Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Random thoughts of the day

♣ In his editorial in the Bloomington Alternative, Greg Travis claims that "fiscal control of our county government is, for the first time in two decades, in the control of Democrats." While this statement is technically true as the Democrats control the Auditor's Office for the first time since 1984, it is far from honest. Democrats won control of the County Council (county government's fiscal body) in 1998 and held it until the Republican sweep of 2002. It is amusing that Travis wrote this while at the same time complaining about a poorly researched article in the Herald-Times.

♣ In her guest column in yesterday's IDS, IU Student Association president Betsy Henke claims that the search committee for the new IU president has "ZERO IU-Bloomington students, eliminating representation of nearly 38,000 voices." Miss Henke seems to have forgotten that Casey Cox, a law student who also got his undergraduate degree from IU-Bloomington, is a student trustee and on the search committee.

♣ I am very disappointed that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is considering allowing "canned hunting" for another decade. "Canned hunting" is not a sport, it is animal cruelty. The Indiana Deer Hunters Association is opposed to "canned hunting" and wants to see it eliminated. It is long past time for this to be taken out of the bureaucracy and decided legislatively. The Indiana Legislature should pass a bill to ban "canned hunting" with a much shorter (no more than five years, preferably two or three years) phase-out period.

♣ A group of Leftist busybodies went to Wal-Mart this past weekend and physically blocked shuttle busses carrying IU students to the store. Once police told them they were trespassing, they went to Wright Quad and tried to physically block the busses from leaving the dorm. While it is certainly reasonable to protest what these Leftists consider to be unfair business practices by Wal-Mart, they have no right to physically prevent shoppers from going to the store.