Love it. Thanks for sharing, Mollie.

Yep. Shower or on the highway for a long drive. Thanks for the links, Charlotte.

Terrific post and thank you for sharing it. Just listening can be difficult when everything is polarized, but Justin is the type that would make it easy for just about anyone.

Used to live close by, but am a Cincy fan. Many attendees at any particular game could have cared less about the game. The same was true at that time for the Bulls. I enjoyed going to Sox games more.

There is no room on that lot to expand the stadium without affecting the residences around it. If they built a new stadium in the suburbs, attendance would fall dramatically.

Actually, it would be great to see Obama on his girl bike on the path behind. Good pic!

On her last point that there is a lot of rhetoric and very little policy coming from the candidates, Mitch Daniels has something similar to say: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/indiana-gov-mitch-daniels-criticizes-romney/

I'd have to say there is not a case for breaking them up because people keep starting up new ones. Want to break up the big banks? Support your local one.

My father was in banking for 24 years before they were bought out and corporate leadership eliminated the local executives. Half of the accounts disappeared within a month of the news going public. Apparently the same leadership huffily demanded to know what happened. Simple: they fired the community's trust. 

What about employing community tactics? As in, "Not from around here, are ya?" Probably wouldn't work. I get lectured every day by my local paper on how to think and it is still not how I think. The liberal immigrant would find comfort even in our local media.

Do you think Will has any idea what tax rates were pre-January of '81? At any time?

Perhaps this is a light bulb moment for Mr. Smith.

Posting from Indiana (and in response to Valiuth), here are the figures on tax dollars compared to Federal spending: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html.   This is probably more indicative of government overspending than anything else.

This only goes to '05, but you can see it's a relatively recent phenomenon (2002 was the first year) that we received more than we paid. When I worked for the legislature years before that, we (the staff, bored in the slow summer months) worked out a secession plan because we always paid more in. Keep the money. We'll settle for even, subtracting for defense, intelligence, and law enforcement. We'll stop taking suburban Chicago's (of which a chunk of our state is considered part of) wealth, but in exchange you promise to take the tornadoes.

Currency names: California Bear (too many good headlines there, "Markets Emaciate Bear"

New York Continental (tie to history, and will probably be similarly valued).

Illinois Shakedown (as that is the current policy to fixing spending problems).

I wade into these waters with deep trepidation. One point that appeals to me is Ms. Charen's pointing out that same-sex couples may enjoy all the contractual and succession protections that heterosexual couples do. Perhaps things would be a lot easier if governments had initially defined the domestic partnership of marriage as a "partnership in perpetuity" and left "marriage" to the churches. Of course, it's a bit ungainly to talk about getting your Partnership in Perpetuity License, and there was already a handy term to put down in the books.

I certainly do not want friends that go this route to feel a lesser class because of definitions. That said, because of the point highlighted above, if a couple hasn't already taken such steps (an indicator of a serious "partnership in perpetuity"), then I have to question how serious the marriage would be. That, in and of itself, devalues and simply makes marriage a ceremony. Unfortunately, the lure of the ceremony sometimes is the attraction of marriage. Perhaps if we were all forced to wade the same legal hurdles, everyone would have a better appreciation of marriage as an institution. Still working on my views...

As someone whose job it was to teach the young...smile and nod and they'll feel affirmed.

I'm not old by any stretch. I would never trade what I know now for the intervening years it took to learn.

Since I lived in Chicago at the time, I couldn't escape Wilco and bought this album when it came out. It was easy to appreciate what the band was doing to the recording industry by essentially self-publishing. The critics didn't seem to understand that this was another blow to the power of the labels. I'm not sure they would have been so quick with praise had they known.

My rating drops when yet another band features being stoned in what may be the album's most enjoyable song. I'm pretty sure that the word "stoned" sells another 200k albums. At some point, though, it just sounds like you're trying to be cool.

It's a good album, but someone could swipe it from my cabinet and I wouldn't know.

The Star led with a column that we hurt the nation by voting out Senator Lugar. They said his willingness to see "people on the other side of the aisle, rather than combatants" was important to solving the problems that confront us. The column went on, and many comments repeated this, that this was going to make us look backwards in the eyes of other states.

Apparently Indianapolis gets more and more cut off from the rest of the state with each passing year. It's funny that the state's leading newspaper is so out of touch...like our lame duck Senator. His campaign did some push-polling back in December. Judging by the questions and statements, someone pulled out the ol' Establishment Guide to Reelection in any State.

As to Mourdock's chances, he has already won a statewide election. His opponent is a congressman from the South Bend area. Historically, it is difficult to run from there.

I am a Hoosier and will cast my vote for Mourdock on Tuesday. During the one televised debate, Mr. Mourdock made the only compelling argument that can be made against a distinguished career: "It's just time."

Senator Lugar is a throwback to the time when there was bipartisanship. It just doesn't exist anymore. I would welcome the Senator home, but I have doubts whether he'll reside here. I hope he does. This is a somewhat unfortunate end to a respectable career.

We're also retiring Dan Burton, another long serving member of Congress. We nearly got him out in the last primary, so I guess he saw the writing on the wall. He's certainly no squish, but never met a pork-laden bill he didn't like.

Both Lugar and Burton failed to step up when it mattered. I'm not referring to the past four years, but going back many before that. They are not alone.

Hi, Duane. I was actually referring to a period earlier than 2007, and I should have specified that. The time frame I meant to reference was around 1998-2004. With a bit more vision, we could have put things on much firmer ground. Yes, I think things would have been different had Newt remained as Speaker of the House.