Senate Supports House Prayer

I’m pretty sure the General Assembly has enough to do during this short session. There are plenty of bills to consider and meaningful resolutions to pass. There are items being considered that will affect a far greater number of Hoosiers than the 150 who represent us in the State Capitol.

Educational issues, such as full-day kindergarten, and highway issues, such as whether to add new toll roads, are important matters that must yet be considered.

Yet one of the priority items on the agenda of the Senate this month was passage of a resolution in support of the House’s desire to pray to Jesus. Maybe spending time passing such a meaningless resolution that has no legal binding anyway won’t prevent more important legislation from eventually being considered. But it does show where the priorities of our lawmakers lie.

Several weeks ago Federal Judge David Hamilton issued an order preventing members of the House from saying specifically Christian prayers once official business begins for the day. As a result, lawmakers have been praying before entering the chamber.

Last week, the Senate stepped in to support House members who want to pray by passing the resolution unanimously. A House version of the resolution also passed.

Lawmakers are mostly irked by the gall the federal judge had in issuing his prayer restriction. They say it violates the spirit of the separation of powers mandated by the Constitution.

The U.S. House opens its session with a prayer. Generally speaking, legislative bodies are given wide latitude to set their own procedural rules of order by the courts.

Unlike public schools, where children are captive audiences, the Senate and House do not require public attendance at their sessions. So they are less restricted as to their use of prayer.

However, the House comprises 100 lawmakers, each with his or her individual guarantee of freedom of religion. Objections were raised by some lawmakers that the prayers being said during legislative sessions were strictly Christian in nature.

Judge Hamilton did not proscribe prayer in the House. He simply ruled that any prayers must be more ecumenical in nature so as not to offend those of disparate faiths.

Representatives do not need to cloister in the hallways to say their prayers. They may pray freely in the chamber during a session, just as long as the prayers they say are general enough that proselytizing is not an issue.

The Senate starts its daily sessions with a moment of silence. The House should consider the same practice. A moment of silence would allow the religious members of the House to pray to whatever god they want. But those who are less sectarian can simply use the silence to yawn. No one gets offended.

But, alas, the entire General Assembly has decided to make a political issue out of it. It doesn’t require much of an excuse to make almost anything a political issue, but all things religious are especially vulnerable. Take the Ten Commandments, “One Nation under God,” and “In God We Trust,” as examples.

Even the Senate bill’s sponsor, Mike Delph, R-Carmel, acknowledged that the resolution was only symbolic. He said it did not undermine the judge’s ruling and that the House had every intention of abiding by the ruling.

But an appeal of that ruling is already in the works. Thus more time and taxpayer money will be used defending a practice that is of questionable value.

Yes, I know; it’s the principle of the thing.

Time to End Debate on Time

The federal government has made its ruling; the governor just wants to move on to newer issues, and most Hoosiers are ready to get used to the time change.

But a few lawmakers aren’t ready yet to throw in the towel on the time debate. Even though the General Assembly, after a great deal of debate, decided last year to catch Indiana up with the rest of the nation by voting to approve daylight saving time, House Minority Leader Pat Bauer wants the issue to remain alive, at least until the November elections.

“I think for St. Joe County, it disconnects them year-round from the Chicago economy and the transportation hub,” Bauer said at a news conference he called shortly after the Department of Transportation announced that eight Indiana counties would move to the Central Time zone.

Of course, had the DOT decided to allow St. Joseph County to switch to Central Time, as it had petitioned, Bauer would have bemoaned the fact that it would then have been separated from Elkhart County, which is clearly in the same metropolitan area.

Elkhart County did not petition to switch to Central Time, and the DOT had said previously that no counties would be switched unless they asked to be.

Until last week when the DOT announced its decision, 10 Hoosier counties were in the Central Time zone and all observed daylight saving time. Five counties near Chicago in Northwest Indiana along with five more near Evansville in the southwest have been on Central Time for decades.

In all, 17 counties petitioned the DOT, which is the agency in charge of setting time zone boundaries, to switch from Eastern to Central time. The DOT finally ruled last week that eight counties could make the switch.

Two of those counties, Starke and Pulaski, are in Northwest Indiana. The other six, in the southwest, are Knox, Davies, Martin, Dubois, Pike, and Perry.

It probably would have been better to move St. Joseph County and Elkhart County into the Central Time zone, keeping South Bend and Elkhart in step with Chicago all year. But since Elkhart did not petition for a switch, the DOT did not force the issue.

Some democratic lawmakers want Hoosiers to vote on whether all of Indiana should be placed in the Central Time zone. Others want to roll back the move to daylight saving time.

But House Speaker Brian Bosma doesn’t have the time for those kinds of legislative shenanigans. He said the General Assembly was the place to make those decisions, and the decision has already been made.

And with the ruling by the feds last week, the matter should be settled once and for all.

But in an election year, that seldom happens with contentious issues like what time it is in Indiana. Lawmakers, like Bauer, will continue beating the dead horse until they finally realize the life has left it. And that won’t be until after the election.

A lot of people in northern Indiana are not happy with the new time zone boundary. As confusing as things used to be, they say it is even more confusing now. And one survey indicated that a majority of Hoosiers are not clear about what the time zone ruling really means.

So, naturally, the minority party will milk the confusion for all its worth.

But once everyone has had a chance to spring forward and fall back at least once, they’ll realize it isn’t all that bad. And if they have relatives out of state, they’ll also realize how much easier it is to make plans now that they don’t have to worry about whether their clocks are synchronized with each other.

No matter where the time zone boundary was drawn, somebody would be inconvenienced. The newly-drawn boundary is probably the best compromise for a situation in which there was no way to please everybody.

And as for the lawmakers in the state capitol, they should move on to more pressing matters and let time expire on the time zone debate.

School Lunches Getting Healthier?

When I was in school, the ladies in the cafeteria served up real food. At least, that’s the way I remember it.

There was always a green vegetable side dish, usually green beans or peas. And the main course seemed homemade. I don’t know that it really was.

Our beverage choice was, well, non-existent. We drank white milk or we drank nothing.

But we were always served a portion of buttered bread. We could select between one and four sandwich halves of it. I always opted for four. It was usually my favorite part of the meal. (I guess that might explain a lot about my current weight status.)

But sometime after I graduated high school, lunch menus changed. French fries were added, as was pizza. I never once remember being served fries for school lunch. And we didn’t have an a la carte line.

A school in northern Indiana where I taught for several years served the kids a good heaping plate of starch over starch several times a month. It was called ravioli over rice. They served it with a small side salad, but there aren’t many nutrients in lettuce.

These days, some schools are making at least a modicum of an effort to reintroduce green stuff back into their lunches. Most have either a salad bar or an option for a chef’s salad that kids can take instead of the starch du jour.

Still, there is always pizza day, pasta day, and almost every day is French fry day. When kids are given a choice, they usually opt for the fried starch with sugar.

And that brings me to the beverage choices. There’s still white milk, of course. But when given the choice of milk or flavored sugar beverages, most kids go for the sweet stuff.

It’s not even real juice, not that it would be so much better if it were. They offer fruit-flavored drinks, which are little more than sugar water with color. Real fruit juice isn’t much different, except that it does have a few vitamins.

Congress has finally stepped in to say enough is enough. Beginning in July, schools that participate in the federal free or reduced price lunch program must start offering students healthier menu choices, along with more options for physical activity.

The guidelines are well-intended, but implementing them may not help much unless local dieticians are careful.

The guidelines call for each meal to include no more than 30 percent of its calories from fat. What that might mean is that dieticians might opt to remove some of the healthy fats, such as omega-3 and monounsaturated fats and replace them with highly-refined carbohydrates. That would be a step backward.

The best school menus include a good mix of foods, including lots of green vegetables, salads, fresh fruit (not juice), lean meats, and foods containing the healthy fats. Good menus also restrict flour, starch, and sugar products and foods containing trans-fats. Beverages should be limited to white milk, chocolate milk, bottled water, and diet soft drinks.

As a teacher, it is easy for me to notice a big difference in behavior of the students immediately after lunch. They have been filled with sugary drinks and starchy foods, and it shows.

Maybe next year, if the school dieticians follow the intent of the new federal guidelines, fifth-period students might be a little more docile.