In Indiana

A copious handkerchief blotted the eyes and wiped the cheeks of a portly man in the Senate Chamber of Indiana one day last week, after Lieut. Governor Van Orman had informed the portly one that he had been found innocent of high improprieties. The margin of innocence was two votes. A majority of the Senators voted guilty but two-thirds were needed to convict. The portly one was Circuit Judge Clarence W. Dearth of Muncie, against whom the weekly Post-Democrat of his home town had loudly protested for alleged jury-packing and interference with freedom of the press (TIME, April 4).

Editor George R. Dale of the Post-Democrat fared worse. A fugitive from indictment for criminally libeling Judge Dearth, by saying that His Honor's maladministration of justice was morally responsible for a pair of murders, Editor Dale had been abiding across the state line, in Ohio. But last week his daughter fell ill. He went home, was jailed. A synopsis of future chapters in Indiana's biggest excitement in months, at the bottom of which lies war between the friends and foes of Prohibition, will doubtless include further encounters between an outrageously outspoken journalist and a spokesman of self-righteousness.