A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

The Indy Star has an article entitled Attorney accused in fatal DUI crash about a 26 year old attorney named Terry Record who was apparently involved in a drunk driving accident that killed 46 year old Jimmy R. Cash. Record worked for the Indiana Department of Health and was active in Republican politics. He was also at least nominally a contributor to Indiana Barrister, though I can’t think of anything he wrote there. The story I expected was a matter of young guy goes out with his buddies to have a good time, has too much to drink, and the nightmare occurs. But, the Star story suggests, at least, that Mr. Record had his wake up call back in October:

[O]n Oct. 7 Indianapolis police found his car overturned on College Avenue near 22nd Street after it had struck another car. Record was not at the scene, and later he told a police officer the car may have been stolen after he left a Broad Ripple bar early that morning, taking a cab home, according to a police report.

His supervisors questioned him.

“There were some inconsistencies,” Symons said. “Based on those answers, we decided it wasn’t appropriate for him to work for us any longer.”

No charges were filed against him in that incident. The incident on Sunday night leading to the fatality took place after Record had, according to his account, “four medium sized drinks”. Witnesses on the scene reportedly indicate that he ran a red light. Record told officers that the pickup truck’s driver caused the crash, police said, and stated: “I hope the guy has insurance to fix my car.” Presumably he was not aware that the pickup truck driver was deceased at the time he made that statement.

I’m certainly not against education programs and encouraging people to drink less because of these incidents, but I also tend to think that these tragedies are also arguments for better mass transit and, perhaps, the neighborhood bar. Of course, our society has a puritanical streak that dislikes solutions that may seem to endorse sinful behavior. But still, the drinking is only one-half of the drinking and driving equation. Who knows if there was anything at all that could have prevented this situation. I don’t really have any intent to pick on Mr. Record. He’s in for a long tough road without me piling on. I just felt compelled to comment because the plight of young white male blogger lawyers resonates with me for some reason.

Update Apparently Mr. Record later changed his story about the hit and run in October. I ran across this new information at Advance Indiana, linking to an Indy Star article.

Indianapolis police found Record’s Chevy Blazer overturned and abandoned about 3:30 a.m. Oct. 7 on College Avenue near 22nd Street. The Blazer had hit a parked vehicle.

Hours later, responding officer Andrew Hannaford said Monday, Record called him and said he had taken a cab home after his sport utility vehicle had been stolen when he left his keys at a Broad Ripple bar.

Record’s story later changed. He attempted to report the vehicle stolen but instead admitted to Detective John Guilfoy that he had been driving the SUV and left the scene of the crash, said Ilnicki, a supervisor in the department’s hit-and-run division.

He was never charged with the hit & run.

And, idle thought, completely irrelevant to the story — Mr. Record was driving a Chevy Blazer in October followed by a 2000 BMW in this week’s wreck. He was briefly a Marion County deputy prosecutor, then an attorney for the Indiana Dept. of Health. I was a government attorney for a few years. The pay isn’t that great. So, I’m thinking either gifts or outside sources of income for the vehicles. Like I said, not relevant — I’m a collection attorney, so I’m always sensitive to whether income and lifestyle match up.

This was posted in the comments, but Gary Welsh at Advance Indiana flagged an item from WTHR suggesting that Record, or at least his vehicle, was suspected in another hit and run in December.

Joh Padgett at Monticello has some interesting thoughts about the fact that Record was leaving Brad’s Brass Flamingo. He says that:

The Brass Flamingo is a well known nightspot amongst Republican politicians and local law enforcement officials who socialize together regularly at the club formerly owned by reclusive millionaire Brad Hirst, who may still have tenuous connections to the club.

I’m not much of a restaurant reviewer, primarily because I’m not all that picky about what I eat. But, I’m always on the look out for good Mexican food — not so much because I’m a huge fan, but because my wife is. If we don’t find good Mexican food, then I’m inevitably going to get burnt out on bad Mexican food. So, last night we stumbled across a pretty decent joint in Lafayette called La Fiesta Burrito. The store we visited is on the north side 350 South near its intersection with 18th Street. It has the best salsa I’ve yet had in town which isn’t necessarily a high bar to surpass, and the steak tacos were pretty good as were the refried beans. The ambiance is nothing to write home about, which is just fine with me.

Oddly, the best indicator of whether I am going to enjoy Mexican food seems to be whether the establishment has Spanish language television playing and whether they have Jarritos to drink. “IF YES, THEN GOOD” (if I might revert to basic programming language here.)

I have little kids. I love video games. So, I read with interest a post over at Geekdad on the subject of how to decide which games are appropriate for your kids. My kids are still just 1 and 3, so video games haven’t really entered the scene yet, but it’s just a matter of time.

One approach, the Lego Rule:

Chris Anderson suggests an even more intriguing strategy: the “Lego Rule.”

The Lego Company, it seems, has a policy of not producing toys that replicate 20th century weapons. “You can have swords, and you can have laser guns in space, but no actual 20th century guns,” Anderson says. So his four children can play games like Halo, since it contains only futuristic, fantasy war, where you’re killing only green- or blue-blooded aliens. The same goes for Roman swordplay titles. “But it clearly walls off Grand Theft Auto.”

(I e-mailed Lego’s spokesman Michael McNally, and he confirmed the company’s Solomonic logic. Lego, he wrote, agrees that good-versus-evil combat “is at the root of children’s play scenarios, and we believe is an important part of a child’s exploration of the world.” But they don’t want it infecting the children’s perception of the real world around them, so the solution is to place it decisively in the realm of fantasy.)

Ed Brayton catches a whopper from Sen. Inhofe (R-OK):

Inhofe, speaking to the press before Cheney’s arrival, lambasted Democrats for Thursday’s Senate vote to begin withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1 and the press for “mischaracterizing” the reasons for U.S. involvement.

“The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up,” Inhofe said.

I must be part of a mass hallucination.

George Walker Bush, apparently a mild-mannered frat boy from the elite reaches of New England society is really COMMANDER GUY: THE DECIDER, fighting a never-ending battle against Truth! (The Department of) Justice! And the American Way!