Homeland Security:

Sure, why not a cabinet post? Ridge gets the power to make real change; Congress gets the power to subpoena his testimony. Sounds like a win-win.
I loved Rush’s idea yesterday on how to get control of the Senate back — appoint Charlie Schumer as the first Secretary of Homeland Defense 🙂
God knows our borders are porous, our various levels of government don’t talk to each other, and we spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about why we didn’t prevent 9/11 when we should be looking ahead to what might happen today or tomorrow. I liked Peggy Noonan’s column on this today. She said essentially what I’ve been saying ever since the congressional investigation started. I’ve long been of the opinion that the several Pearl Harbor investigations that occurred before the war was even fairly begun were a mistake, and primarily aimed at discrediting FDR (who is not my favorite president by a long shot, but you simply don’t do this sort of thing while a war is on). The present hearings seem focused on assigning blame to the President and his men more than they are on making real working changes. Maybe we do need a reorganization, but we don’t need congressional finger-pointing to obscure and obfuscate the central issue.

Indy Journalism:

I’m also going to be keeping an editorial eye on the Indianapolis Star. A one-newspaper town the size of Indianapolis is a bad thing and it shows quite often.

Indiana’s Budget:

I don’t really understand the question. Nobody really understands the question. When you are running a deficit and you have to do something about that, why is it that the governor and the legislature immediately think “raise taxes”? Why not “cut spending”? And when you cut spending, why think about cutting education first?
I really do know the answer — because they don’t know how to cut spending, and because if they threaten to cut education spending first, everyone gets scared about the little kids going to rat-infested schools, learning out of old books, and being stuffed 50 urchins to the class. That don’t feed the bulldog. What really needs to be cut is the incredible amount of waste at the state government level — starting with inflated legislative salaries and an expensive governor’s mansion on the tony north side of Indianapolis.
And certainly an expensive special session of the legislature isn’t helping. The May revenues shortfall of $115 million doesn’t seem to have put the spur to anyone’s legislative butt, either.