Olios for Freedom!

• Dear Senator Obama re: Your Comments on the Libby Commutation Y'know what would be nice? What would be nice is if, whenever you play the "We Must Change the Politics of Division" card you acknowledged, in some small way--maybe a saucy wink, or a Renee Zellwinger face scrunch--that many of us on one side of this Evil Cancerous Partisanship got there by dint of fighting against the very things you're complaining about since, oh, I dunno, before your ass was born. We've been partisan about civil rights, American adventurism abroad, equality, justice, and personal freedom. Sorry that turned out to mess shit up so much for you. Do you really imagine that your policy stances--and they're largely pretty good, sir--are not going to be met with partisan opposition if you're elected? Or is partisanship supposed to vanish by then? Alternately, Senator, you're a Senator. Just introduce non-partisan legislation that solves all our problems. You'll be President by acclamation.

• Al-Qaeda? Maybe the British Car Bombers Should Have Trained in Hamilton County where the count as of July 2 was thirteen families burned out of their apartments and one barn burned to the ground by "errant" fireworks. Or errant "legal fireworks", as the Carmel fire department, recipient of some of the surcharge largesse (earmarked for "safety instruction and training", wink wink) that closed the deal that brought 1/4 sticks of dynamite Flaming Freedom sticks to neighborhoods, vacant lots, and tinderboxes statewide, would have it. The 19 year-old whose Roman candle spree left a dozen families homeless and bereft of possessions (most, as usual with apartment dwellers, sans insurance) faces a $25 fine.

• Speaking of imaginary links to vaporous organizations, there's no reason, neither common-sensical nor in her track record, to expect NBC's Lisa Myers to buck popular trends and journalistic standards and reason anything out from the utter haplessness of the British car "bomb" attacks. But is it too much to ask that she learn to pronounce "GLAS-ko"? Or should we just be grateful it didn't happen in Edinburgh?

• Reasons to spend four years in Journalism school: so that you, like the Star's political pundit Matt Tully, can write an entire column about the reasons for massive Property Tax increases without ever mentioning, alluding to, or suggesting you've ever heard of the actual, unequivocal, accepted-without-objection explanation, the Ideologues Gone Wild repeal of the state's business inventory tax two sessions ago, which sorta conveniently left out any means for replacing the lost funds except having them fall to You Know Where. (Oh, sorry, Liberal Bias: the funds, of course, were replaced by the resultant upswing in sales--due to lowered prices--Indiana's exploding employment numbers, and excise taxes from the year-round low car prices we used to get only in February, when all the dealers tried to Beat the Tax Man by passing the savings On To You! Property tax increases are apparently an illusion.) Tully's employer, the primary-colored Pie-chart fans at Gannett were--givet me a minute to look it up--in favor of the repeal. Just in case you were holding your breath.