Potpourri: "Everybody Knows that Smoking Ain't Allowed in School."

The backlog keeps getting bigger, so here's a sampling of recent links and news items, some mine, some sent to me.

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Constitution, schmonstitution … what’s it have to do with St. Daniels and his plan to establish charter re-education centers for the state's misspent youth? The Perry County News takes a look, and we breathlessly await the Tribune’s editorial take on the matter, in which we're betting the best and brightest will be asked to step forward and teach school for a while.

It always gladdens my heart to note that taken as a group, Indiana’s legislators remain as cowardly and hypocritical as I’d always imagined they are. A partial list of exemptions to the Indiana state legislature's ballyhooed tough statewide smoking "ban" now includes casinos, taverns, bars, nursing homes, bunco clubs, VFWs, American Legions, pay toilets, chicken shacks, bandstands in public gazebos within 100 feet of a flower shop, and cigar bars, but only if populated by 50% or more lobbyists on Wednesday nights in June.

The bill’s annual sponsor, Charlie Brown, quoted while lying prone after Lucy yet again yanked away his football, politely characterizes these carvings as “compromise,” and while probably not a single legislator would compromise when it comes to his or her own health and well being, the health and well being of workers is now being “compromised” all the way down to where the bill itself has been rendered nonsensical.

Perhaps the legislature might helpfully specify the actual places where smoking is to be banned, which presently number five or six vegan juice bars that never allowed smoking in the first place. Read all about it here (Facebook thread here), and know that to his credit, our Rep. Clere voted against the latest round of dumbings down.

In other tidings from the DingDong Chamber in Indy, Mike Ladd, executive director of the Urban Enterprise Zone Association in New Albany, asks if the war has been successful, and he's not talking Afghanistan Taliban Blues. Rather, Mike lets us know that the Danielsist cadres see a power-grab opening in the gentle art of municipal bankruptcy.

The essence of this bill is that a community’s creditor, or two or more creditors combined, that fall into the criteria above, would be able to request three people in state government to declare a city bankrupt, followed by what essentially amounts to a state take-over; while removing certain appeals processes.

Bankruptcy's nothing, Mike. Just wait until St. Daniels sends in the teams of partisan GOP commissars to whip us into prime Gitmo shape, maybe even literally. No doubt they'll help the medicine go down with plenty of help from their Facebook pages, because even Maureen Hayden (!) has noticed that legislators are using social media to make "friends" with their constituents.

Maureen -- let me get this straight -- you mean that some legislators view social media as means of facilitating communication? Wonders never cease. Friends? I don't have the heart to tell you that down here, in the wide-open, fenced-in spaces of the Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness, some legislators are content to use social media to make enemies.

Speaking of the inner workings of the Open Air Museum, how is it that this fellow from so far away can provide such an accurate depiction of life in a place where Steve Price is our leader: Just The Same Old Dumb. Pitt should be made an honorary New Albanian, although I bet he'd pay double to avoid it.

Finally there is good news and bad news: A bill would form New Albany-Floyd County parks district, and "remove" our parks from politics. Let's hope. The Clere Channel Network is poised to take full re-election credit for introducing the parks district bill, although the CCN hasn't had much to say about Ed's support of this "bad news" repugnancy, as Bluegill covered it at Facebook:

In response to my local state rep and the Indiana House passing a xenophobic "English only" bill yesterday, I'm trying to to figure out if I'm going to pay my state taxes this year in quetzals, birrs, riels, or Belarusian rubles.

online.com/article/20110124/NEWS01/110124026" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Indiana House passes 'English only' bill (Journal and Courier)

State documents would have to be published in English only under a bill that passed the Indiana House today by a vote of 63-26.