Author: Craig Ladwig

Thanksgiving in Kenya GRANTED, I MAY NOT KNOW what is expected of a modern governor these days. Somehow, though, I didn’t think it would involve traveling to Kenya for Thanksgiving. What’s he doing in Kenya? Well, the governor, his wife and entourage are visiting Indiana National Guard troops there. Whoa, now I’m really confused. What is…

by Mark Franke Joe Manchin is hard to figure out. He likes to see himself as a moderate who thinks independently of party and ideology. Many desperately want to believe that. His recent decision not to seek reelection as a senator from West Virginia has been spun to meet the interests, might I say delusions,…

Exposing the Eco-Devo Game AT LAST, an actually issue of critical economic importance in the governor’s race. Mike Braun has called attention to his GOP primary opponent’s role in creating a statewide eco-devo network that runs on favors and political connections. “Eric Doden has been using donations from people who received taxpayer-funded benefits while he…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. About a month ago, the Indianapolis Star reported that “One of Indianapolis’s most popular charter schools is expanding to create an all-girls STEM-focused K-8 school.” Inside Indiana Business said “the school, called Girls IN STEM Academy . . .  will open in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, Every Girl Can…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. James C. Capretta, fellow at the American Enterprise Institutes, asks, “How can the largest items in the federal budget, Social Security and Medicare, be preserved without more borrowing? (Tightening the Terms of the Social Contract, Law and Liberty, Nov. 7, 2023)” The original concept of tying retiree benefit payouts to the…

by Mark Franke ”Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These words of Thomas Jefferson can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, immediately after the more recognizable “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson writes that it is to secure these…

A Man Without a City I HAVE THE COMPLETE off-year election results in front of me. My analysis? God seems to use elections to warn us that democracy is not going to be our salvation. Around here, we unthinkably reelect everybody. Our top council vote-getter is a race merchant with a socialist bent. Our pay-to-play mayor won his fifth term…

Pausing for a Silent Moment of Malfeasance FOR A JOURNALIST, malfeasance is something for which you expect to have to dig. You are surprised to find it on top of the ground or, in this particular case, sitting on a council table wrapped up as a $50-million present to special interests. The discussion last week in my…

Deport Them; They’ll Like It THE ADMINISTRATION of Indiana University is deep into what my colleague Mark Franke has identified as cognitive-dissonance reduction, a way of cramming inconvenient facts into an impossible ideology. Pamela Whitten, with a doctorate in communication studies, is the university’s first female president if that is important to you. She seems confused or perhaps just stymied as…

by Mark Franke I learned something new the other day in a Wall Street Journal column: the term “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” a form of mental gymnastics used to fit inconvenient facts to the ideology. I know what cognitive dissonance is, having run into the term in my undergraduate business school classes. Think of it as a…