Indiana Political Review

“I’m sorry ma’am. Please put that driver’s license away. I am forbidden by law from verifying that you are who you say you are. Please, just step into the voting booth.” That is a conversation you may hear come November after the Supreme Court hears two Indiana cases.The ACLU and Rep. William Crawford (D-Indianapolis) have each challenged the recent Indiana law which requires voters to produce photo identification at their polling places. Apparently, they believe that some people will have trouble obtaining photo IDs and therefore will be denied their right to vote. When asked to produce evidence that any single person would be denied their right to vote as a result of the law, the challengers were stymied. They could not even find one person.

The new voter ID law has been upheld by the U.S. District Court of Indiana and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Now it is headed to the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals upheld the law by a 2-1 vote. The first paragraph of the dissent by Judge Terrence Evans reads:

Let’s not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic. We should subject this law to strict scrutiny—or at least, in the wake of Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428 (1992), something akin to “strict scrutiny light”—and strike it down as an  undue burden on the fundamental right to vote.

I just spent the last three years of my life in law school. This summer has been devoted almost entirely to studying for (and passing - woohoo!) the Indiana bar. And I have one question: What in the hell is “strict scrutiny light?” Is it somewhere between intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny? The dissent has made up an entirely new level of scrutiny and argues that it should be applied to this case. This new level of scrutiny looks a lot like “strict scrutiny.” I’m not really sure what is “light” about finding that the law is an undue burden on a fundamental right as the dissent suggests ought to happen.

The dissent characterized the new law as being designed solely to discourage voter turnout by Democrats. I’m going make my own characterization of the law. Isn’t it just common sense to require that people who present themselves at the polling place should be required to identify themselves? Otherwise, how do you keep people who are not authorized to vote from voting? Shouldn’t an illegal immigrant at least have to go to the trouble of procuring a fake ID from the BMV (at whatever minimal risk of theoretical prosecution that exposes him to) before sauntering into a polling place, impersonating a legal voter and casting his vote for Julia Carson? Common sense seems to indicate that it’s the least we could do.

Governor Daniels has stated that he will propose an amendment to the Indiana constitution that deals with property taxes. While he has not as yet made such a proposal, it is hoped that the amendment will place a cap on property tax increases, year-over-year. However, the rest of the (scant-on-details) story leads one to suspect that the underlying cause of the massive tax increases will not be addressed by the amendment.

It appears that one of the proposals that has been offered is to have the state assume the burden of funding schools. For the life of me, I can’t see how that will make any difference at all. Except that the worst-run schools will be able to stick a wider set of taxpayers with the bill for their fiscal incompetence. Doing this will only obscure the problem for longer and will tend to negate any responsibility for local school boards’ budgets. This is a recipe for disaster. What possible incentive would the local school boards have, as they cast their eyes across the vast sea of taxpayers, to rein in spending? To the contrary, they will see this as an opportunity to increase their spending while spreading the costs over a much wider area. School expenditures will skyrocket, taxes will inch ever upward and eventually, we will be faced with a much thornier problem in that there will be no way that local populations will be able to support the schools within their districts.

The better way is to leave the schools to be controlled and funded by the communties that they serve, but to limit the amount that the overall tax budget is authorized to increase each year. Each recipient of the public largesse would then have to fight it out to see how big a slice of the pie they can grab. When the pie is gone, the pie is gone. AND WE WILL NOT MAKE MORE PIE! Only this way will there ever be spending restraint in government. A strong constitutional amendment is an excellent idea. Let us hope that it accomplishes the right result.

Please read this. (Of course, Karl would say my inner kook is my outer kook, as well. Harumph.)

and he has an interesting point. It just took him 27 years to get around to making it.

to the newest attorneys to be admitted to practice law in Indiana, announced this week. Heartiest felicitations! May God grant you all prudence, temperance, fortitude, patience, justice, and mercy.

I received the following encouraging message in my Inbox today:

Dear Karl,

If you can’t win, cheat.

Apparently that’s the Republicans’ answer to our work in California. If they have their way, this reliably “blue” state won’t be so blue in 2008.

Faced with a strong Democratic presence, Republicans are campaigning for a new election system instead of their own candidates.

If they get what they’re after, it could cost us the White House.

In California, Republican operatives — including some of the 2004 Swift Boaters — are working on a proposition for the June ballot that would essentially hand over 20 of the state’s electoral votes before the elections even begin next November.

Electoral reform is a good thing — but this proposition doesn’t even come close to an honest effort. It’s designed for just one thing: to make California the only big state in the country to break up its electoral votes, handing the White House back over to the Republicans. We need election reform, but let’s do it for real — and let’s not pick and choose which states we do it in.

We can’t let this proposition get on the ballot. Reject the Republican power grab in California:

[Link to Democrats.org removed - you’ll have to type it in yourself if you’re interested]

California, like 47 other states, awards all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes. In the last four elections, all of California’s electoral votes have gone to the Democratic nominee.

Republicans want to change the rules to award one electoral vote for each Congressional district a presidential candidate wins. In 2004, that would have given George Bush 20 of John Kerry’s 55 votes.

These so-called “reformers” aren’t proposing to do this in Texas, or Florida, or Ohio, or any other large state that the Republicans won in 2004.

Only California.

This isn’t electoral reform — it’s a blatant power grab. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger is against the proposal, saying:

“I feel like, if you’re all of a sudden in the middle of the game start changing the rules, it’s kind of odd… It almost feels like a loser’s mentality, saying, ‘I cannot win with those rules. So let me change the rules.’”

Don’t let the Republicans cheat to win the election. Make your voice heard now:

[Link to Democrats.org removed - you’ll have to type it in yourself if you’re interested]

For Republicans, it’s not Iowa or New Hampshire that matters most in 2008 — it’s California.

Tell them to play by the rules.

Sincerely,

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

I will admit up front that I voluntarily signed up to receive propaganda from the Democratic party. However, I swear that it is only for entertainment purposes and, of course, every now and then it provides a topic upon which to write a post.

Dear Dr. Dean: 

Better Homes and Gardens’ Do It Youself Book of Toilet Repair; The Do-It-Yourselfer’s Guide to HVAC; The Sunshine Book of Decks and Patios; How To Write a Great Cover Letter; Bertie Sees It Through; and, of course, National Review. All of which should help to explain why Birdy has posted three posts to my one. The brick patio is almost done and posting should become more regular once again.

I realize that my reading recently hasn’t been nearly as profound as Birdy’s, but I’ve saved a ton of money! And nothing in the house leaks now. I swear: When the patio is finished, we’ll have Birdy and his family over for a barbecue and he can report on the soundness of this latest endeavor.

…and all it got him was these lousy numbers. 10 percent fewer among African-Americans than among Democrats as a group, terrible job performance numbers for a guy with all the favorable press a pol could want (especially the L.G.N. - the local Gannett Newspaper, Novaya Pravda), and tepid support among the die-hards. I can’t remember a decline this precipitous since Dubya let the Taliban have Afghanistan back in favor of Finding WMD, Stabilizing, Spreading Democracy, er, Keeping Iran out of Iraq. Let us hope the flush is successful here.

Currently reading: St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, Apologia Pro Vita Sua by J.H. Cardinal Newman. Latest aditions to the MP3: Best of Chris Isaak, Jimi Hendrix - Smash Hits, The Black Crowes - The Lost Crowes, Dinosaur jr. - Beyond

from a ridiculous buffoon. Sure, let’s create new taxes without doing anything to prevent property taxes from being raised later. Please, someone, write an amendment to the state constitution eliminating the property tax and addressing the myriad taxing authorities who are unaccountable. Please.