Collectors of Classified Documents

When leaving the White House, everybody takes home some souvenir secret documents. It seems like that, anyway. Trump had 300. Ex-VP Biden had a few. Now it turns out that ex-Veep Mike Pence had some back home in Indiana, too. It’s a questionable hobby.

The federal government began the modern system of document classification in 1951, updating it in 1953 and 2009. Maybe the FBI also needs to search the homes of Harry Truman, Alben Barkley, Ike, Nixon, JFK, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George W. Bush,  Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama.

Kamala Harris, take heed.

More:

“Trump Angrily Orders Pence to Return All Classified Documents to Mar-a-Lago,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

Updates:

See? We told you.

“Classified records pose conundrum stretching back to Carter,” Zeke Miller, Farnoush Amiri, Colleen Long, and Jill Colvin, Associated Press

“US National Archives asks ex-presidents to check for classified papers,” Hugo Lowell, The Guardian

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Mass Shooting in Indianapolis Kills 8 People

A gunman murdered eight innocent human beings and injured at least seven others in Indianapolis, Indiana on Thursday before shooting himself dead. This is the third mass shooting in Indianapolis so far this year. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in a January shooting, and three adults and a child were shot to death in March.

Indiana has some of the weakest gun laws in the United States, a country of lax gun safety laws and more guns than people, where there have been 45 gunshot mass murders in the last month, 147 in 2021 to date, more than one every day (details here).

So far in 2021, 12,421 people have been shot to death in the US, including 87 children under 12, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

More:

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

“These are the victims of the Indianapolis FedEx mass shooting,” Fox 59 News

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Carrier

During his 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump won a victory when he convinced the Carrier company to keep 800 manufacturing jobs in Indiana instead of moving them to Mexico. But Carrier has laid off some of those Indiana workers due to outsourcing and automation.

A video from The Atlantic

More:

“Carrier Employees, Soon to Be Laid Off, Feel Betrayed by Donald Trump,” Charles Bethea, The New Yorker

Related:

“Labor seeks to break into the debate over robots,” Steve LeVine, Axios

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Christian Soldier Cruz Vanquished in Indiana

Freshman Senator Ted Cruz has withdrawn from his crusade for the Republican presidential nomination after his defeat on the bloody battlefield of Indiana. “We left it all on the field,” said Mr. Cruz, after his drubbing from the steak-chomping, golf-club wielding, thrice-married Trump Creature. After a well-deserved rest, Mr. Cruz will resume the holy crusade during his grueling 3-day Senate work week.

More:

“Cruz’s sudden exit from GOP race catches supporters off guard,” Dylan Baddour and Kevin Diaz, Houston Chronicle

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Hoosier Hospitality

Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a formerly prominent Republican, is flabbergasted by the uproar about Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act. After all, it has the same name as a Federal law and laws in 19 other states.

There are three main differences:

1.  Indiana’s law explicitly allows for-profit businesses to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.”

2. Indiana’s law allows businesses to assert such rights as a defense against lawsuits by private individuals, not just against actions brought by government.

“So, let’s review the evidence: … there’s ‘nothing significant’ about this law that differs from the federal one, and other state ones—except that it has been carefully written to make clear that 1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals.”

— “What Makes Indiana’s Religious-Freedom Law Different?” Garrett Epps, The Atlantic

3. Timing. Public opinion in America has swung in favor of same-sex marriage, and Indiana Republicans are out of step with their “freedom to discriminate” legislation.

More:

“Indiana’s Mike Pence is starting to look like Lester Maddox — without the spine,” Joan Walsh, Salon

Legal types can see a letter by 30 law school professors here.

Related:

“When ‘Religious Liberty’ Was Used To Justify Racism Instead Of Homophobia,” Ian Millhiser, Think Progress

“Disciples Of Christ Cancels 2017 Convention In Protest Of Religious Freedom Law,” Daniel Strauss, TPM Livewire

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Indiana Welcomes … Some of You!

The Indiana legislature passed a law, and Republican Governor Mike Pence is so proud of it that he boldly signed it when no one was looking. The so-called ‘Religious Freedom Restoraction Act‘ grants individuals and businesses the right to discriminate against people unlike them and claim their religion mandates their bigotry.

Wholesome, honest-to-goodness Hoosier intolerance. Who could be against that?

Everyone. The ACLU. The Disciples of Christ. The NCAA. The Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. USA Track & Field. NASCAR. Corporations like Yelp, Salesforce, Ennis Communications, Cummins, Angie’s List, Twitter, Subaru, General Electric and Indianapolis-based pharma giant Eli Lilly & Company. The mayors of Indianapolis, South Bend, Evansville, Washington DC, Seattle and San Francisco. The governors of Connecticut, New York, and Washington. U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL). Annual conventions like the AFSCME Conference and the $50 million Gen Con. The editors of the Indianapolis Star. Tim Cook. Audra McDonald. Miley Cyrus. Larry King. Charles Barkley. Nick Offerman. David Letterman. Wilco. Ashton Kutcher. Arnold Schwarzenegger. And many more.

There’s a petition, a boycott movement, and this:

Marriage Equality in Virginia. And 10 Other States.

The Supreme Court declined to reconsider federal appeals court rulings overturning bans on gay marriage in five states. Same-sex marriage is now legal in Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Indiana and Wisconsin. Six other states — Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming — bound by the same appellate rulings had stayed same-sex marriage pending the Supreme Court’s review, and should get with the program shortly. That means marriage equality is the law in 30 states and the District of Columbia.

Back Home Again in Indiana

U.S. District Court Judge Richard L. Young ruled Wednesday that Indiana’s state law banning same-sex couples from marrying or having their marriages from other states recognized is unconstitutional. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller filed an emergency motion to stay the ruling pending an appeal, but the ruling took effect immediately and Hoosier couples rushed to marry.

We think it’s time to cue Jim Nabors:

Traditional Marriage, Part-Time Adultery

Congressman Mark Souder (R, IN-3) thinks your bedroom behavior may be a threat to the Republic, but is careful to note that his own admitted adultery was only with a part-time staff member. Since his subordinate was only part-time, perhaps that makes it “adultery lite.”

It was traditional adultery, of course, the heterosexual kind. Mr. Souder and his staffer are married, just not to each other.

Palin Quits Book Signing Tour!

In case you missed it, when former Alaska Temp-Governor Sarah Palin left a Borders bookstore in Noblesville, Indiana on November 19th, hundreds of supporters bid her adieu with heartfelt chants of “Quitter! Quitter!”