The Good Pence

I can't foretell whether Linda Pence will be our next Attorney General, but if she loses, I'll never be convinced that the best person won. EVER.

Listen to Pence's critics, and you hear things like:

(1) "she is overzealous"
(2) "she is trying to run a prosecutor's race"
(3) "she's arrogant, and she thinks she's the smartest lawyer in the room," or
(4) "she won't go after corruption in Lake County."

To retort in order...

(1) having an AG who is overzealous is the best thing for Hoosiers. What is wrong with someone who will target those who target us through crime, consumer fraud, professional misconduct, and frivolous personal injury lawsuits filed against state employees and facilities? Anybody who has ever hired a lawyer knows that, as long as the lawyer's actions do not violate the rules of professional conduct, there is no such thing as an "overzealous lawyer."

(2) This segues nicely into the "prosecutor" issue. Among Pence's notable proposals are her desire to combat the methamphetamine epidemic, go after sex offenders, and independently investigate child fatalities, instead of relying on the Indiana Department of Child Services to police itself. These are all great ideas, but people say Pence shouldn't be acting like a super-prosecutor or....what's the word....solicitor general. My retort is, "Why not?" She is not talking about usurping anybody's role. She is talking about, for the first time in Indiana history, having someone who can coordinate crime strategy for the state from a prosecutorial angle. How is that a bad thing?

People who think this is overstepping don't know that history of the office. When Jeff Modisett was Attorney General, his office had a "death team," which would work with prosecutors on both initial death penalty prosecutions and petitions for capital post-conviction relief filed by inmates on death row. We went where help was requested, and it was FREQUENTLY requested.

(3) Ummmm....in 95-99% of the cases, when Linda Pence is in a room full of lawyers, she IS the smartest lawyer in the room. And do we really want one who has NEVER actually practiced law? I think back to when AGs all across the country went after big tobacco, and how these AGs' states had to pay a LOT to big law firms. Can you imagine how much would have been collectively saved had Linda Pence been in position to coordinate the effort under the aegis of the National Association of Attorneys General?

(4) A smart lawyer gunning for a superprosecutor image knows you MAKE a huge reputation on corruption. For every insider D she might alienate, she would pick up four R votes around the state for not flinching. Many have suggested that Pence's comment that she would "review all ongoing investigations" before committing to continuing them all meant she would pull the plug. No, no, no. She'll check the file first, which is prudent practice. And if grounds existed to move forward, she'd break a foot off in whoever's (expletive) needed it for justice to be done.

But the truth is, even if Linda Pence had NO new ideas for the office, you'll notice that NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY has said Greg Zoeller is a better lawyer than Linda Pence. Because they can't. They just can't.

The Good Pence

What the Heck is Going Down With Gas Prices?!?!

Gas prices were $2.72 last night in Indianapolis. Aside from Linda Pence saying she would zealously investigate Indiana gas stations as Attorney General, what has changed? (No, I know that couldn’t do it. Yes, she’s a bad@ss, but she’s not even in office yet!)

Seriously, America hasn’t begun drilling anywhere new yet, and most authorities say even if we did so TODAY, we won’t see the results for shy of a decade. Can someone explain how gas prices can drop so precipitously so quickly without market manipulation in the first instance or “politically-oriented price manipulation" now?

Some conspiracy-minded friends (who apparently are prescient) told me to watch gas go as low as $2.00/gallon until right after the election low gas prices helps McCain. This is common sense. Every public opinion taken on the matter says when the economy is bad, McCain suffers. Low gas prices lower the cost of everything.

But such a theory would assume that some American and European oil companies believe they’d be better off with John McCain. What would make them think that? Oh, wait. Barack Obama is going to tax them, isn’t he?

But how can the private oil companies alter production when they're all operating at capacity? And we know they are at capacity because multi-national corporations never lie, even when restraining production generates record profits for all of them. So, this price change must have occurred somewhere else.

Oh, guess what? On September 10, the Saudis said they would ignore OPEC requests to reduce production to keep oil prices from dropping below $100 per barrel. Oh, and guess what? The Saudis privately prefer McCain because they believe they want him to keep troops in Iraq, and they like his Iran rhetoric.

In short, two plus two equals cheap gas until November. Then watch us get crushed because then the Saudis won't care anymore.

What the Heck is Going Down With Gas Prices?!?!

Greg Zoeller Should Be Terrified of Linda Pence

I met Linda Pence two days ago. She is amazingly personable and incredibly sharp, and when I heard her pitch her candidacy, I became an instant believer. Ms. Pence's resume speaks for itself, and her tenacity is well-documented, even among conservative bloggers who try desperately to turn it into a negative to help their friends.

Let's be blunt. Most people who aren't lawyers hate lawyers until you need one, and then you want somebody who will crawl up and die on criminals, scam artists, and corporate wrongdoers of all stripes. Pence will be our pit bull.

Pence's proposal for independent investigation of deaths of children under the care of the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) is critical, and one Governor Daniels fears greatly. (In fact, you should expect to see the Governor dump any cash he can spare into Greg Zoeller's race to protect himself from true oversight of all of his activities). And this is just the tip of the iceberg on her agenda.

Apparently, the conservatorati, too, know Pence can flip this office to the Democrat column, which is why they're pushing the most ludicrous charges and guilt-by-assocation innuendo to undermine Pence's candidacy.

Recently, Advance Indiana attempted to brand Linda Pence a hypocrite because she criticized Attorney General Steve Carter for hiring a Chicago law firm for a DISCOUNTED rate of $395 per hour, when, lo and behold, she just hired a media consultant from Chicago. Let me dissect this so you'll see how assinine this criticism is.

When Steve Carter hired the Chicago firm, he used TAXPAYER dollars, not campaign dollars. Steve Carter was essentially saying, "Neither I nor Greg Zoeller know how to work a major case, so we have to pay an insane hourly rate to someone who can."

Seeing the obvious implication, AI and other R blogs, such as Hoosier Access, have tried a second tact. From Hoosier Access:

"As Gary Welsh noted over at Advance Indiana, it’s pathetic and hypocritical of Linda Pence to criticize Steve Carter and Greg Zoeller for seeking outside counsel when she personally was very handsomely paid for being an outside counsel during the O’Bannon administration."

These bloggers are referring to Ms. Pence's work on the 1999 White River fish kill case. Ms. Pence served as outside counsel at the behest of the late, great Governor Frank O'Bannon. Ms. Pence recovered $14 million for the state, making her acquisition an extremely profitable one.

If there is any criticism to be had with that work, wouldn't it be directed toward the O'Bannon administration for not having someone on staff or at IDEM to handle this litigation? After all, I don't fault the Chicago firm for representing a client in need, Steve Carter. I fault Steve Carter for being a client in need.

Put simply, Hoosiers can pay expert attorneys hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, OR we can get own expert attorney in-house, in the form of Linda Pence, for the price of votes plus $79,400 per year.

The appeal of that simple statement is undeniable, which is why the Republican bloggers are using the new number one dirty word in their operative handbooks: "Chicago."

Anything that can connect a Democrat to anything in Chicago (or Lake County, for that matter), no matter how tangentially, soils them. I envision the day when an East Chicago pastor who takes daily polygraphs to prove he's corrupt-free runs for a statewide office, and the R's will point out that "Pastor So-and-So had lunch regularly with Bob Pastrick." And I'll say, "Yeah, and so did half of East Chicago."

At some point, don't we have to say please show me ANY evidence of wrong-doing (even if its uncharged) by the ACTUAL CANDIDATE instead of playing Six Degrees of Separation through discredited politicians?

But the most telling insight into this race comes from the fact that almost EVERY Republican blogger post has been anti-Pence, not pro-Zoeller.

That's because when you have nothing to showcase, all you can do is distract and attack.

Greg Zoeller Should Be Terrified of Linda Pence