Tagged: Indiana

Former Indiana governor, now Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, has joined a panel that will make recommendations about the future of the nation's space program. 

The Committee on Human Spaceflight is part of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. Its purpose is to review the space program's long-term goals and direction and suggest ways to sustain it. 

Daniels says Purdue has a long history with the space program and that he's honored to serve on the panel. Purdue's alumni include astronauts Virgil `Gus' Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan. Armstrong was the first man on the moon, and Cernan was the last. 

Daniels will serve as co-chairman of the committee through June 30, 2014.

Indiana State Police are seeing a surge in gun permit requests amid the national gun-control debate sparked by December's deadly Connecticut school shooting.

The Indianapolis Star reports state police are now seeing up to 4,000 permit requests each week. That's three times the number the agency was handling at the same time last year.

Indiana residents make online gun permit applications to the State Police, but those applications are funneled to local police agencies for inspection, fingerprinting and background checks.

Each of those applications must be reviewed and approved or rejected by the local police chief, town marshal or county sheriff.

An Indiana law that bans registered sex offenders from using Facebook and other social networking sites that can be accessed by children is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Chicago overturned a federal judge’s decision upholding the law, saying the state was justified in trying to protect children but that the “blanket ban” went too far by restricting free speech.

The 2008 law “broadly prohibits substantial protected speech rather than specifically targeting the evil of improper communications to minors,” the judges wrote.