Watching the television reports of heroes who gave everything to save others. Listening to stirring tributes and renditions of the national anthem not to be missed. Everyday, I am proud to be an American. Today I am especially proud.

I cannot say that we have won this global war on terror against evil people who only wish our demise. The war is not over. Battles still rage. They are still unfortunately seeking our destruction. We did not start this war. The people in the World Trade Center were innocent victims of pure evil. That said, there are some undeniable truths that have come to the surface with what was done.

1. There is right and wrong. Good and Evil. Good guys and bad guys. However you want to look at it.
2. Some bad guys will not change and need to be destroyed for the sake of humanity.
3. We do not need to understand them when they hijack planes and fly them into buildings. While it is sad, there is not any room for negotiating with that type of people.
4. The American people are innately kind and brave and helpful to others around the world. We are also kind and brave and helpful even when it costs us dearly.
5. We will prevail in this conflict as long as our people value freedom more than their own desires.
6. We have an incredible volunteer military forces that lives by truth #5

So thank you from the bottom of my heart to those who have served. My heart weeps and my condolences go out to those who lost loved one. Thanks to the families of those who serve in the military to provide us with freedom. And thanks to those first responders who willingly go into the building as we are desperately scrambing to get out.

May our next ten years be as safe as our last ten have been.

All eyes are on the Indiana Department of Transportation to see what decisions will be made and how long any needed repairs will take, Each day that goes by can cost thousands of dollars of revenue for local businesses. If you are a business that is suffering from this closure, we would love to hear from you and what you are doing to keep the revenue coming into your business,

Please contact us in the “Submit News” section and we will be in touch!

Indiana and Kentucky transportation and law enforcement officials today (Sunday) announced traffic plans aimed at managing extraordinary traffic congestion on the first work day following Friday’s closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge over the Ohio River between west Louisville and New Albany, Indiana.

The congestion is expected to affect much of the traffic throughout the Louisville and Southern Indiana region, not just limited to those commuting across the Ohio River.

“Commuters are the key to making this plan work,” said Ryan Gallagher, director of traffic management for the Indiana Department of Transportation. “It is critical that commuters tomorrow (Monday) – both morning and afternoon – realize that familiar driving habits simply will not work for the vast majority of people.”

Key to the plan will be the reversible lane in the Second street bridge, which will have 3 southbound lanes in the morning and three northbound lanes in the evening.

Key morning commute changes:

Special lane-dividing markers on the I-65 Kennedy Bridge to more firmly channel southbound traffic toward I-64 and I-71. Motorists will not be able to access the right lane once they are on the bridge.

In Louisville, closure of one lane of the ramp from I-65 north onto I-64 east.

In Jeffersonville, Ind., closure of the Court Avenue ramp to I-65 south from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. EDT weekdays.

Key afternoon commute changes:

In Louisville, closure of the ramp from westbound I-64 onto I-65 in downtown Louisville. That will restrict I-64 to local access downtown. Commuters wanting to access I-65 will be required to use I-71 or surface streets.

In Indiana when the I-65 northbound ramp to I-265 westbound is overloaded, signs will direct traffic to a make-shift U-turn at the Indiana 60 exit one mile to the north. Signal timing at the entrance and exit ramps have been modified to help traffic flow.

The changes are being made to allow traffic to move to and from Louisville in spite of the loss of the Sherman Minton, which was ordered closed on Friday after inspectors found cracks in the bridge’s steel. The bridge normally carries 80,000 vehicles each day. The closure of the Sherman Minton leaves just two local bridges between Louisville and Southern Indiana – the Clark Memorial and Kennedy bridges.

Indiana State Police and Louisville Metro Police will have officers at key intersections directing traffic and handling accidents. Hoosier Helper and Kentucky SAFE Patrol vans will assist with vehicle breakdowns.

Here are key points to help with the commute:

Plan ahead. Your normal route may be affected even if you don’t cross the river.

Leave early or much later to avoid rush hours.

Carpool or telecommute if possible.

Today, what would the phrase be to get our political class focused on what needs to be done? It’s the spending, stupids.

Plural.

Stupids as in BOTH parties.

Specifically FEDERAL spending. Remind me again why we need to send money to Washington DC so that they can take some of it, hire bureaucrats, and then tell us what we need to do to get the money back. I don’t get it.

On top of that, they see the need to spend more each year with what they call the “baseline” budgeting system that automatically grows their spending by x percent each year and then when we say that we don’t want to GROW quite that much, it is immediately turned into a DRACONIAN cut… and the world is going to come to an end.

Note to leaders of both parties. Our families do NOT baseline budget. If we don’t make as much, we do with less. dig? Our budget cuts at HOME are draconian. You all can do with a little less. Don’t EVEN try to tell me that each and every one of your departments would not actually run BETTER with about a 1% cut in spend.

One lousy percent.

How hard is that? Across the board. No arguments about this program vs that program. No chance to pit this guy vs that guy. Just do with a little bit less.  Saving that much money should be easy, and do it 10 years in a row and we have a SURPLUS.

Yet keep spending and our grandkids get stuck with the bill.

It’s the spending stupids.

The Red Devils are coming off of a tough year last year that only saw them win one game (against Madison) and saw them lose many of those games by wide margins.

The Seymour team of last year had a more impressive record, but still found it tough to win on the road, making for an interesting match up this year.

So if you have a beef with my opinion, put your big boy pants on and deal with it in the arena of public ideas. That’s right. Right out here in front of God and everybody. Tell me why I am wrong here…. There is a comment section below. Feel free to make your voice heard.

That is what our country was based on. The freedom to tell Britain (our administration at the time) that we did not appreciate being taxed without representation and that we weren’t going to tolerate them telling us what we could or could not do.

Now I realize that when you are talking about students, there are some controls that need to be in place. That is why you have a sponsor or advisor to teach them. The young journalists need to channel that energy a bit. That requires someone sponsoring their paper that they trust. Mr James Sexton, the current principal of Jeffersonville High School has indicated in his recent directive that  this is about correcting “grammatical errors and potentially libelous or slanderous articles”.

Ummm. Ok. I don’t see that many grammatical and punctuation errors in the Hyphen. In fact, I took a look at the Courier Journal and my guess is that you could find many more there. #Just Sayin. (whoops, did I just commit a grammatical error?? or was I trying to communicate the way people do today…I leave it to you to decide.)

Now for the big one. Libel and Slander. Perhaps if Mr. Sexton sees a potential problem in this area, he can point to times in the past where this has actually happened? (The question mark there is NOT a grammatical error… again …#justsayin). From where I sit, (and what do I know, I am just a person who has never met any of these people –the principal, the advisor or anyone else associated with the paper– ever in my life as far as I know) this seems like a good old fashioned case of Over Controlling Principal (irresistable force) meets Typical Press (immovable object).

Additionally, this seems to me that Mr. Sexton’s assertion that he is going to protect the district and JHS from libel and slander is…well…pretty transparent that he simply does not like what has been said and wants some more control over it. Just my opinion.

If you want to compare the characters to the recent Harry Potter series, Mr. Sexton is inching ever closer to the Dolores Umbridge character. Again. Just my opinion of course.

In today’s world, there are so many ways for students to express themselves. If you dictate that the school paper is “not to be a free and open forum for students and faculty.”  Then you need to realize that these students will recognize it for what it is. A closed propaganda piece for the administration. You simply cannot choose to have it both ways (a democracy when it serves you and a dictatorship when it does not).

What to do about it.

I do have a solution to the problem. If any student that is working for the paper finds that what they write in the paper is being altered, they are free to publish it here on on my site as an editorial. Unlike the folks at JHS I am fine with trusting these kids as feeelance writers.If it gets by the scrutiny of your adviser. I will publish it.

Say what you want. Use your journalistic judgement. We trust you much as many of the other high schools in the area trust the advisors that work on their papers to guide the budding journalists there to use good judgement.

How are you going to become true wizards of words if you have to only talk about journalistic freedom and not USE it?

Again #justsayin.

There already is a JHS teacher who is an advisor to these publication, who already does proof the paper for these types of errors prior to publication, Kelly Short. And while there are going to be varying degrees legally about the amount of control that is acceptable over a school newspaper, the concerns are that this written request is treading on potentially troublesome legal areas for the principal.

According to Mr. Sexton (as quoted in the News and Tribune) the issue is “grammatical errors or potentially libelous or slanderous”. And that “If it’s libelous or slanderous, you might want to tell the sponsor that the missed something.” But it is clear that there might  be more at play than that.

At the heart of the issue is the relationship between Mr. Sexton and the advisor / sponsor Ms. Short. When asked about the relationships between other Principals and Newspaper advisers in area high schools, many acknowledge that their needs to be a level of trust and that not everything printed in the newspaper will reflect positively about decisions made by the principal, teachers, or school board administrators. What is clear is that this level of trust is currently not there. What is also apparent is that Mr. Sexton wants more control over the content of the paper than many area high school principals do.

In the principals directive, “The Hyphen should not be considered in the future an open forum for students, faculty, or community members associated with Jeffersonville High school.” seems to indicate that the two parties have quite a bit of difference on how they view the process of teaching kids about the press and the process of becoming a journalist.

This year, Schimpff’s celebrates 120 years of continuous operation as a business here in Jeffersonville, making them one of the oldest businesses in the area. To help celebrate, Schimpffs will have prizes and specials throughout the month of June.

Stop by and pay them a visit the next time you are in downtown Jeff!