Mia is a 7-month-old Australian cattle dog mix! She is very active, playful, and friendly and loves just about everyone. Her previous owners said that she did great with other animals, car rides, and even baths! They could no longer keep her, so they brought her to the VHS to help her find her forever family. Mia’s adoption fee is $100, which includes her spay, microchip, age-appropriate vaccines, and a bag of food.

Ginny O’Connor hates to brag about herself. In fact, she’s one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet. So, since Ginny doesn’t like to boast, I have the honor of bragging for her.

Ginny was recently bestowed with one of the most prestigious honors in the Hoosier State, the Heart of Indiana Torchbearer Award. This award is given annually to women who have opened their hearts and minds to the needs of humanity. The award recognizes women with extraordinary talents for delivering outstanding community service. I don’t’ mean to brag, but these are qualities Ginny has demonstrated her entire life.

Vanderburgh County – Sometime during this upcoming weekend, Indiana State Police will be conducting a sobriety checkpoint in Vanderburgh County. The exact location, date and time will not be released. Motorists that are not impaired can expect only short delays of 2-3 minutes while passing through the checkpoint.

Troopers encourage all motorists to call 911 or the closest Indiana State Police Post when they observe another motorist that may be impaired. Be prepared to give a description of the vehicle, location and direction of travel.

The Indiana State Police are committed to traffic safety and will continue to conduct saturation patrols and sobriety checkpoints to apprehend impaired drivers and to deter others from drinking and driving.

The Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana will be hosting Art in the Park, a music and art festival, Saturday, June 1st. The free outdoor fair will take place at the Eykamp Scout Center, located at 3501 E. Lloyd Expressway, and will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Over 30 artist booths will be present, with a wide-range of media represented. Several musical acts will perform, including The Boat Monkeys, Shade Tree Players, Gina Moore with Warren Hale, and more. There will be activities for children, and a public 3D mural project, in which anyone can participate.
The Arts Council, located at 318 Main Street in Evansville, is to be the best source of information and advocacy by increasing awareness and accessibility of the arts and for the arts, arts education and arts organizations in southwestern Indiana. For more information, go to www.artswin.org, or call (812) 422-2111.

Sunday, October 27

Two shows at 12:00pm and 3:00pm!

Seats are $53, $43, $30 and $22.

Tickets go on-sale Tuesday, June 4 at 10:00am.

Pre-Sale from Tuesday, May 28 at 10:00am until Monday, June 3 at 10:00pm.

PASSWORD: Z3D

Tickets available at The Centre Box Office, Ticketmaster online or by calling 1-800-745-3000.

THE CENTRE

Dancing with Our Stars – June 8

Tri-State Business Expo – July 11

PEF/EVSC Summer Musical “Beauty and the Beast” – July 11-14

J&J Ventures Dart & Pool Tournament – Aug. 2-4

100 Men Who Cook – Aug. 24

Ghost Brothers of Darkland County – Oct. 17 @ 7:30pm

Three Classic Fairy Tales – Oct. 27 @ 12:00pm & 3:00pm

CENTRE’D ON KIDS 2014

Junie B. Jones – Feb. 5 @ 9:00am & 12:00pm

The Monster Who Ate My Peas – March 17 @ 9:00am & 12:00pm

Are You My Mother? – Apr. 22 @ 9:00am & 12:00pm

BROADWAY AT THE CENTRE 2013-2014

Elvis Lives! – Oct. 19 @ 7:30pm

Mamma Mia! – December 13 @ 7:30pm

Straight No Chaser – December 20 @ 7:30pm

Hello Dolly! starring Sally Struthers – January 12 @ 7:00pm

Bring It On: The Musical – February 9 @ 7:00pm

Hair – March 10 @ 7:30pm

Million Dollar Quartet – March 26 @ 7:30pm

Visit www.smgevansville.com for more information.

We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.”

How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

Copyright 2013, Creators Syndicate Inc.

A physician’s expertise makes him capable of inflicting great harm, noted Plato a couple thousand years ago, and no one is better positioned to steal than a guard. So perhaps we should not be surprised that the most conspicuous foe of liberty and the Bill of Rights turns out to be a former professor of constitutional law.

As a general rule, politicians tend to whipsaw between two poles. Conservatives try to increase economic liberty but show less regard for civil liberties. Liberals care deeply about civil liberties while trying to restrict the economic kind.

But the Obama administration is remarkable for its degree of disdain for both.

The president’s principal first-term achievement was the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The law greatly increases government’s role in health care and includes an expansion of government power unprecedented in American history: a requirement that all citizens purchase a consumer good irrespective of their personal behavior.

The administration also has pressed relentlessly – and successfully – for tax hikes, which shift control over economic resources from private hands to government. It also has indulged a regulatory binge, which shifts control indirectly, by cranking out burdensome new rules at a rate far faster than the Bush administration ever did. (This holds true even if you count only “economically significant” rules – those costing $100 million or more – and rely only on administration-friendly accounts.)

The result: Government not only is taking more of your money, it increasingly is telling you how to spend what’s left. A recent study estimates the cost of regulation at nearly $15,000 per household. This means the three principal drains on the family checkbook, in order, are: (1) taxes, (2) housing, and (3) regulation. And Washington is working hard to move regulation into the second slot.

While trends like these drive conservatives nuts, they gladden liberal hearts. Yet liberals are not happy with the Obama administration these days – for exceptionally good reasons.

Most saliently, the Justice Department has been trolling through the phone records of reporters for the Associated Press and, even worse, has accused a reporter (Fox News’ James Rosen) of acting as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the unlawful leaking of classified materials. Rosen’s offense was to do what reporters are supposed to do: break a story. This, too, is unprecedented, and it goes too far even for Obama’s most knee-jerk defenders. The New York Times views the investigation as “threatening fundamental freedoms of the press.”

The Rosen matter alone would suffice to disqualify the administration from any Friends-of-the-First Amendment society. Yet it is only one of several such assaults. Others include the administration’s campaign, through its insistence on a contraception mandate under Obamacare, against religious liberty, and the president’s suggestion after Citizens United that “we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process” to limit the free-speech rights of persons who incorporate their social organizations; and its thuggish targeting of its political opponents.

If the IRS’ treatment of tea-party groups were an isolated story, you could swallow the explanation that a few low-level bureaucrats went rogue. But that account does not explain why the EPA has been far more generous to freedom-of-information requests from liberal groups than from conservatives. Or why, shortly after the Obama campaign slimed Romney supporter Frank Vander Sloot as a disreputable fellow, he was audited three times – twice by the IRS and once by the Labor Department. Or why, after Texas resident Catherine Engelbrecht started a Tea Party group, she received scrutiny not just from the IRS but also from the FBI. And OSHA. And, just for good measure, the ATF. Or why the IRS took 17 months to respond to an initial tax-exempt status from the conservative Wyoming Policy Institute. Or why it shared confidential files from conservative groups with the liberal ProPublica. Or why. . .

Enough on the First Amendment. The president also has tried with considerable vigor to undermine the Second, and has succeeded in subverting the Fourth: Under Obama, who has gone to court to defend warrantless wiretaps he once condemned, warrantless “pen register” and “trap-and-trace” monitoring has soared to unprecedented heights.

In 2011 the president signed a reauthorization of the Patriot Act with just one regret: Congress approved an extension of only one year, while Obama wanted three. He signed into law a defense reauthorization bill allowing the indefinite detention, without charge, of American citizens, thereby gutting the principle of habeas corpus. Granted, he issued an executive order promising not to exercise that power. But the order does not constrain future presidents or, technically, even him.

From a civil-liberties perspective, Obama has carried forward nearly every one of the war-on-terror powers that led liberals to denounce George W. Bush as a goose-stepping fascist, and in fact has made many of them worse. When he retires from public life, perhaps he will return to teaching the Constitution. That should be much easier work – given how little of it there will be left.

Source: RCP