A friend of mine noted that this poem by James Patrick Kinney seems to have a lot of relevance just about now.

‘The Cold Within’

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood–
Or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back,
For, of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next one looked cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of wealth he had in store,
And keeping all that he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For he saw in his stick of wood
A chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain,
Giving just to those who gave
Was how he played the game,

Their sticks held tight in death’s stilled hands
Was proof enough of sin;
They did not die from cold without–
They died from cold within.

Betsy Reason, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article about the death of Tony Feller, a guy I knew in school. I didn’t know Tony well, but I did know him to be a very nice guy back in high school. By all accounts, that hadn’t changed in the past 20 years. His dad, as it happens, was an excellent teacher from whom I learned calculus and a lot about computers.

Tony died after a long battle with colon cancer. He and his wife, Crystal, kept a blog chronicling his fight. Donations to cover his treatment can be made through the Tony Feller Fund.

The blog makes for some sad reading, mainly because you know how it comes out in the end. But, for us all, it comes out the same in the end. That’s a tough part of life, but the important part is what we do with the time we have. It looks as though Tony made the most of life and did not succumb to despair. That’s about the most any of us can really ask for — though, obviously, more years on the planet would have been more fair.

The sad part, as always, is for the friends and family left to carry on without a loved one. Sympathy goes out, in particular, to Tony’s wife and children. Rest in peace, Tony.

Niki Kelly and Jeff Wiehe have an article on the Indiana Supreme Court’s new rule concerning the admissibility of evidence of custodial interrogations in felony cases. (At the moment, the Indiana Judiciary’s website is less than helpful. There is a press release, but then you have to go digging for the actual order promulgating the new rule of evidence.)

The Supreme Court’s press release says:

The rule, which was approved by majority vote, states in part, “In a felony criminal prosecution, evidence of a statement made by a person during a Custodial Interrogation in a Place of Detention shall not be admitted against the person unless an Electronic Recording of the statement was made.”

A place of detention means a jail, law enforcement agency station house, or facility owned and operated by law enforcement. An electronic recording means an audio-video recording. The exact definitions for “place of detention” and “electronic recording” can be found in Rule 617 online.

There are seven exceptions to the rule which can be found online as well. Generally, the exceptions include the following:

1. statements made as a part of routine processing or “booking”
2. statements made when the suspect does not agree to be electronically recorded.
3. when there is an equipment malfunction
4. when the interrogation takes place in another jurisdiction
5. when law enforcement officers reasonably believe the crime under investigation is not a felony
6. the statement made is spontaneous and not in response to a question
7. substantial exigent circumstances exist which prevent the recording

The Journal Gazette article has an interesting quote from Rep. Matt Pierce who chairs the House Courts and Criminal Code Committee. He called a grey area the issue of whether such a rule should have gone through the legislature or the courts.

“There has been tension between the legislature and the courts in the past about what the legislature can do in areas of evidence,” he said. “The court says the Constitution gives them the job of administering courts, so they are the final word.”

Justices Dixon, Boehm, and Rucker voted in favor of the new rule. Justices Shepard and Sullivan dissented, mostly on the grounds that police departments are largely moving in this direction on their own and there hasn’t been any particular evidence of dishonesty in the Indiana law enforcement community where such interrogations are not recorded.

Bill Ruthart, writing for the Indianapolis Star (link is to the Courier Journal version), has an article on the Interim Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverages hearing on Sunday liquor sales. The issue seems pretty clearly to be whether to offer protections to liquor stores not available to smaller stores selling other products.

Nobody seems to be advancing the original rationales about the morality of selling evil liquor on a holy day. Instead, the assumption seems to be that total liquor sales will remain static while the time over which the product is sold will increase by a day. This will result in lesser profit for the liquor stores, more market share for big retailers, and no appreciable increase in overhead for the box stores because they’re open anyway.

I don’t want the good liquor stores to go out of business, but I don’t really care about the seedy ones selling low end stuff staffed with employees who don’t know much about what they’re selling. Regardless, though, I don’t know of any reason why businesses selling alcohol should enjoy protections not available to those selling, for example, sporting goods. Sporting goods stores have to compete with big retailers even on Sundays. A really good sporting good store (the REI in Denver being the best one I’ve personally had the pleasure of enjoying) can be invaluable. A low end one without knowledgeable staff is just redundant.

For legislators gathering information on the subject, one approach might be to find a state with similar alcohol laws but with Sunday sales and see what that has done to the alcohol industry in that state. Liquor laws being what they are, however, I don’t know how easy or hard it would be to find an apples-to-apples comparison.

The Indiana General Assembly’s Regulatory Flexibility Committee (for which I was once counsel – I know you are all very impressed) will be studying nuclear power plants.

One thing they will have to address is what went wrong at Marble Hill. If they plan to go down the nuclear reactor avenue at some point in the future, they’ll have to figure out how to avoid an expensive debacle like that.

There is a Time Magazine article from 1984 that discusses the fate of Marble Hill.

Marble Hill has already eaten up some $2.5 billion, making it the most expensive nuclear power project ever to be dropped. The decision brings the total number of cancellations of U.S. nuclear plants since 1974 to 100.

Public Service began constructing Marble Hill in 1978. The original cost estimate for the plant, situated near the small town of Madison, was about $1.4 billion. But Marble Hill ran into the same sort of quality-control problems that have bedeviled the rest of the nuclear power industry, and costs shot upward. Construction crews, for instance, routinely failed to repair properly the air pockets that formed in the concrete as it was being poured. Last month a task force estimated the total price of completing the project would be $7.7 billion or more.

Marble Hill’s voracious appetite for cash has left the utility strapped. Just to continue generating power to its 540,000 customers, Public Service said it will immediately need to boost rates 14%. Later the utility plans to apply for additional rate increases to begin paying off its $2.2 billion share of the construction bill.

(There is also some information here, but the site is riddled with questionable spelling, making me question the accuracy of the information.)

Currently the discussion of nuclear issues by the Reg-Flex Committee looks like it’s slated to take place on the afternoon of September 22, 2009 in the Senate Chambers.

Probably this is of little practical consequence, but there was a mildly interesting article from the Washington Post (appearing in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) on whether Richard Lugar or Orrin Hatch is the most senior Republican in the U.S. Senate. The two were sworn into the Senate on the same day (January 3, 1977).

The answer as to who is the most senior has to do with which set of tie breaker rules you use. The Senate itself apparently awards seniority in such situations to whichever Senator represents the state with the greater population — under that scenario, Lugar wins. At the time the two were sworn in, however, the Republican caucus went with whichever Senator was first in alphabetical order. Under that rule, Hatch beats Lugar.

Tell City attorney, Jeff Hagedorn, has a good column in the Perry County News rebutting a claim by one of the local doctors there that medical malpractice costs are a significant reason for climbing health care costs. Malpractice costs have dropped significantly since 2000. Malpractice premiums have even gone down to a lesser extent. Meanwhile health care costs have continued to shoot steeply upward. So, trying to peg health care costs to malpractice costs seems to be little more than wishful scapegoating.

The study found “that premiums and claims for doctors both have dropped significantly in recent years while the medical malpractice insurance industry is enjoying remarkable profits in light of the global economic collapse.

It concludes that further limiting the liability of negligent doctors and unsafe hospitals is not only unjustified, but also would have almost no impact lowering this country’s overall health-care expenditures.”

Hunter said, “thirty years of inflation-adjusted data show that medical malpractice premiums are the lowest they have been in this entire period. This is in no small part due to the fact that claims have fallen like a rock, down 45 percent since 2000. The periodic premium spikes we see in the data are not related to claims but to the economic cycle of insurers and to drops in investment income.

Since prices have not declined as much as claims have, medical malpractice insurer profits are higher than the rest of the property casualty industry, which has been remarkably profitable over the last five years.”

Steve Buyer has, from time to time, shown himself to be fairly thin-skinned for a politician. Now he is claiming that President Obama called him a liar during Obama’s address to the nation on health care which was interrupted by the outburst of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina “First in Treason!”). Asked about that, Rep. Buyer said he thought he understood why Wilson did it.

Moments before Wilson’s outburst, Obama had talked of his critics “spreading disinformation and lies,” Buyer said. What the president was doing at that moment “was calling us liars,” Buyer said.

Buyer said he took offense to those remarks himself.

So, we know which comments Buyer took offense to because he specifies the moments before Wilson’s unfortunate bout with Tourettes. Let’s look at the comments that Buyer identifies himself with when he says that the President was calling “us” liars:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

Note that President Obama didn’t identify who he is saying made these claims. By talking about “us,” Buyer is identifying himself as someone who makes these claims. And, if he is, then he’s a liar and shouldn’t be offended if someone calls him one. And, if he’s not, then he’s being overly sensitive.

I mention the redistricting issue primarily to share a good line from the Journal & Courier editorial board.

One look at a map of Indiana’s congressional and state legislature districts, and one can tell from the lines and odd-shaped districts that those who created it were either drunk or partisan — not that those are mutually exclusive.

Personally, I’m dismissive of Todd Rokita’s redistricting proposal primarily because it comes from Todd Rokita. He has been a very loyal Republican and not unconcerned for his own political fortunes over the years. So, it’s hard to accept that he is taking a non-partisan action simply for the good of the state and out of no concern for his own political future. Maybe he is, maybe I’m maligning him unfairly. But, the past is typically a good place to look for explanations about what is going on in the present.

Maybe we should turn the redistricting process over to a panel of Libertarians and other 3rd party members. An even playing field would be a huge improvement for them, so I think we could trust them to create one.