I thought this was a pretty insightful comment by Ken Burns while promoting his new documentary, The War:

As we know from Iraq, as we know from the Peloponnesian wars, the experience of war is essentially the same: I was scared, I was bored, I was hot, I was cold, my officers didn’t know what they were doing, I didn’t get the right equipment, I saw bad things, I did bad things, I lost good friends. It’s been the same since the beginning of human history and it will be, I’m sorry to say, the same until human beings are no more.

Mike Smith, writing for the Associated Press, has an article about new rules adopted by the Indiana Gaming Commission and the Indiana Horse Racing Commission that might be considered an usurpation of the General Assembly’s authority to control gambling in Indiana. The gaming commission adopted new rules that allows casinos to become more like buildings and less like boats. State law requires the building to be boats and not barges, though the General Assembly has considered allowing casinos to operate on barges, for a small fee of course.

Legislators have considered allowing barges in the past in exchange for major fees but have not done so. But Pelath said the expanding casinos fit his description of a barge.

“A barge is what a barge does, which is sit there and be real big,” he said. “And whether you strap a motor onto the back of it, it doesn’t make it not a barge.”

I love that explanation about barges. With respect to the Horse Racing Commission

Some lawmakers also are irked at emergency rules adopted by the Indiana Horse Racing Commission and gaming commission that require the state to consider seeking money or other benefits before allowing ownership interests to be sold.

. . .

Yelton said he agreed with Daniels’ philosophy behind the rules — that the state should benefit if a casino or track owner makes a significant profit for selling its ownership in a license that allowed it to make great sums of money.
But Sen. Lindel Hume, D-Princeton, said it was “on the borderline of extortion.” And Pelath said it violated legislative powers.
“I’m absolutely certain we didn’t delegate taxing authority to the gaming commission, and it wouldn’t even be constitutional if we did,” he said.

Gov. Daniels should probably consider running for the General Assembly – he really, really seems to enjoy legislative power.

The Lafayette Journal and Courier has an interesting article on sales of homes by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to the article, HUD is the largest seller of homes in Indiana.

n a climate of increasing numbers of foreclosures, HUD has become the largest seller of homes in Indiana. According to a Journal & Courier analysis of statewide sales disclosure data, HUD was listed as seller in 7,516 transactions compared with 6,270 sales for home builder C.P. Morgan from 2004 through 2006.

That’s not a good sign.

Doghouse Riley has an excellent post up. I’m not quite sure how he did it, but he managed to equate the Republicans and their allegiance to Bush’s Iraq strategy with the implosion of the Marsh supermarkets. And then he busts loose with this:

Of course you can’t just blow off a business the way you can 225 years of national reputation, rule of law, and concepts of truth and honor, so there was a period of suitorhood when Marsh tried to preserve its vanity by finding, in succession, a White Knight, a Handsome Millionaire, a Still-Handsome Middle-Aged Guy with ED, and finally a 70-Year-Old Goaty Guy with a recurring bit part on Law and Order, before giving up the game entirely, shaving its snatch, getting a boob job and an Eva Gabor wig and cruising truck stops. Or so one imagines.

Some writing is informative. Some is merely a pleasure to read for its own sake. This is both.

Looks like Brad Ellsworth (IN-08) is pushing on the national level a bill of which I was critical on the state level.

A bill to require all new manufactured homes to come equipped with emergency weather radios is gaining traction in Congress, pushed by a campaign promise to an Indiana woman whose 2-year-old son was killed by a tornado in 2005.

My main critique was that this level of involvement by the government was a bit too great given what I perceived to be the effectiveness of weather radios and the relative ease of getting them on one’s own. Who knows, maybe my perception is wrong on both counts.

Interesting post over at Balloon-Juice about the Petraeus “report.” Apparently the word “report” is being used as a verb rather than as a noun. There will apparently be no document, rather Gen. Petraeus will simply have a little chat with Mr. Bush. Gotta keep the paper trails to a minimum.

Amy is running in the Bloomington mini-marathon tomorrow. So if you’re there, go ahead and cheer for good old #381!

We are both alumni of IU, so it was nice to roam around the campus a little bit this evening. I can tell I’m getting old and surly and have lived in Tippecanoe County for too long. Some student was jaywalking in front of my car, and I mumbled as an aside to Amy, “You’re way too trusting. I’m from Lafayette. I’ll effin kill you.” (Except I didn’t use the “effin” euphemism, but, you know, this is a family blog.)

Police: Teen wrecks SUV at Noblesville City Hall.

A 17-year-old Noblesville boy is facing juvenile court proceedings after crashing into City Hall with a sport utility vehicle, police said. The boy, who was arrested at the scene of the accident Wednesday night, was charged with driving while intoxicated after investigators conducted field sobriety tests.
“He has apparently admitted to huffing (from) some canister, and that he had blacked out and lost control of the vehicle,” Noblesville Police spokesman Sgt. Graig Collings said Thursday.