposed.

If it looked like control of the House hung in the balance, I expect ISTA would have backed Cornstuble. But I don’t see Rep. Bosma giving up the gavel regardless of what happens in the Truitt/Cornstuble race.

Jim Shella has an exchange in a state Senate race between incumbent Senator Scott Schneider and challenger, Tim DeLaney. DeLaney has criticized Schneider for his support of legislation that would have allowed Indiana schools to teach creationism as science. (See here for a previous post on SB 89-2012 for which Schneider was a co-author.)

DeLaney criticizes Schneider: “Instead of talking about jobs and the economy and education, he spent time laboring to get creationism taught in schools as science.” (emphasis added)

Schneider’s response doesn’t meet the thrust of the criticism. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with allowing students a full agenda of all different ideas of origins of life,” he says, “and yet we find the sort of anti-religious folks getting into a fervor about that.”

The legislation was entirely unnecessary to permit schools to mention creationism as one of the multitudes of religious origin stories humans have posited over the millenia. They are and have been free to do that. What they can’t do is teach creationism as science. Because it’s not. Objections to teaching creationism as science include:

#It’s not falsifiable; no testable bounds can be imposed on the creator.

#It does not comport with Occam’s Razor which disfavors positing a more complicated explanation where one with fewer assumptions will explain the observed phenomenon.

#Because it posits supernatural forces, it cannot be empirically or experimentally tested.

#It is not open to change in order to explain new evidence. Relying as it does on the Word of God as absolute truth, evidence that runs contrary must be disregarded. “In science, all claims are tentative, they are forever open to challenge, and must be discarded or adjusted when the weight of evidence demands it.”

Either Schneider doesn’t understand the basics of the scientific method (in which case he ought not be authoring legislation on the subject) or he is deliberately ignoring the point in order to advance his political and/or religious goals.

SB 246 sets up procedures for allowing Prosecutors to introduce lab evidence and for Defendants to confront and cross examine lab technicians.

It requires the Prosecutor to provide notice of intent to use a lab report, defined as “a written report or affidavit relating to the results of a scientific test that is prepared for use at trial or to assist in a law enforcement investigation.” The notice has to be provided at least 20 days prior to trial. Then the burden shifts to the defendant to file a demand for cross examination within the next 10 days. If the Prosecutor doesn’t file the notice, the State can’t use the lab report. If the Defendant doesn’t file the demand to cross examine, then defendant waives the right to confront and cross-examine the person who prepared the laboratory report.

The main dynamic that jumped out at me as potentially going wrong was a Prosecutor filing the notice 6 months before trial; before the Defendant’s attorney had his act together with respect to the case and having the 10 days blow by without the Defendant getting the demand on file. But, the statute gives the court authority to alter those deadlines, so I don’t suppose that’s too big of a concern.

In the wake of the SB 1 “right to resist”; the Marion County Sheriff’s Office is, per WRTV6, ordering its warrant servers back into uniform. Apparently civil and criminal process servers had been serving summonses and the like in plain clothes. I’m speculating, but one benefit of having plain clothes process servers is that it cuts down on the embarrassment factor of having a Sheriff’s Deputy stop by your house to serve you papers for something relatively minor like getting sued for non-payment of a debt.
But, like approaching a fearful, skittish animal, I suppose police these days are well-advised to announce their presence well in advance.