Category: Indiana Writers Group

For the use of the membership only (577 words). THINGS ARE UPSIDE DOWN, or at least very, very strange — mostly in Indianapolis. The new tea shop on Fountain Square allows stray cats to roam freely among the tables. And this weekend the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors will hear from both…

For the use of the membership only (619 words). by Craig Ladwig The Associated Press last week sent out an analysis under the headline “Indiana Minorities Don’t Have Proportional Representation.” The editors there imagine they are doing readers a service by alerting them to the supposed bigotry of the democratic process. The AP suggests that…

WE STILL NEED HELP getting an important event off the ground and on our calendar. We are asking you to sponsor our post-election seminar with a $150 donation. We hope to leave behind the posture of a national presidential election and turn toward the duties and responsibilities of individual citizens in a constitutional republic. Please make…

(For the use of the membership only.) “May you live in interesting times.” — Chinese curse   HAVE YOU NOTICED anything different about your Republican friends? Your co-workers? The market researchers tell us that they are more “engaged” politically. That may be a nice way of saying more opinionated. This is good, or eventually so.…

by TOM HUSTON The candidates each sent out a fund-raising email on Monday and the difference in emphasis was stark: Hillary: “We cannot demonize Muslim people.” Trump: “We are going to make America safe again.” ISIS EMPHASIZES soft targets and encourages “lone wolf” (falsely identified as “self-radicalized”) or small units, easy to organize and hard…

by Andrea Neal During the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan took Indiana by storm. Ninety years later Hoosiers still struggle to grasp why. The secretive brotherhood launched its Indiana recruitment efforts in Evansville in 1920. Within four years, Hoosier Klansmen numbered 250,000 and represented every corner of the state. “Members included ministers, mayors, shopkeepers and…

(For the use of the membership only; not for publication, duplication or quotation.) “We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both…

by Judge Dan Heath In June of 2012, while doing research on another matter on the website for the National Center for State Courts, I happened upon a number of articles dealing with the concept of business courts. I was intrigued by the idea because throughout some 16 years on the bench at that time,…

TO WATCH THE PENCE CAMPAIGN is to watch a lab experiment in biological tropism. The word picture is a group of amoebas on a microscope slide reflexively retreating this way and that as someone (we suspect Matt Tulley, the Star columnist) threatens them with a pencil tip. First there was the about-face on protecting Christian merchants…

by John Gaski, Ph.D. A perennial, or at least quadrennial, staple of Democratic Party argumentation is the claim that economic-growth rates under Democratic presidents outpace those under Republican presidents. Recently, Hillary Clinton resurrected this familiar mantra. But a closer look at the numbers tells a different story. Every president’s economic record benefits (or suffers) from…