Elbow deep in papers today. Litigation kills trees. Dead.

SB 492 caught my eye because of its expansive scope. The bill title is: “A BILL FOR AN ACT to amend the Indiana Code concerning trade regulation, property, and courts and court officers.” It might as well be entitled “A BILL FOR AN ACT to amend the Indiana Code concerning laws.”

Article 4, section 19 requires that “An act, except an act for the codification, revision or rearrangement of laws, shall be confined to one subject and matters properly connected therewith.”

That said, the courts aren’t going to overturn anything both Houses of the General Assembly agree to and isn’t vetoed by the governor on the basis that a bill covered too much ground. In this case, the bill addresses gift cards, foreclosures, and licensure of those engaging in mortgage transactions. Mostly, the gift card issue is the only thing that seems not to mesh very well with the rest of the bill.

Following up on an incident I blogged about a few times in the past, Terry Record plead guilty to a Class C felony of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, causing death. He was drinking at the Brass Flamingo before striking Jimmy Cash with his car and killing him.

Record faces two to eight years in prison at sentencing June 2, though Indiana law allows the judge to suspend all or part of the sentence.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article discussing the Senate debate over how to allocate education dollars. Senate Democrats offered an amendment that would have allocated more money to the poorer and more troubled schools. Senate Republicans thought this unfair and promoted a formula that was more equal in terms of dollars-per-student. The real negotiations will probably take place at the conference committee stage.

This is one of those situations where I’m glad others are making the hard decisions. On the one hand, I can see where students who start further behind might need more resources to get them on an equal footing with their peers elsewhere in Indiana. And, fixed costs play a factor in making “per student” funding approaches less than ideal. On the other hand, I’m leery of sending piles of money to ineffective money-pits.

The Lafayette Journal & Courier has a couple of articles about how the recession is affecting people’s health. Basically, the dynamic is that people are short on money, they skimp on medicines, and the lack of medicine affects their ability to work. Nasty cycle.

Dorothy Schneider has an article about the recession’s affect on those with mental health problems while Linda Johnson, for the Associated Press, has an article about the recession’s affect on diabetics.

People skimping on medicine up front also increases the nation’s overall health care bill. They don’t take their medicine because they can’t afford it. Then, they get really sick and get treated in the emergency room which, often times, is an order of magnitude more expensive than the medicine would have been. (Mental health has a similar “emergency room” dynamic — with the decline of readily available resources for the mentally ill, chances increase for the mentally ill to cross paths with the law at some point, at which time, their treatment becomes much more expensive and less effective in a correctional setting than it would have been in a medical setting.)

On the other hand, some of the failure to take medicine may have to do with poor decision making. I came across this quote in the diabetes article:

“By December, people were making decisions in terms of, ‘Do I fill this prescription or … buy Christmas presents for my kids?”‘ Lasky added.

If it’s truly a choice between these things, pretty clearly, you fill the prescription. It makes you wonder what purchases folks are making a higher priority than their medicines. Food and shelter go above medicine, but after that, medicine probably has to be one of the first priorities. Diabetes isn’t something to mess around with.

Happy Easter everyone. Not being a religious guy, my appreciation of the holiday is based on the themes of renewal and Spring. That’s where the eggs and bunnies and whatnot come from, and these are not specifically Christian. In other words, you don’t have to believe in the divinity of Jesus in order to be happy that winter is over, the sun has returned, and life is more common than death.

The Resurrection is probably where I break from Christianity most significantly. I believe Jesus lived, taught some very important moral lessons, and then died on the cross. I don’t believe he was a God, came back from the dead, or was otherwise magic.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mike Kole yesterday to talk libertarianism, Libertarianism, Obama, and major party dynamics. The podcast is here.

It was a lot of fun, and I’m really glad I took the opportunity when Mike suggested it. Because I’m a busy creature of habit, my general tendency is to stick in my hectic, yet comfortable, rut. I’m glad I veered out of the rut momentarily for this one. Mike’s set up is really slick. Amazing how you can carry a radio studio in a bag whereas, my understanding is, not so long ago, the machinery and wires involved were substantial.

In the Indiana political blogosphere (rarefied company there), I suspect I talk more about Libertarians more than any other non-Libertarian. (Note the big “L” designating the party as opposed to the closely related philosophy.) For most of the 90s, I self-identified as a Libertarian, more or less. The realities of the two party system and the Bush administration made me come to regard that identification as something of a luxury. I have also come to see the party as emphasizing tax cuts first, last, and always as opposed to the civil liberties issues over which I am more strongly aligned with libertarianism. In addition, my association with liberals over the years has probably strengthened my utilitarian tendencies as well. My political views are a warring hodge-podge of philosophies, so my consistency leaves a lot to be desired.

At any rate, talking politics is always a lot of fun, and Mike, among other things, is a skilled radio producer. So, as I said, the process was very enjoyable.

The Obama administration will not go down in history as a force of pure, unadulterated shining goodness, as it turns out. In fact, the Department of Justice’s state secret position (pdf) with respect to the NSA wiretapping cases is down right disappointing. (Link is to the government’s Motion to Dismiss in the Jewel v. NSA case.)

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic has an entry entitled “Shut Up: It’s Still a Secret” (h/t Reverent & Free) commenting on the government’s assertion of the executive branch’s common law prerogative to protect classified information which would should shut down any litigation against the National Security Agency for its arguably illegal warrantless surveillance program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently running a hyperbolic graphic saying “Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush.” If you click through the link, the statement is modified somewhat to “In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s Arguments are Worse than Bush’s” (h/t Mike Kole).

Ambinder suggests that the Obama administration is trying to figure out how to disengage from the Bush-created thicket without weakening the executive branch’s prerogatives for more legitimate undertaking. I hope this is the case. At the end of the day, however, it’s basically the administration saying “trust us” which we are reluctant to do when we potentially have (or had) government employed spooks indiscriminately sucking up telephone traffic from good guys and bad guys alike. The fundamental problem with a “trust us” argument is that, even if this group of people have their heart in the right place, the next group may not. This brings to mind Federalist #51 on the subject of checks and balances:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

(Emphasis added) The state secrets argument creates a situation where there is no effective check or balance.

Nevertheless, for the time being, I can’t embrace the “Obama is as bad as/worse than Bush” argument. Covering up the past administration’s transgressions isn’t good; but it’s not “as bad as” committing the transgressions in the first place. I have a hard time believing that the Obama administration will be as indifferent to Constitutional limitations as the Bush administration was. Take, for example, Obama’s decision to appoint Dawn Johnsen to the Office of Legal Counsel. She is a Constitutional scholar who has worked for, among others, the ACLU and has characterized (at least in the case of the Bush administration) broad readings of executive power as “outlandish.” Whether she would offer opinions that limit executive power once she was working for the Obama OLC remains to be seen, but appointing someone who has taken that sort of stance in the past suggests that President Obama does not view the Constitution as a mere piece of paper to be gotten around.

Mike Bennett, writing for the Palladium-Item, has an article on the efforts of Mark Zimmer who intends to climb to the highest point in all 50 states to bring attention to Alzheimers. His grandfather is battling the disease and his great-grandmother died of the disease.

Currently, he is summitting the highest peak in Indiana — not exactly a mighty challenge — but the western states will provide sterner tests. The highest point in Indiana is Hoosier Hill in Wayne County, a lofty 1,257 feet. By contrast, Mount McKinley in Alaska is 20,320 feet and Mount Elbert in Colorado is 14,440 feet.

Zimmer’s intent is to average one state per month.

This AP story out of Pittsburgh is disturbing on so many levels. Three police officers were killed responding to a call that started with a domestic dispute over a dog urinating in the house.

Margaret Poplawski was arguing with her son, Richard, over a dog that peed in the house. It escalated to where she was determined to kick him out, and she called the police. They responded, and Richard shot the two responding officers with a rifle.

Apparently Richard had been stockpiling weapons because “was concerned about his weapons being seized during Barack Obama’s presidency” and “believed that as a result of economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society.”

A third, off-duty, but in-uniform officer was killed as he responded to help the officers while on his way home. A four hour stand-off ensued, and Richard was captured.

The two main points that stand out to me from this story are that: 1) We should consider incidents like this when we second guess the tactics of officers in less tragic situations or where tragedy is on the suspect’s end. They respond to a simple domestic dispute and three police officers lose their lives as a result. That doesn’t mean officers get a free pass, but we should cut them some slack when they’re doing a job in which this is the downsided.

2) The tone of the anti-Obama rhetoric has some pretty ugly consequences. Yeah, this guy was apparently a crazy sociopath, so we can’t pin it entirely or even primarily on Glenn Beck and his ilk, but the cries of socialism, fear mongering about Obama grabbing his guns, and most importantly the apocalyptic macho “cold dead hands” posturing is taken seriously in some quarters. I’m a First Amendment nut and, therefore, don’t think any government action should be taken to restrict, regulate, or punish such speech. But I think citizens considering such rhetoric should tell the people using it exactly how full of crap they are.

Update More on the Glenn Beck connection from the ADL via Balloon Juice.

This last comment was a reference to popular right-wing conspiracy theories about Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-constructed prisons and concentration camps for U.S. citizens. Such conspiracy theories had long been staples of the militia movement, but received a reinvigorating shot in the arm following the election of Barack Obama as president. Almost overnight, right-wing conspiracists across the country revived all of their 1990s militia conspiracy theories about the “New World Order,” planned gun confiscations, and government plots against the citizenry. Once more, wild speculations about SHTF (“s—t hits the fan”) and TEOTWAKI (“the end of the world as we know it”) scenarios became rampant.

Poplawski bought into the SHTF/TEOTWAKI conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker, even posting a link to Stormfront of a YouTube video featuring talk show host Glenn Beck talking about FEMA camps with Congressman Ron Paul. When the city of Pittsburgh got a Homeland Security grant to add surveillance cameras to protect downtown bridges, Poplawski told Stormfronters that it was “ramping up the police state.” He said, too, that he gave warnings to grocery store customers he encountered (but only if they were white) to stock up on canned goods and other long-lasting foods.