Indiana Political Review

Apparently, noone told the Sheriff how the election is interpreted by everyone else in Indiana.

All the more reason to vote against his anointed sycophant next time.

Congratulations, Mayor-elect Ballard! Congratulations, incoming City-County Council Republicans! Please get together and hammer out an aggressive, workable agenda in the best interest of those who elected you.

See here for details about the proposal to deal with the property tax problems. I would alter this plan by implementing a permanent, non-raisable 1% sales tax on groceries for those not on AFDC or using EBT cards instead of raising our sales tax from 6% to 7%.

Cross-posted on Conservative Donnybrook.

Law Blog - WSJ.com : Indiana Law Student Shoots Real-Estate Finance Casebook

I’m calling this justifiable libricide. I never took Real Estate Finance, but based on some of the other classes I took in law school, I can see why someone would do this. I only wish I’d thought of it first. If I’d gone to Indiana University, I think he and I would have been fast friends.

Update: I have since gone back to this article and read some of the comments (many of which are much wittier and funnier than mine). I will share one which I found hysterical, and rightly belongs on a website like this:

“I tried to do this once- I pointed my rifle at my French textbook but it promptly surrendered without needing to be shot.”
Comment by Le Trole - October 22, 2007 at 8:33 pm

I wish I’d said that.

The commentary on Iraq has been decidedly one-sided on this blog thus far. Let us address that now.

I will say that at least my view of Iraq is conflicted. I do not share Birdy’s crystal clear vision of the evils of American (neo-conservative) foreign policy and am left with a much more ambiguous view of things. In the interest of full disclosure, I supported the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. And, like most everyone else my ongoing support for the war has waxed and waned in proportion to the news coming from Iraq. In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Washington D.C., when the government invaded Afghanistan, I was heard to say, “Excellent. We should start in Afghanistan and don’t stop until we reach the Nile.” Such is the rhetoric born of nationalistic rage. To me, it was very clear that we had been attacked because our culture is unacceptable to the extremists of their culture. It was a clash between the West and Islam. And, they (foolishly to my mind) started it. I simply proposed we take up the challenge and finish it.

One of the best comments from that time, which captured my mood, was a comment by that lightning rod of controversy, Ann Coulter that went something along these lines: ”Why can’t we take over their country, take their oil and convert them to Christianity?” Note: She has made similar comments in a number of places, but I heard it on Sean Hannity’s radio program and have been unable to find the exact quote.

There is an article in the London Review of Books that follows along these lines. I hope he’s right. At least that would lay waste to one of Birdy’s main arguments against our occupation of Iraq, namely that it doesn’t serve the vital national interests of the United States. Taking their oil would certainly being in our national interest and, it seems to me, it is the least the Iraqis could do to repay us for their newfound freedom. Getting a purple thumb does not come without costs.

Finally, I saw another excellent piece that is sure to spin Birdy through the roof. It is one of the best apologies for the war that I think I’ve seen. Here is just a taste:

The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition’s current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq’s other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition’s role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam’s struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.

Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world’s axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world’s largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam.

There is plenty more to that article and I hope Mr. Bull is correct in his analysis. It would mean that things are set to wind down in Iraq so that we can get on with the business of exploiting their natural resources.

Oh, and as far as our progess toward the Nile?
Afghanistan…Check!
Iran…[Check back later]
Iraq…Check!
Saudi Arabia…

We seem to be hopscotching around a bit (I would have worked in order so as to simplify supply lines), but it may be that my kneejerk foreign policy formulated on 9/12 is being played out as time goes on.

I will be writing a series of posts articulating what I believe are foundational aspects of our political order, including the relational nature of God, the social nature of man, the necessity of a proper, Christian anthropology, and other things. I hope to spend quite a bit of time interacting with the once-acknowleged but lately ignored master, St. Thomas Aquinas.

 Hope you’ll stay tuned.

I have hesitated to broach this topic until now. I am on record as saying these people are nuts. (Pick either, the Iranian regime or the Neocons.) I really am torn, though, because — just as I believe we were absolutely correct and justified in attacking al-Qaeda and the Taliban who supported them in Afghanistan– I believe we would have been justified in attacking the Ayatollahs and their apparatus after the revolutionaries took our folks hostage in 1979. Is it too late to seek redress for that grievance, along with the substantial damage done to our economy by Iranian counterfeiters who used presses, ink, and paper we had given them under that Pelavi regime during Nixon’s administration, etc.? Is there a time limit on just-war action? Is Ahmadinejad one of the thugs who brutalized our fellow citizens as seems to be the case? I don’t know the answers to these questions.

Just the headline, mind you.

Well, okay, the last line is pretty funny, too.

The ChiComs are trying to kill the Boy Scouts. Story here.

Here is an interesting animation that shows how Instant Runoff Voting works. However, I still stand by the comments I left on Birdy’s post. This is interesting only in a purely theoretical sort of way. Practically, I envision some counties (not to cast aspersions, but let us use Miami-Dade as an entirely hypothetical example) that just will not be able to figure this ballot out. The (future) litigator in me, however, says that there are a lot of potential fees in a plan like this one.