TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – It’s high time the National Rifle Association held its annual convention in Indianapolis. Lord knows the Indiana General Assembly, with encouragement from the governor’s office and little resistance from cautious public officials in the Circle City,

Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”

has earned the honor.

Long ranked as one of the loosest states for gun traffic by federal authorities and firearms control advocates, Indiana has widened the lanes in recent years as its Republican majority has grown more reactionary and special interests such as the NRA have ratcheted up their influence.

Good to see it’s generated tourist dollars. Hard to see much sense in it otherwise.

You’d think there might be some soul-searching from a state that’s tagged by the feds as a major exporter of guns used in crimes elsewhere, owing to its exemption of “private” sales from background checks and its lack of caps on the number of weapons that can be purchased at one time.

You might hope that a gun-rich state would take mass shootings in schools and workplaces as a hint to try some approach other than expanding the “right” to bring guns in one’s car to schools and workplaces.

You might expect a tough-on-crime state to respond to news reports of felons’ wrongfully obtaining gun permits in some way other than closing off the record of those permits to the public.

You might wonder why any state government facing a crisis of urban violence, such as that in Indianapolis, not only would ease restrictions on where guns can be carried but actually would forbid local governments from making their own rules in that regard.

You would not be familiar with how the mind of Indiana governance works.

What’s a stain of shame to many of us, including such radical incendiaries as police chiefs and emergency room physicians, is a badge of honor to the majority of our legislators, along with Gov. Mike Pence and his predecessor, Mitch Daniels.

Gun control is anathema to both those men; Daniels stamped his bona fides by opening state parks to firearms and Pence reacted to the Sandy Hook massacre by saying, in effect, don’t get carried away.

This was shortly after his election victory over Democrat John Gregg, who made sure voters knew he was “Bible-quotin’ and gun-totin’.” It is tough out there for Moms Against Guns, I’m here to tell you.

The list of favors to the gun lobby and Second Amendment fanatics is long and always lengthening; but the topper has to be the law enacted late in Daniels’ administration permitting householders to use force against any police officer or other public agent they believed to be unlawfully entering their home. This daft and potentially deadly sop to the fantasy frontier spirit came in response to an Indiana Supreme Court ruling against a man who’d fought with invading police. If they’re wrong, the court said, you have to complain or sue later; you’ve no inherent right to get physical.

A tough call; the only call, when you think about it. But when it comes to guns, the thinking over there seems to have all the range and focus of a sawed-off shotgun. I mean, talk about Stand Your Ground. This threatens the lives, not of annoying teenagers, but of cops and mail carriers. Just how conservative is that?

Providentially, no upstanding, licensed, rage-crazed homeowner has tested the home-is-your-castle law so far. And to our relief, much of the other gun legislation is mostly symbolic as well. Nobody has been checking Dad’s trunk when he’s come to pick up Junior; and if a House bill now pending passes as expected, nobody will be allowed to. It’s simply one more endorsement of a gun culture and a gun lobby that have made our communities a mine field that no number of gun control laws ever could sweep clean even if three ghosts visited the Statehouse tonight.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, rightful Hoosiers. The way this legislature figures, you make us safer wherever you tote.

Oh, uh, but the Statehouse is off limits, of course.

Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, a contributor to Indianapolis Business Journal and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”

Jennifer Nelson

for www.theindianalawyer.com

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz
IndyPoltics.Org

A week or so ago, Republican State Sen. Mike Delph of Carmel talked about his “tweet heard around the world.”  He sent out a Twitter

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org.

message that there were not enough votes in the Senate caucus to restore the second sentence banning civil unions into HJR-3, the marriage amendment. Delph had broken the cardinal rule that what is said in Senate caucus stays there. A couple hundred twitter posts and a few days later Delph found himself stripped of Senate leadership position, no press secretary and stuck on the far side of the chamber surrounded by Democrats.

More recently in the Statehouse an amendment was added to a bill that would have allowed state contractors to discriminate based on religion.  No one would have noticed anything until it broke out on social media.  Within 24 hours the bill was sent back to committee and the amendment was removed.

And there’s no need to go back to the 2012 U.S. Senate race and the infamous “rape” comment which spread like wildfire, mostly due to Twitter and Facebook.

So what am I getting at?

Social media aren’t just for posting pictures of your kid’s soccer or basketball game.  You can do a lot more on Twitter than tell everyone you’re standing in line to see the new Lego movie.  (Which I did tweet was “totally awesome” after I saw it.)  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, You Tube, blogs, you name it.  What once seemed like the sole purview of teenagers and 20-somethings to waste valuable time talking about absolutely nothing has become a very valuable asset in the world of politics and if you don’t know how to use it, you lose it.

For example, during the debate over House Joint Resolution 3, there was a group called “Young Hoosiers for Marriage” who supported traditional marriage.  About 100 of them held a rally at the statehouse showing their support for the amendment and wanting lawmakers to restore the second sentence. What they didn’t do was made sure they owned the internet domain name “Young Hoosiers for Marriage” because when you typed it in on the web, it took you straight to Freedom Indiana’s web page. Freedom Indiana was the group opposing HJR 3.  And to add insult to injury, with 10 minutes after “Young Hoosiers for Marriage” was announced there was a Facebook all set up by opponents of HJR 3 saying what a bad idea the second sentence was.   You may not like, but you have to respect it.

As I said, social media can be a very powerful tool which can easily make or break a candidate or an issue.  A political career can easily come to an end if you catch the right candidate doing the wrong thing at the right time.  Smart political operations not only master the art of social media by knowing how to properly get out information, but they also know how to monitor it.  And if you are smart and monitoring, or to use a technical term “following,”  a reporter’s Twitter account many times you can figure out where the reporters’s going with a particular story and know how to either do damage control or enhance your own political profile.

As the old saying goes, “politics ain’t no bean bag” and social media has made it a lot more fun and a lot more complicated.  By the way, you can follow me on Twitter at either AttyAbdul or IndyPoliticsOrg.   You’ll be doing yourself a big favor. Trust me on that one.

Abdul is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org. He is also a frequent contributor to numerous Indiana media outlets. He can be reached at abdul@indypolitics.org.

By Erika Brock
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – A bill to ban state education officials from using the controversial Common Core standards and replace them with Indiana-based curriculum rules passed the House with bipartisan support on Thursday.

But the legislation no longer appears terribly relevant. The State Board of Education is already working on new standards that are in some parts similar to the Common Core but diverging in other areas.

“It is the right thing to do for Indiana,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Lizton. “It sets up the guidelines needed to move forward.”

The bill requires new “college and career readiness standards” to be ready for the 2014-2015 school year. It also defines college and career readiness as standards that provide high school graduates with the “requisite knowledge and skill to transition without remediation to postsecondary education or training and ultimately into a sustainable career.”

However, the bill doesn’t require testing on the new standards right away. That would be implemented the following year.

Democratic Rep. Kreg Battles, a teacher in Vincennes, said the bill is “setting kids up for failure” because it doesn’t include a pilot program to try out the standards and testing program.

“If you know anything about testing you do not give a test unless it has been piloted first,” Battles said. He had offered an amendment on Wednesday that would have added a pilot program to the bill but it was shot down.

Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, said that the reason for the pilot would have been to insure that the teachers will not be “teaching one thing and testing another.”

But Thompson said, “Nothing at all in this bill I can find that does not allow a department to do pilot testing.”

Last year, lawmakers passed legislation to pause the implementation of Common Core, which is a set of standards originally written by officials from several states but adopted by the administration of President Barack Obama. Last year’s bill also called for lawmakers and state education officials to reconsider the State Board of Education’s adoption of the standards.

Now, the board is holding public hearings on a different set of standards, which members want to implement by the next school year.

Erika Brock is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.