I looked up that concealed carry thing. I found an article about the Appeals Court ruling, but not the Supreme Court ruling. I did find one Supreme Court ruling that said the State of Maryland doesn't have to allow concealed carry, but they have to allow open carry. At that point I decided that, if I keep chasing this one around, I won't have time to write a blog tonight. I find it reasonable to assume that the Supreme Court upheld the Appeals Court ruling in the Illinois case, so let's just go with that.
We seem to be spinning our wheels on that abortion thing, so let's give that one a rest too.
I want to correct an error in what I said yesterday. The combined population of Cheboygan and Emmet counties is closer to 60,000 than it is to 40,000. I added Cheboygan (26,000) and Emmet (33,000) and came up with 39,000, which I rounded off to 40,000. I told you that math was my weak subject! Anyway, that means we have about 2400 Indians instead of 1600, which doesn't change the fact that we don't have nearly as many Indians as I thought we had. We could debate the meaning of "all kinds of people", but that won't get us anywhere either.
The point I was originally trying to make is that none of the minority groups in my neighborhood has caused any trouble lately, and nobody has caused any trouble for them either. I seem to remember we were originally talking about gays. I'm sure we have some gays here, but they don't go around making a public spectacle of themselves like they do in some places, so nobody bothers them either. I don't know what will happen if that gay marriage thing passes. I suspect that some of our gays will get married, but they might have a hard time finding anyone to perform the ceremony. Then again, all they need is one guy who is willing to do it, and lots of people are authorized to perform marriages. There's the judges, who might be required by law to marry gays, although I haven't heard that was part of the proposal, just that county clerks couldn't deny them a license. My daughter and her ex were married by an old friend who had recently gotten one of those mail order divinity degrees. He's a nice guy, but kind of a loose cannon so, if he can do it, I suppose anybody can do it.
Anyway, back to the Indians. There are at least two tribal organizations that I know of in the area. One is near St. Ignace, which is actually in Mackinaw County, just across the Bridge. They operate a casino on reservation land, but you don't have to live on the reservation to be a member of the tribe. I think most of our Cheboygan Indians are enrolled in that one. I believe that the casino is owned collectively by the tribe. I'm not sure what they do with the profits, but I think they disperse them around the tribe in some manner. If they don't pass them out as dividends, then they must use them for public works projects on the reservation. I know those guys have their own police force because, whenever a DNR officer encounters a tribal member, he can't give them a ticket. The tribes have their own hunting and fishing regulations and, if the officer suspects the subject has broken one of those, he calls in the tribal police. Apparently the jurisdiction of the tribal police is not limited to the reservation, just to tribal members, wherever they may be.
The other tribal organization that I know of is The Little Traverse Band, in the Petoskey area. I don't know if they have any reservation land, but they did buy a former bowling alley and turn it into a casino. What they do is give the land to the federal government "in trust", and it becomes kind of like a reservation, no matter how small it is. These guys were opposed in their effort to open the casino by the guys from St. Ignace, their principal objection being that it would compete with their own casino. I don't know who made the final decision, but the Little Traverse guys prevailed and the casino finally was opened. Now they want to build another one near Mackinaw City, which is on our side of the Bridge, about halfway between the two existing casinos. This time they are being opposed by some White guys as well as the other Indians, and they have been arguing about it for years.
We used to have a Taco Bell, but it closed down some years ago. We have a MacDonald's, A Burger King, a Big Boy, and two Subways, but no Red Lobster. I really wish we had a Red Lobster, I think the nearest one is in Traverse City, over a hundred miles away.
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