Category: Indiana Writers Group

The Jan. 6 Record Set Straight(er) WE OWE to the Claremont Institute some insight into the unholy mess that was Jan. 6, 2021, and the fateful decision of the Vice President to certify the election of Joe Biden as President. It is not what we have been told. The narrative to date is that the Vice President had little…

Indiana’s Equity Commissar Gets Paid IT IS PAINFUL to follow the public discussion but somebody has to do it. I can tell you that it is devoid of what most of us would recognize as common sense, let alone that necessary to continue a democratic republic.  Gov. Eric Holcomb, an always ready example of the haplessly shallow, was defending his decision…

Redistricting: Power Delineated by Leo Morris Here’s the remarkable opening sentence of one of the many stories about the Hoosier GOP’s “disputed” and “contentious” redistricting plan: “Two independent analyses of Indiana’s redistricting maps say the districts drawn by Republicans are heavily skewed in favor of Republicans.” Seriously? The party in charge of redrawing election maps redraws them…

Returning Civility to America’s Discourse by Mark Franke America was built by a group of people who disagreed about many things but still found enough common ground to write our Constitution and forge a stable republic. The battle for ratification had its elevated oratory, to be sure, but the new nation began in an environment…

Is Stupidity a Dominant Gene? by Mark Franke Several weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed column entitled “You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity.” That got my attention, even without my wife’s not-so-subtle hinting I should read it.   The author, Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote a…

Is Debt ‘Ceiling’ the Right Term? by Leo Morris A modest request to news organizations: Please stop referring to the federal “debt ceiling.” It is a grotesquely inappropriate term. It is preposterous to refer to something that is constantly being moved as a “ceiling,” which we all know is fixed in place forever. Remember that…

The Public’s Right to Be Heard by Leo Morris At the conclusion of a recent Allen County Commission meeting, the commission president became annoyed with a woman who refused to shut up when her allotted time expired under the public speaking rules. He warned her that people not following the rules risked having no public…

The Biden Difference CONSERVATIVES CAN STOP scoffing at Joe Biden’s statement that his $3 trillion-plus spending plan won’t cost anything. The rest of the world, and increasingly large numbers of Americans, think the same way. What he means is it won’t cost the government anything. That is because he intends to raise taxes to pay for it, and as his press secretary…

Coveting: America’s Favorite Deadly Sin by Mark Franke I attended a Lutheran elementary school, grades one through eight, back during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. It was a traditional education with a lot of memorization—presidents, state capitals, books of the Bible and so forth. I still can recite those lists but it gets tougher with…

Journalism and the Lost Art of the Quirky OTHER THAN SOLID INFORMATION on which to base viewpoints and life strategies, the thing I miss most in my morning reading is quirkiness. There’s no time for those little stories that remind us how heroic — and how ridiculous —  is the human race. Yes, I have examples.  There…