Indiana

One icy day in January, the 130-year-old First Methodist Church in Princeton, Indiana, burned to the ground after years of slow decline. Through the years the church’s beautiful crescent sanctuary had seen christenings, confirmations, weddings, funerals, the full circle of small-town religious life. Downstairs hosted the Pinewood Derby and the yearly pancake and sausage breakfast. Boy Scouts learned first-aid there; seniors practiced CPR. That was all long ago. The destruction left by the fire was so complete authorities in the small Southwest Indiana county seat couldn’t find a proximal cause. But ultimately, it was gradual social and generational change that left the building underused, expensive to maintain, impractical and finally vulnerable.

Mitch Daniels visited Washington this week to test the ground on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. "I’m worried about winning it and regretting it for six years," he told Politico. And well he might. The former Indiana governor and Purdue University president is debating whether to run for the seat of incumbent Indiana Senator Mike Braun, who after just one term decided he'd rather be back as governor in Indianapolis than stay in the cooling saucer for even one more minute. Daniels may find it equally abhorrent to join a body as a junior senator at the age of seventy-three. Either way, a run by him would immediately thrust the Indiana Republican primary into the national narrative, framed as a war between the pre-Trump and post-Trump GOP.

It was sad to see the glee with which pro-choice advocates welcomed the news that the ten-year-old Ohio rape victim was real. Surprisingly she lacks a nom de guerre yet, something like Victim Zero, Baby Doe or Child Jane. She went from victim to martyr to symbol within a news cycle or two. The story just received new life as Indiana, where the abortion was performed, has since voted to ban most abortions. We know now an illegal alien who should never have been in the United States (his status is never to be talked about again of course as it's outside the narrative) twice raped the ten-year-old.

The mainstream media has picked up on a story of a heroic armed citizen being heralded as “a good Samaritan” for shooting and killing a gunman who opened fire inside a Greenwood, Indiana mall. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s better late than never for such left-leaning media outlets as ABC, NBC, People magazine, the Today Show, the Washington Post and others reporting what gun owners have known forever: the best — and ofttimes only — way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with another gun. Yesterday, a man with a rifle managed to kill three people inside the Greenwood Park Mall. But then, a 22-year-old man used a firearm he was legally carrying concealed to shoot the gunman and end his killing spree.

You must have seen the horrific story reported out of Ohio. A 10-year-old child became pregnant through sexual abuse. Under the new post-Roe abortion laws in Ohio, she is ineligible for a termination because she was found to be six weeks and three days pregnant. Her unnamed doctor called a named abortionist in next-door Indiana where terminations can currently be performed past six weeks and began the process of arranging the out-of-state procedure. Someone took the story to the press, where it quickly became a Handmaid's Tale-level news item, the near-perfect example of everything wrong with overturning Roe v. Wade. It was almost too good (or too evil?) to be true. The victim was very young, below the average age of menses.

Mike Pence began his political career as "Rush Limbaugh on decaf," a calmer and more collegial kind of conservative radio host based in Indianapolis. He likely ended it as Donald Trump's patsy, running for his life from star-spangled sans culottes who wanted to hang him for refusing to certify his own ticket as the winner of an election. And...I mean...geez. We've all ridden some emotional rollercoasters over these last six years, but Pence's is in a category all its own. I think a letdown that severe would have sent me careening up to some remote corner of New Hampshire to live out my days in a lean-to. And that's not even counting all the White House drama Pence no doubt had to endure while in office.