It’s the year’s guiltiest literary pleasure: Stephenie Meyer’s series of teenage vampire romance novels, “Twilight.”
INDIANAPOLIS – Transplanted organs from a single donor spread skin cancer to two recipients who then died, claim two medical malpractice complaints against the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization.
HAMMOND, Ind. – The Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the classic holiday movie “A Christmas Story” with a display in Hammond.
News briefs from around the state.
INDIANAPOLIS – Descendants of World War I flying ace Harvey Weir Cook celebrated the Veterans Day dedication of a new passenger terminal bearing his name, a belated consolation for the removal of his name from the airport that he helped develop more than 60 years ago.
Two years of election coverage accomplished what had previously been unheard of in Indiana. The coverage brought political candidates to rallies in the Hoosier state and engaged residents in the election process.The elections gave Indiana the chance to make its mark on the rest of the nation. For the first time in years, we were considered a swing state, and presidential candidates ran ads here. And even though Indiana hadn’t gone blue since Lyndon B. Johnson ran for office in 1964 , we were once again on the map in yellow, instead of dark red, during the final weeks of the campaign.
Nov. 4 was a bittersweet day for many. The election of Barack Obama, a black man, was a sign of major social progress. However, there was a measure that passed in the West Coast that effectively stripped many of their rights. That measure was Proposition 8, an amendment that added 14 words to the state constitution defining valid marriage as between a man and a woman. In a 52 to 48 percent vote, California voted in favor of Proposition 8. In effect, this measure halted the four-month period of time where homosexuals could legally wed in the state. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints spearheaded the proposition, along with other Catholic and evangelical interest groups. Together supporters of Proposition 8 raised nearly $38 million.
I am outraged at the comments of IU College Republicans chairwoman Chelsea Kane. In the article “IU voters increase by 287 percent,” she states that she was disappointed in students who voted for Obama because they were captivated by his rhetoric.
It’s a sign of the times that almost everything comes in a light version. Some loser who graduated in the bottom of his class with a marketing degree from a sub-par university decided that it would be clever to spell it “lite” and ended up making the greatest career move of his life. We now have lite radio, lite beer, lite cream cheese, Nintendo DS lite, and the list goes on.
Congratulations are truly in order for President-elect Barack Obama. Congratulations must also be given to his committed, hard-working volunteers who surely played as important a role in last week’s victory as the candidate himself. One might rightly wonder whether our economy would be suffering if these tireless Obamaniacs would show the same effort working at real jobs as they did in campaigning, but I’m trying to be magnanimous, so I’ll just leave that there.
Lyndon B. Johnson, despite his major civil rights legislation and his war on poverty, is not as well-known in American politics as he probably should be. Yet lately his name has been tossed around a lot. That’s mostly because of Johnson’s victory in the 1964 presidential election. Until last Tuesday, 1964 was the last time a Democrat had won several conventionally Republican states including Virginia and Indiana. With Johnson’s devastating 486 electoral vote victory over Barry Goldwater – one of the early proponents of modern conservatism – and the election of John F. Kennedy, a man who has probably sold the message of his party better than any man since, the early ’60s were good to the Democratic Party.
Tuesday night, former Sen. John Edwards said that Sen. John McCain had a weight around his neck in the final days of the presidential campaign.That weight, he said, was sitting President Bush.
Most people don’t have a whole lot of faith in politicians. This is partially because the media tend to portray politicians as two-faced liars who are mostly out for themselves, and partially because a lot of politicians are two-faced liars who are mostly out for themselves. This predominant view was a big reason why a lot of people – myself included, at first – didn’t have a lot of faith that a candidate like Barack Obama would have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected. But somehow, he was able to convince people that he wasn’t totally full of it, that we could actually believe in him and in ourselves and we wouldn’t get burned. Obviously, the man hasn’t even taken office yet (though as David Letterman said, is anyone opposed to him taking over a little early?), but rumblings are already starting that we might actually have elected the man we thought we were electing.
The IU Kelley School of Business is receiving a $15 million donation from an IU alumnus to benefit minority scholarships. It is one of the largest donations ever given to the school, and with interest and IU’s match program, it the single largest contribution.
IU Police Department is investigating the theft of missing artwork from Ballantine Hall.
The IU men’s basketball team closed out its short exhibition season with a 72-54 win against Division II Bemidji State Beavers.
It’s a delicate and daring experiment: Could doctors switch a leg nerve to make it operate the bladder instead? Families of a few U.S. children, whose spina bifida robs them of the bladder control that most people take for granted, dared to try the procedure – and early results suggest the surgery indeed might help, in at least some patients.
IU scientists will now have a new place to conduct research outdoors. The University started construction late last month on a new 6,000-square-foot field laboratory near Griffy Lake that’s dedicated to research in sciences ranging from biology to geology and public and environmental affairs. The Research and Teaching Preserve Field Laboratory, as it’s called, is designed to advance research in environmental, geological and biological sciences.
Flu season is here, and this year, federal officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that even young children receive the vaccine.
One year ago, sophomore Nicholas Bielinski was in the U.S. Air Force. Today he is studying at IU. Bielinski is one of more than 300 IU students who have served or are serving in the U.S. military. The number also includes dependents of disabled or deceased veterans. These students will have the opportunity to not only commemorate veterans, but also themselves.
