Another season of outdoor dining on Kirkwood begins April 29th
The City of Bloomington announced the 2024 Outdoor Dining season for the downtown area. This year’s program will expand outdoor dining in “parklets”—parking spaces closed off by orange barriers directly outside the participating businesses. Kirkwood Avenue will remain open to accommodate emergency vehicles and traffic rerouted due to the Clear Creek Reconstruction Project.
The City Council voted unanimously in favor of this year’s program on April 3rd. The 2024 season will run from April 29th through November 4th.
In addition to expanded outdoor seating, the program brings economic enhancement, vibrancy, and sustainability to Bloomington’s pedestrian-friendly downtown. This program originated in 2020 as a COVID measure that relieved restaurant from internal capacity constraints; it continued in 2023 and will continue again this year.
Businesses can apply and learn about associated fees at: https://bton.in/ODD24
Attorney General Todd Rokita co-leading fight against DOJ attempts to hijack election process from states
Attorney General Todd Rokita is co-leading 16 states in fighting federal interference with election laws after US Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to deploy armies of lawyers into the states to combat “legislative measures that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote.”
“The Biden administration is weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice against the states,” Attorney General Rokita said. “These actions pose a direct threat to democracy, election integrity and the rule of law. We will stand up and defend our rightful authority within the framework of American federalism.”
Speaking in March, Garland said he had “double[d] the number of lawyers in the civil rights division” and “launched the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force” to deal with states allegedly maintaining “discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot.”
Attorney General Rokita and West Virgina Attorney General Patrick Morrisey co-led a 16-state letter to Garland warning that the states would “vigorously defend our election laws” and “not allow intimidation and fearmongering to supersede the will of the people.”
The very premise of Garland’s threats — the idea that states are depriving or hindering U.S. citizens from freely and easily casting votes — is false and ludicrous, the letter notes.
One of the measures at which Garland and others have taken aim is voter ID laws — which they claim disenfranchise eligible voters.
“On the contrary,” the letter states, “voter ID laws prevent voter fraud by stopping those who attempt to impersonate others at the polls. In 2005, Indiana led the charge to preserve election integrity by implementing the first-in-the-nation voter ID law, which requires in-person voters to present a valid government-issued photo ID to vote — (and) the United States Supreme Court held that voter ID laws were constitutional and did not impose a burden on the electorate.”
Amid reports of fraud in various parts of the nation, many Americans distrust the results of the 2020 general election. Some polls indicate more than 30 percent of the electorate believe the election was stolen.
“With voter confidence at an all-time low,” Attorney General Rokita said, “the U.S. Department of Justice should champion voter security measures instead of attacking states that implement them. And the DOJ should respect, as well, the constitutional provisions giving states the role of regulating elections.”
Rival Showdown Wrestling Saturday night at Bloomington’s Armory
This Week in Hoosier History
1831 – Citizens of Indianapolis celebrated the arrival of the first steamboat to come from Cincinnati via the Ohio, Wabash, and White Rivers. It was hoped that the Robert Hanna would establish the new city as a river port. However, the boat ran aground on its return trip and White River proved to be unfit for commercial navigation.
For more local news . . . Check out our archived episodes of What’s Happenin’ and Talkin’ Sports with Nick Jenkinson