I got up this morning and scanned the headlines. Among other things, I learned that Noblesville is under a water emergency. So, when I went for a run, it was a little jarring to see several lawns being watered. To be clear, Lafayette is not under a water emergency, but still, as a guy who doesn’t especially like mowing his lawn, it seems odd to use a scarce resource in a way that is sure to create work for yourself. All, so what? Your grass will be green? I’ve been passively trying to kill my grass ever since I became a home owner. Grass is pretty durable stuff – it’ll survive a period of brownness. But, I suppose I’m in the minority on this one. Conservation by way of laziness and aesthetic indifference isn’t really a common Hoosier trait, I don’t suspect.

Just thought I’d flag Andrew Kaduk’s nice take down of Sean Hannity. Apparently Sean is engaging in a bit of a double standard in his rhetoric. Listening to “the People” in opposing the immigration bill = good. Putting one’s finger to the wind and paying attention to opinion polls = bad. Hannity is a blowhard. Who knew?

Andrew has some great imagery here:

I was enjoying the sunshine and the breeze on my way home, and barely noticed (at first) that Sean Hannity was chirping away in the background over the noise of the wind humming through the open windows. Normally I would just change the station, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s difficult to drive with one hand while physically fighting vomit back into my mouth with the other…and Hannity has that effect on me. Frankly, my tolerance for partisan asswipery has grown rather thin in the last year…and Mr. Hannity certainly falls in the overall category of “Partisan Asswipe” with plenty of elbow room.

Notwithstanding the fact that some might put yours truly into the partisan asswipe category, I’ve found that I don’t have so much time for that kind of radio anymore either. For a long time in the distant past, I would routinely listen to Rush Limbaugh or other talk radio blowhards, either to love them or to hate them. Then, more recently, particularly when the Democrats were completely in the wilderness, I would listen to Air America or Ed Schultz. For whatever reason over the past year or so, I have not listened to much of any of these people. My preferences these days go more toward the Bob Edwards Show or various programs on NPR. I don’t know if it’s a sign of aging or what, but I can’t work up as much energy to be an outrage junkie these days. Perhaps with a bit more coffee . . .

Strange Maps has a map up with U.S. states named for foreign countries with equivalent GDPs. Apparently Indiana’s gross domestic product is equivalent to that of Denmark. I wonder how our standard of living compares.

If any of you find yourselves in or around Lafayette on a Saturday in the summer, you could do worse than checking out the Farmer’s Market on 5th Street between Main and South streets. The street is blocked off and, I’d say, 25 – 30 vendors set up stands selling meats, vegetables, plants, breads, and a variety of other things. Enough people show up to browse to make for some low level people watching. It’s pretty nice. If they could somehow fit an outdoor cafe or two into the mix, it’d be even better. It’s nice to have some activity downtown during the weekend, and it’s definitely a positive for the city.

On the list of things you really shouldn’t do is forge papers from the court that has sentencing authority over you.

Dexter L. Berry, 29, an inmate at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, is suspected of forging a document in order to reduce his sentence.

The jail received an amended abstract of judgment, purportedly issued from Tippecanoe Circuit Court on May 22, 2007.

Staff in Circuit Court received a telephone call last week from a staff member at the prison attempting to confirm the abstract.

“We had nothing in the file,” Amber Laffoon, the court reporter, said. “That was nothing that I had typed.”

Circuit Court Judge Don Daniel entered an order Tuesday finding that the documents are “false and deceptive, and that said documents appear to be the result of forgery.” He ordered DOC to follow terms of an April 17, 2006, order sentencing Berry to 15 years in prison.

. . .

“Mr. Berry is one of our more prolific correspondents” in the DOC, Phillips said. “He asks for a lot of different records.”

“One of our more prolific correspondents.” — What a great quote. There are always a couple of inmates who make up a significant chunk of the paperwork.

I received an e-mail from a doctoral student who apparently runs this site requesting assistance into research on blogs oriented on state politics. The e-mail was as follows:

Dear Blogger,

I am a doctoral student in media and public affairs at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and my research focuses on the impact of blogs on state politics around the country.

A quick profile of my research is available here.

Previous blog research has focused on the impact of the nation’s big-name, A-list blogs on American politics. Stories about the impact of those blogs range from the downfall of Trent Lott to Dan Rather’s memo-gate to George Allen’s more recent Macaca moment. But to date, no one has considered the impact of blogs at the state level.

My observations about the impact of bloggers on state policy and politics in Louisiana have triggered my interest in looking at that dynamic in states around the country. To that end, I am requesting your help in compiling data for my research. I have prepared an online survey for both bloggers and blog readers to complete.

The survey is available online through June 30 at the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=mb2MRtsLhdFv5NW9LLmdiA%3d%3d

I would be grateful if you, as a blogger, would:

First, take a few minutes to complete the survey yourself;

Second, circulate this request among other bloggers and your readers and/or post a link to this survey online urging readers to both complete the survey and forward the link to others;

Third, contact me if you have any questions, concerns or input regarding this research endeavor.

I have created a blog (http://stateblogresearch.blogspot.com) that will track this research as it progresses and I would be happy to keep you posted on this project as it moves forward.

All feedback can be directed to stateblog@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance for your help on this!

Best regards,
Emily Metzgar
stateblog@gmail.com

So, if you have the time and the inclination, go on over to the survey.

Two military judges have ruled with respect to two Guantanamo prisoners that their combatant status review tribunals determined only that the prisoners were “enemy combatants” but did not make the necessary determination that they were “alien unlawful enemy combatants.” The determination that an enemy combatant is “unlawful” (for example, fights without uniform or conceals his weapon) was a necessary prerequisite for the military tribunal to acquire jurisdiction over the individual.

Under directives from President Bush and senior Defense Department officials, military officials here have held detainees after finding simply that they were “enemy combatants.”

This legal deficiency is potentially an issue for all 380 Guantanamo detainees. Everybody at Guantanamo is an enemy combatant, but that doesn’t mean the combat was unlawful. One of the detainees was a 15 year old kid at the time he was apprehended. He apparently threw a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan. War is hell; throwing a grenade during a firefight is presumptively “legal.”

I’m horribly, horribly biased, but I think my little girl, Harper, is very, very cute. Here she is at the Pretty Prairie Berry Farm:

Originally uploaded by amasson.

Seventy-nine year old Jack Kevorkian was released from prison after 8 years. Kevorkian strikes me as a practitioner of civil disobedience in the mold of David Thoreau and those who followed him. It’s appropriate that Kevorkian went to jail, but his fight is not without merit. At root, he stands for the proposition that all humans should have the right to terminate their own lives. And, they should be able to do it legally, with dignity, and without pain. Perhaps I’m just projecting my own beliefs onto him. There are many who object to the unregulated, illegal way Kevorkian was going about his assisted suicides. But, the fact is, there was no regulated, legal way to assist people.

There are a lot of pitfalls to be avoided. Protections need to be in place to ensure that the person choosing death is competent to make the choice and that others, including the death practitioner, are not unduly influencing the decision. In most cases, personally, I think suicide is the coward’s way out. But, there are definitely situations where that is not the case. If, for example, you have nothing but an extended future of unrelenting pain to look forward to, it’s cruel of society to force continued life on a person.

It sounds like, now that he’s out of prison, the more visible aspects of Kevorkian’s fight are over. He says he will continue to advocate for his cause, but he will do so legally.

Despite Kevorkian’s efforts, I don’t think the debate has advanced much over the past 20 years. Maybe it never will.