House Elections Committee Votes 9-3 Along Party Lines To Advance Marriage Discrimination Amendment To Full House

House Speaker Brian Bosma got his wish. All nine Republican members of the House Elections Committee, including at least one closeted homosexual, voted for HJR-3, the proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine the state's statutory prohibition on the legal recognition of marriages between persons of the same sex in the constitution's bill of rights. The committee's three Democratic members present for the vote all voted against the amendment. How some of these people can look themselves in the mirror is beyond me.

Indianapolis Bar Association Survey Results For Judicial Candidates

	Number of Replies	Yes	No	Approval %		Number of Replies	Yes	No	Approval %
Democrat					Republican
Kimberly J. Brown (i)	230	23	207	10.0%	Cynthia J. Ayers (i)	390	321	69	82.3%
Karen Celestino-Horseman (c)	115	61	54	53.0%	Rom Byron (c)	103	79	24	76.7%
Annie Christ-Garcia (i)	224	201	23	89.7%	David J. Certo (i)	298	269	29	90.3%
Barbara Cook-Crawford (i)	216	184	32	85.2%	Patrick "PJ" Dietrick (c)	104	94	10	90.4%
Angela Dow Davis (c)	150	79	71	52.7%	Kurt M. Eisgruber (i)	204	195	9	95.6%
David J. Dreyer (i)	433	388	45	89.6%	Therese A. Hannah (c)	66	62	4	93.9%
Shatrese M. Flowers (c)	210	129	81	61.4%	Gary L. Miller (i)	379	312	67	82.3%
Mark A. Jones (c)	255	246	9	96.5%	Marilyn A. Moores (i)	217	168	49	77.4%
Christina R. Klineman (c)	163	146	17	89.6%	Timothy W. Oakes (i)	366	325	41	88.8%
Jonathan C. Little (c)	80	22	58	27.5%	Marc T. Rothenberg (i)	208	197	11	94.7%
Sheryl L. Lynch (c)	169	123	46	72.8%
James B. Osborn (i)	220	210	10	95.5%
Marcel A. Pratt, Jr. (c)	211	175	36	82.9%
Todd A. Woodmansee (c)	124	59	65	47.6%

Responses to this statement: I recommend (candidate name) for judicial office.

2014 Survey Group Statistics:
Total Number of Deliverable Emails: 4,377 (2012 total: 4,323)
Total Returned: 1,201(2012 total: 1,150)
Response Rate: 27.8% (2012 rate: 26.6%)Survey Group:
-Indianapolis Bar Association attorney members
-Marion County Bar Association attorney members
-Attorneys with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office
-Attorneys with the Marion County Public Defender’s Office

The Indianapolis Bar Association has released the results of a survey it took of its membership concerning the candidates seeking election to the seats up for election on the Marion County Superior Court and the Circuit Court. Only about 27% of the 4,377 bar association members offered an opportunity to participate in the survey responded to it, which indicates utter apathy among most bar members towards the election of judges in Marion County. I always make it a point to respond to the survey. Typically, I don't pass judgment on many of the candidates because I lack any professional knowledge of their capabilities, particularly with respect to those who practice primarily in the criminal courts since I only practice in the civil courts.

Because so few attorneys participate in the survey, attorneys from the larger law firms have a disproportionate influence in the survey results because they go out of their way to encourage their attorneys to complete the survey in accordance with their desire to see their preferred candidates scored higher than other candidates. I'm a Republican and can't really quarrel with the survey results for the Republican candidates, all of whom received pretty high marks; however, the low rating given to one of the Democratic candidates, Karen Celestino-Horseman, is totally unfair. Even though I don't agree with Karen on very many political issues, she's a very hard-working, knowledgeable and experienced attorney who has earned better than the 53% favorable recommendation result she received in the survey. Clearly, this is a case where there is an organized effort on the part of certain attorneys to score her lowly in an effort to discredit her candidacy. Judge Kimberly Brown's 10% rating, the lowest in the survey, is understandable given her suspension as a judge as a result of a highly-publicized disciplinary complaint against her. I don't know enough about the other three Democrats receiving low ratings, Angela Davis (52%), Jonathan Little (27.5%) and Todd Woodmansee (47.6%), to characterize their survey results. I would note that Woodmansee does have one prior concluded disciplinary action against him and one that is currently pending, which may have affected his rating. I would add that the lowest rated candidates, other than Judge Brown, were all non-incumbents.

Because of the byzantine system unique to Marion County, the process of electing judges begins and ends with the slating conventions held by the respective major political parties. Each party nominates half of the number of superior court judge positions to be filled in the general election, which means that whoever wins the primary automatically wins the general election. It's nearly impossible to win the primary election unless you're first slated at the party's slating convention. Only rarely is a candidate successful in bypassing the slating process and winning one of the coveted spots in the primary election. Judge Kimberly Brown, a Democrat, was one such candidate, and she's been effectively taken out of the race due to her suspension from the bench. Typically, candidates who fail to win at slating will drop out of the primary election. Judicial candidates are compelled to pay up to $24,000 to be slated by their respective candidates, which seems a bit unseemly to most legal ethicists but it's the system that has been in place only in Marion County for decades now.

UPDATE: I've been advised that Todd Woodmansee dropped out of the race.

Purdue Professors Under Fire For Joking With Students About Shooting During Lockdown

As campus-wide texts alerted students on Purdue's West Lafayette campus that the school was on lockdown due to a shooting in the campus' Electrical Engineering Building, some students complained that their professors treated the incident as a joking matter. A YouTube clip uploaded by Anthony Casazza, recorded comments Professor Rebecca Trax, a continuous term lecturer at the Krannert School of Management, made to her students after one of the students in her classroom alerted her to a text message students had just received alerting them to a shooting on campus. Trax's reaction suggests that she wasn't receiving the same text message notification students were receiving during her class, presumably because she wasn't holding her cell phone during class.

Trax responded, "Is it asking us to do anything?" Trax then joked about catching the shooter in her lecture hall that holds approximately 300 students according to Casazza. She joked about the involvement of Purdue's engineering students and said she would have her teaching assistant tackle anyone who came in the lecture hall's door. "Okay, you engineering students, what are they doing to you?" the accounting professor rhetorically asked. "Okay, let's focus. I know this is kind of disruptive," she continued as some students can be heard laughing. "We cannot lock the doors due to fire marshal regulations," Trax told her students. According to Purdue Review, Trax was not the only professor dismissive of the text alerts sent campus-wide concerning yesterday's shooting. Read more here.

UPDATE: The Journal & Courier is reporting that police detained a Purdue Exponent student reporter and seized his camera while he was covering the shooting yesterday at the Electrical Engineering Building. Police claimed they seized the camera for potential evidence. The student reporter was held for questioning by police for nearly two hours. The student's camera equipment was later returned. The story notes that federal law prohibits the search or seizure “of any work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper” or a similar form of public communication. The Exponent has more:

Exponent photo editor Michael Takeda, a junior in the College of Technology, was slammed to the ground by the Purdue Police after being found in the Electrical Engineering Building taking photos. The area had not been closed off to the public at the time.

The officers confiscated Takeda’s camera and photos, detained and questioned his whereabouts within the building, which was then on lockdown after being held by the police for roughly three hours.

“I understand the severity of this event, and I respect that. But as a working journalist, I wish I had my rights not violated (and my rights) enforced,” Takeda said.

Takeda was released from the police. However, it was only after Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, prodded the University that Takeda’s belongings were bequeathed to him.

“They were very cooperative, and they recognized right away that this was a serious situation that required their immediate attention,” LoMonte said.

LoMonte said, though the University was helpful in releasing Takeda’s belongings, it was just the police’s instinct to retrieve his belongings, despite the possible infringement of a federal law.

Here's another YouTube clip taken in a lecture hall in the same building where the shooting occurred where initial reaction upon hearing and seeing police outside the building was laughed off until someone enters the room a few minutes later and asks the students to evacuate the room.

It looks like there's a lot of disbelief among the friends and acquaintances of the shooting suspect, Cody Cousins. The Journal & Courier reports that he once worked as a student reporter for the Exponent in 2011.

The news of Cody Cousins' alleged involvement in Tuesday afternoon's fatal shooting at Purdue University came as a shock to Thomas Gräber, a friend and former classmate.

The two met in 2009 when they sat next to each other in a philosophy course at Purdue, said Gräber, who is currently enrolled at Vincennes University.

The picture Gräber described of Cousins — a man he said enjoyed playing basketball, shopping, going to the bar and writing — is anything but the description of a killer.

"It's obvious he is intellectual, well-spoken, courteous and respectable," Gräber said. "He was one of those guys who you could sit down and have real good heart-to-hearts with.

"I'm in shock. I'm confused. I don't want to believe that this actually has happened. … Cody is a very nonviolent person, politically and personally. He would never tell a story about getting in a fight."

Cousins, of Centerville, Ohio, was a teacher's assistant for professor David Meyer, which seems to be the lead connection between Cousins and the man he is accused of killing — Andrew Boldt, 21, who also was a teacher's assistant for Meyer.

Springboro Schools Superintendent Todd Petrey said Cousins graduated from Springboro High School in 2008.

During his time as a student, Petrey said Cousins didn't have disciplinary problems and excelled academically. He pointed out that Cousins was especially strong in the area of technology.

"Our prayers and thoughts go out to the Purdue victim's family and Cody's family," Petrey said.

The Purdue Exponent confirmed that Cousins worked as a staff reporter for one semester in 2011. No one in the newsroom was able to give any insight into Cousins' personality, history or hobbies . . .

IMPD Claims It Accidentally Destroyed Cocaine Evidence For Drug Dealer's Trial, Along With Evidence In 20 Other Cases

IMPD Chief Rick Hite has confirmed to Fox59 News' Russ McQuaid that clerks in the department's property control room inadvertently destroyed cocaine being held for the pending trial of an accused drug dealer, Marlon Long, last October while clerks were supposedly shuffling evidence during a conversion to a new computer system. About one kilo of cocaine with a street value of approximately $30,000 was destroyed, along with 149 other pieces of evidence affecting about 20 cases. “We’ve identified 149 pieces of which 89 pieces were salvaged so that means there were about 20 cases that were impacted by that,” said IMPD Chief Rick Hite. Despite the loss of the primary evidence in Long's case, McQuaid reports that he was nonetheless convicted during his jury trial last week using photographs and lab test results. This comes just two years after the department's public embarrassment from the mishandling of blood alcohol evidence for the trial of former IMPD Officer David Bisard, who killed one motorcyclist and injured two others critically while driving his police cruiser on duty drunk.

Purdue Shooting Anomalies

We're being hit with these school shootings "fast and furious" nowadays, making it difficult to separate them. Today was Purdue University's turn. We're told that around noon today a 23-year old teaching assistant in the electrical engineering department, Cody Cousins of Centerville, Ohio, walked into Room EE067 in the basement of the Electrical Engineering Building, a lab classroom that holds approximately 25 students, and shot at point blank range another teaching assistant, 21-year old Andrew Boldt of West Bend, Wisconsin. Purdue Police Chief John Cox told reporters that Cousins fired about 4 or 5 shots in what he described as a targeted, intentional shooting. A student in the adjacent classroom, Nick Wieland, told the Journal & Courier that he heard about two shots ring out before hearing a man scream.

Cox told reporters that nearly a dozen police officers were on the scene within minutes, and Cousins walked out of the building unarmed and surrendered to police without resisting. The Journal & Courier has a video on its website showing Cousins' peaceful arrest out front of the building after he laid face down before being placed in handcuffs. According to West Lafayette police, Cousins has been preliminarily charged with murder and is being held at the Tippecanoe County Jail. The following text message alert went out to all Purdue students on campus within minutes of the shooting.

Purdue spokesperson Liz Evans spoke to CNN's Wolf Blitzer nearly 90 minutes after the shooting had occurred but could still not identify whether anyone had been injured or killed in the shooting, only that one person had been taken into custody. At 1:50 p.m., the Purdue Exponent reported that  Prof. David Meyer, the professor of the classroom where the shooting occurred, sent out the following e-mail message: "IMPORTANT: Any student that witnessed the incident today (Tuesday, January 21) in room EE 067 please contact the Purdue police department as soon as possible." News reports haven't identified what kind of gun Cousins allegedly used in the shooting. West Lafayette police told reporters that a search warrant had been issued this afternoon following the shooting for Cousins' residence, but he could not confirm whether any weapons had been recovered from his residence. Cousins made no statement to police at the time of his arrest.

Acquaintances of  Cousins tells WTHR-TV that they didn't view him as being a violent person, let alone capable of committing murder. "That's the thing. He never showed us a gun, talked about a gun, was violent. He was always...there was no indication that he would ever, like, snap or do anything physical," said neighbor Tom Novak. "I've seen him intoxicated, too, and he was never violent, you know."He had one prior arrest during his years at Purdue for public intoxication. Cousins' landlord described him as clean-cut guy who was well-organized.

Alleged Shooter Cody Cousins

Shooting victim Andrew Boldt

Classes at Purdue were cancelled this afternoon and have been suspended for Wednesday as well. Purdue President Mitch Daniels was outside the country on a week-long trip to Columbia when he learned of the shooting. University officials say that he is cutting short his trip and expects to return to the campus tomorrow afternoon.


The conspiratorial website, NoDisInfo.com, quickly dismissed the Purdue shooting, like other recent school shootings, as nothing more than a hoax, although it presents no evidence to back up the claim.
 

Former Republican Virginia Governor And Wife Indicted For Illegally Accepting Gifts, Vacations and A Loan

I would say this should serve as a warning to Indiana elected officials who do the same thing, but our federal prosecutors refuse to prosecute elected official who regularly engage in these practices without consequences. Former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, have been indicted by federal prosecutors in Virginia for multiple counts of illegally accepting gifts, vacations and a loan from a prominent Richmond businessman, Jonnie Williams, Sr. McDonnell supposedly granted preferential treatment to Williams in exchange for the things of value that he and his wife received from him. This is a common practice in Indiana as I've discussed ad hominem on this blog that is never prosecuted in this state.

Bosma Reassigns Marriage Amendment From Judiciary Committee To Elections Committee In Last Ditch Effort To Save It

House Speaker Brian Bosma has apparently opted to reassign HJR-3, the proposed constitutional amendment to add Indiana's statutory ban on same-sex marriages to Indiana's Bill of Rights, from the Judiciary Committee to the Elections Committee to ensure its safe passage to the full House. As first reported on this blog, Bosma threatened to remove several Republican members of the Judiciary Committee who were leaning against voting for the amendment, enough votes to sink it in committee when combined with the four Democratic no votes on the committee.

Some Republican insiders believe that Bosma may be setting himself up or other Republican lawmakers who are supporting the marriage amendment for inopportune public disclosure of political career-ending scandals in his overzealous pursuit of enshrining discrimination against the state's gay and lesbian citizens in the state's constitution. A growing number of Republican lawmakers are incensed with Bosma for pushing this hot button social issue in light of shifting public opinion, particular among younger voters, on the acceptance of same-sex marriages.

Many Republicans want to end this madness now before it further erodes the party's image through such public displays of intolerance, noting that legally the amendment is completely unnecessary given Indiana's current defense of marriage law banning same-sex marriages. If the state law is eventually overturned as unconstitutional by the federal courts, as many now believe it will be, the enactment of a state constitutional amendment will make no difference as has already happened in other states like Utah and Oklahoma. Some Republican leaders and candidates fear that placing the issue on the ballot will drive voters to the polls who might not otherwise turn out in an off-year election to stop the poorly-conceived amendment to the detriment of the party's candidates by distracting from far more important issues on which a majority of  voters side with the party.

UPDATE: Freedom Indiana's Megan Robertson, a lesbian and Republican political consultant, issued a statement late this afternoon reacting negatively to Bosma's latest move:

"Thousands of opponents of HJR-3 have called, written and come in person to the Statehouse to explain to lawmakers how this divisive amendment will harm our families, friends and loved ones. We've explained the very real problems with this amendment through our personal stories. We've followed the legislative process with an earnest expectation that legislators truly seek to represent their constituents.    

"We found that to be the case with the legislators serving on the House Judiciary Committee, but House Speaker Brian Bosma broke his commitment to Hoosiers to uphold the traditional legislative process. Speaker Bosma repeatedly promised to treat this issue like any other bill and that no one person would not make this decision. We are proud of the way we have conducted ourselves and disappointed that Speaker Bosma did not live up to his word.  

"Would we change our actions had we known all along that one man planned to change the rules to push this divisive amendment through? Absolutely not. And this power play only spurs us to fight harder. Today is a dark day for democracy in the state of Indiana, but we are more committed than ever to defeat this amendment for the good of our state, our economy and our future together."

Chicago Using $21.5 Million In Surplus TIF Revenues To Hire Extra Teachers

Surplus TIF revenues in Indianapolis are passed out by the tens of millions of dollars to politically-connected developers like Flaherty & Collins, which stuffs a lot of money in Mayor Greg Ballard's campaign war chest. In Chicago, surplus TIF funds are being allocated to the City's financially-pressed schools. The Chicago public schools announced that it will use $21.5 million in surplus TIF revenues allocated to the school district in November to hire more teachers according to the Chicago Tribune.

A proposal is pending before the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee that would allocate up to $23 million in surplus TIF funds from the downtown TIF district to fund a 28-story luxury high-rise apartment building that Flaherty & Collins plans to build on the former Market Square Arena site that is outside the TIF district. Mayor Ballard is gifting the valuable land to the developer that should be used to build a new criminal justice center. The City-County Council is expected to approve the give-away once council members have cut their deals with the developer to get their "fair share" of the project. When it's all done and said, taxpayers will wind up paying at least 45% of the $81 million cost of building the high-rise luxury living apartments to provide subsidize housing for the top 1%.

Another Day Of Chemtrail Bombardment

It's like clockwork. Whenever there is an approaching frontal system, the skies over Indianapolis as indicated by the photo at the top taken at 38th and Fall Creek early this morning are bombarded with chemtrails, ionized aerosols which are sprayed from jet aircraft flying about 30 miles above ground level and which contain aluminum and barium oxides, among other forms of ionized metal aerosols. An approaching weather system is predicted to lay down another 1 to 3 inches of snow tonight. The spraying is part of the government's HAARP weather modification program that the lamestream media wants you to believe really doesn't exist. Anyone who goes through life with their eyes open can see the dramatic changes these artificially-created clouds are having on our weather, not to mention human health, as opposed to the CO2 emissions the loony environmentalists want you to believe is causing global warming. God only knows what negative harm this chemical spraying has on the Earth's environment as the toxic metals pollute our soil and water sources and enter our food chain. Upper respiratory afflictions in humans flare up every day this spraying occurs. Wake up, people. Who gave the government a license to play God?

Below is a rare example of a local TV weatherman providing his viewers an honest explanation of describing what a chemtrail is versus normal contrails emitted by jet aircraft.