My neck of the woods – Lafayette and parts north along the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers are getting hit pretty hard by flooding.

The town of Remington, about 30 miles north of Lafayette, is closed to all traffic except for emergency responders. This morning, U.S. Highways 24 and 231 were shut down as they lead into Remington.

The Oakdale dam in Carroll County is seeing record volumes.

Shipe said a 100-year flood would be 32,000 cubic feet per second.

He said 4 to 6 inches of rain fell in about 12 hours overnight. Most affected are areas north of and near Monticello. They’ve had reports of some roads under water as deep as 13 inches.

“This is a big-time, summer thunderstorm,” Shipe said, “falling in the worst possible situation: on winter time soils, where they were very wet and had snow cover less than three days ago and may have been partially frozen because they had zero temperatures.

“It results in nearly 100 percent run off, very little is absorbed.”

People who live south of the dam are being evacuated. A relief center is being set up in Delphi. Monon is experiencing heavy flooding. Some bridges in Newton County have been damaged. Most of the streams in Benton County are out of their banks.

The Monticello Herald Journal has some additional coverage. I used to live about 1/2 west of Lake Freeman, above the Oakdale Dam and below the Norway Dam. I don’t know that my old house would have been in any particular flood danger, but I’m happy to be well removed at the moment. Small amounts of water are actually coming over the top of one of the dams according to White County Sheriff John Roberts.

Recent Oakdale graph from NOAA:

An interesting article in Governing (h/t to a helpful reader) about Governor Daniels and his role as Privatizer in Chief for Indiana.

The article discusses the toll road privatization and how it contributed to the Republicans’ loss of control of the House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, Daniels remains the most ambitious privatizer of any governor currently in office, turning over to outside entities not just control of a major cross-state highway but prisons, hospitals and welfare case management. Like most privatizers, Daniels doesn’t like the term, but his pursuit of the idea led the New York Times last summer to dub him “Governor Privatize.”

. . .

Daniels was not only the first Republican elected to govern Indiana in 16 years. He also represented a stylistic break with his predecessors, who tended to be conciliatory and generally sought consensus. That is in keeping with the character of the state, historians of which, Daniels notes, have described Indiana as “conservative,” “cautious” and “risk-averse.” That has not been Daniels’ approach. He seems to believe that where there is consensus, there is little need for leadership from the top. And he combines a bold approach to leadership with a policy wonkishness that makes him the kind of governor who throws out a fair number of provocative ideas at any given time. During a typical State of the State address, he outlines so many brash notions that some observers believe a few are just filler meant to give cover to legislative Republicans who are free to choose some things on which to oppose him.
. . .
UNPOPULAR BUT UNDAUNTED

The toll road lease controversy, and the surprisingly contentious reaction to his insistence on statewide adoption of daylight savings time, continue to alienate many Hoosiers. But Daniels’ political fortunes may well rest on his hopes of overhauling the property-tax code. More than two-dozen Indiana mayors were ousted largely because of the issue last year, including Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson. Daniels has proposed a constitutional cap on rates, limiting residential rates to 1 percent of assessed value, rental properties to 2 percent and commercial property to 3 percent. He would pay for the package largely through a sales-tax hike.

There’s a new blog in the Indiana blogosphere: Political Equinox. The blog has two editors – one Republican, one Democrat. I’m waiting for the “Jane, You Ignorant Slut” moment from the SNL Point-Counterpoint segments. Anyway, one of the editors managed to work Eugene V. Debs and Otto Von Bismarck into his “about” description. So, I’m sold.

As the great Canadian philosopher, Geddy Lee once said, “conform or be cast out.” Francisco Mendez Vale is learning the wisdom of those words.

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles is refusing to issue Mendez a license under his true name because it doesn’t match the name on his birth certificate. The Lake Station man was born in Puerto Rico where the custom is often to name the child after both the father (Mendez) and the mother (Vale) but generally use only the father’s name. The use of only Mendez was good enough for the U.S. military and United States Steel, but by God, the Indiana BMV runs a tighter ship. Social Security records have Mr. Mendez as Francisco Mendez while the birth certificate is Francisco Mendez Vale. So, the Indiana BMV is requiring him to go to court and get his name changed to Francisco Mendez Vale before they’ll issue a driver’s license. I would presume this also interferes with Mr. Mendez exercising his right to vote.

I’m messing with the gravatar plug-in for the comments. Basically, if you go to their site, and upload an image to associate with your e-mail, it will display that image whenever you use that e-mail address to identify yourself with a comment.

Update – Brenda posted this in the comments – I had a similar problem:

After I selected my 80×80 icon and hit crop, I had to also assign it to the email (seemed like it should do it automatically, but it was a second step).