Category: Indiana Writers Group

  • Outstater: ‘Your Life Matters’

    BLACK FAMILIES in Indianapolis might want to keep their sons close in coming months. The gentry there is coming to help them. One hundred executives of groups with missions as impossibly diverse as the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana are organizing to save young black men. They march under…

  • Indiana at 200 (49): Eli Lilly Built State’s Iconic Business

    by Andrea Neal From the time he was a youngster, Eli Lilly was fascinated by pharmaceuticals. At 16, he served as an apprentice at the Good Samaritan Drugstore in Lafayette. During the day, he stocked shelves, washed bottles and ran errands. At night, he pored over the United States Pharmacopoeia to learn everything he could…

  • Half Past the Month: We’re All Rechtsstaat Now

    “In the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to…

  • Huston: More Junk Journalism from the Star

    For the use of the membership only (465 words). THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR pulled out all stops in its Sunday, April 12, edition. While it gave priority coverage to the many ways in which Republicans hate gays and dream up ways to discriminate against them, it didn’t neglect the race card. In an article headlined “Uneven…

  • Bohanon: Adam Smith on RFRAs

    by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Travel back to 1956 to a professional meeting of psychiatrists. Most in the group are smoking cigarettes, thinking nothing of it. Most also agree that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Fast forward to 2015 to a similar group. No one dares light up a cigarette and the overwhelming majority thinks being…

  • Schansberg: Tax Day 2015

    by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. We pay taxes every day. But for many people, April 15th represents “Tax Day” — the day when our income-tax forms are due. Many people file their 1040’s sooner, particularly when they’re receiving refunds. They have allowed the government to keep too much of their money all year. So why should…

  • The Outstater: Are Big Shot Corporations Necessary?

    For the use of the membership only (622 words) “If the legislators were trying to reinforce Indiana’s image as a backwater, it couldn’t have done better than this (the Religious Liberty law). I Googled ‘Indiana’ Tuesday morning, and this issue was at the top of the page. How embarrassing.” — Matthew Tully in the April…

  • King: ‘Where’s the Outrage?’

    by Stephen M. King, Ph.D. Bill Clinton’s tawdry affair with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 spawned dozens of books, articles and essays. None was more stinging than William Bennett’s “The Death of Outrage.” Therein, Bennett, former secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, excoriated Bill Clinton and largely the political Left for their utter disregard of…

  • Indiana at 200 (48): Purdue and its Land Grant

    by Andrea Neal Purdue Boilermakers can thank the Morrill Land Grant Act for their highly regarded college diploma. The law, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, gave federal land to states if they agreed to use the land-sale proceeds to start colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts for the children of the working class.…

  • Op-Ed: The Arrogance of ‘History’

    by Tom Charles Huston The renowned historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar opines in Time magazine that, as a consequence of adopting its Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Indiana has put itself “on the wrong side of history.” Mr. Abdul-Jabbar must have studied off-season at the knee of James H. Madison at Indiana University. When used in the context…