Now that the voter registration phase of Indiana’s primary has closed, a kind reader from the Tippecanoe County area suggested that I remind folks of their options and some logistics with respect to casting their vote.

STEPS:

1) To Vote in Indiana — bring your state approved photo ID (Drivers License or ID) or a US Passport with an expiration date. Student ID does not work. (IF you need a photo ID — go to the BMV and get one for $10.)

2) If your IN Drivers License does not have your current address you must ALSO bring a copy of a bank statement, utility bill, government document, paycheck — with your name and current address. Official institutional documents are needed, not random mail.

3) You can vote early. In particular, the reader noted that Purdue students can vote in Stewart Center on April 17-18th — even before the Pennsylvania primary, then “sit back and study for those finals!”

Just a reminder, today is the LAST DAY to register to vote in Indiana’s primary. If you want to vote — and you ought to want to vote because you’re a citizen, dammit — make sure to register. There are probably many ways to do it, but if nothing else, go to your county’s voter registration office; Tippecanoe County’s is in the court house; and get it done. I believe you can register at any BMV branch as well. (Years ago, while in Marion County, there was some sort of screw up when I tried to register through the BMV and I have gone through the county voter registration office since then.)

Think you’re registered, but aren’t sure. You can check online.

It’s a little amazing that we still haven’t figured out a way to vote without substantial problems. But, in any case, Todd Rokita’s office has filed to collect civil penalties against MicroVote for that company’s sale of uncertified voting equipment to up to 47 counties in 2005 and 2006. An administrative ruling held that the company owes the state $360,000 for its violations.

Mainly, I’m flagging this entry at the Indiana Law Blog for potential future use in one of my cases. It concerns tough times for pork producers due to an oversupply of pork and increasing prices for feed.

I have a case where I represent a secondary player in suit filed by a pork producer who feels he didn’t get the pigs he was promised, forcing him to stop producing his own hogs. If it gets that far and if pork prices tank as much as predicted (some are saying it’s going to be worse than the dismal years of ’98-’99), maybe I can argue that he owes us money.

There is a great article this morning in the New York Times Magazine focusing on the development of Maricopa, Arizona. Primarily, it highlights the short-sightedness of using adjustable rate mortgages and interest only loans and the like. Such financial tools have their uses, but it seems that too many home buyers, particularly in hot markets like Arizona, used those tools in conjunction with an assumption that the boom-times would last forever. I had a history teacher who told us that, whenever someone tells you that the good times are here to stay, you should check your wallet and head for cover. (He told the class this in October of 1987; made a little gesture as if sniffing the air; and said, “in fact, it smells like we’re in for another downturn.” A week or so later, Black Monday took place on Wall Street. He had my attention for the rest of the year.) Home values were inflated, people would come in and buy the houses with interest-only loans, ARMs, and the like; anticipating that the home values would continue to rise; at which time, they could refinance or sell the house. When home prices started drifting back down to earth, the house of cards started collapsing. People find themselves struggling to pay their interest-only mortgages in a market where they could rent a property twice the size at half the price. It reminds me of some of my collections where the bank has repossessed the car and the debtor thinks that should be the end of it. I have to advise them, that this isn’t the case where they struck a crappy bargain, agreeing to pay more for the car than it was probably worth (not to mention depreciation, etc.) Now they don’t have a car, *and* they’re stuck paying an extra few thousand bucks. This home market problem is like that with dollar amounts that are an order of magnitude greater.

But there was a side-theme to the article that caught my attention as well. There is real value to local government restrictions on development. Obviously this runs contrary to libertarian notions of a mostly unrestricted right to use one’s property as one sees fit. But, with almost no zoning laws or area planning in effect in Maricopa, each developer was acting in a way to maximize its profits, but this lead to a town that didn’t work especially well. For example, there was only one road to Phoenix, with no overpass over the train tracks, turning the busy roads into a parking lot when a train came by. Apparently there was no space for a high school. High schools lowered property values. One developer said he’d rather build a jail on his property than a high school. In the evenings, since the area was little more than subdivisions, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Apparently you were looking at a 45 minute drive to find anything interesting to do. Typically local government will have community development regulations in place to promote the orderly growth of a community, mitigating some of the negative consequences of developers acting purely to maximize their personal self-interest. However, Maricopa wasn’t much of a community before the developers came in to take advantage of the expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area.

John Cole has a fairly inspired rant about the right-wing blogosphere. He notes that Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) was talking about his trip to Iraq and referred to one of the soldiers as a “two-bit security guard” when the soldier denied him access to a gym in the Green Zone for lack of proper credentials.

Cole describes the probable state of the right-wing blogosphere if McHenry had been a Democrat:

If McHenry was a Democrat there would be a full on red alert action report sent across the WingNetTM. Kerning charts would be pulled out for referencing. Cheeto’s and Mountain Dew stock would triple. McHenry’s countertops would be inspected, and the Confederate Yankee would spend a week linking all the times McHenry had been in the same state as Barack Obama, showing decisively that Obama hates the troops (Jake Tapper would note that he thought this was the case, because he has a really keen sense for traitors- ask anyone in his family). We would learn that someone in McHenry’s family tree did something vaguely subversive in the 1960’s (maybe smoked a joint while listening to Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner, rather than standing erect and proudly displaying a lapel pin).

The Instapundit would kick his passive/aggressive BS into overdrive, linking every rambling yahoo on the intertrons who wants to proudly display their patriotism (500 different links to poorly written proclamations without the benefit of a shift key that “OUR TROOPS AIN’T JUST SECURITY GUARDS THEY ARE THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTESTEST). Red State would send out a fundraising letter for another 25k for website development to combat evil leftist smears against our troops. Mickey Kaus would stop sodomizing fellating goats long enough to pen a column about his outrage, and since he is a Democrat himself (wink, wink), this would give the outrage enough respectability that the odious fool Howie Kurtz would write six columns about it, describing the outrage, pushing it until there would be wall to wall coverage on the cable networks and Wolf Blitzer finally asks the poll question:

“Why do Democrats hate our troops and why do they hate the country, and how can they expect to win the Presidency with that attitude? ”

That is what would fucking happen.

I remember Martin Luther King,
Lord he was the man, baby, that gave us all a dream.

—Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise, “Once Upon a Time.”

It’s been 40 years since Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The day before, at the end of his last speech, Dr. King said the following:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Here in Indiana, Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning in the Democratic primary when he learned of the assassination. He gave a speech that helped calm the situation in town. (Text of the speech).

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Kennedy himself was assassinated two months later. Nixon went on to win the Presidential election. America went through a dark time.

If you haven’t yet registered to vote, you need to do so on or before April 7 (that’d be Monday) in order to vote in the May 6 primary.

Lawyers, Guns & Money has a good post up about the absurdity of trying to make April “Confederate History Month” which would, in any case, be more appropriately entitled “Treason in Defense of Slavery Month.” Proponents claim that it’s about “Southern Heritage.”

The mythology that has emerged around the Confederacy, and especially the “Lost Cause” is not simply a question of historical antiquarianism; such nostalgia invariably carries a racial component, and is deeply embedded within a narrative of hatred and oppression towards African-Americans. Confederate nostaligia has always included this racial component, and has never been about the “heritage” of the American South. The southern states have been part of the United States of America for 231 years, and were in rebellion for four; that leaves 227 years of potential heritage that don’t involve a brutal war fought in the service of human servitude. As others have noted, Confederate nostalgia is about the hate, not the heritage.

Undercutting every element of Confederate nostalgia, including the idea that men fought for their states and not their ideology, or that African-Americans fought in numbers for the Confederacy, or that the Confederate elite behaved with any honor, or that the Confederacy was even particularly popular among poor Southern whites, is a valuable project. As long as states see fit to have Confederate Heritage Month, it will be necessary to describe the essential perfidity of the Confederacy. In all honesty, I look forward to the day when Confederate nostalgia is every bit as respectable as fond remembrance for Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or Imperial Japan.

For my part, here is what you need to know about Confederate History: “The war is over. The good guys won.” Nostalgia for treason drives me up the wall.

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