Category: Indiana Writers Group

“There is nothing that will give power to the (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to require hiring, firing and promotion to meet a racial ‘quota.”’ — Sen. Hubert Humphrey in promising that the 1964 Civil Rights Act would lead only to nondiscrimination and not to social engineering.  INDIANA COMPANIES that want to be listed on at least one of the…

by Mark Franke Dark. Depressing. Frightening. These are just a few of the adjectives people are using to describe 2020 as it passes into a bad memory for all of us. Most, though, will follow with a more positive statement about what 2021 is expected to bring. Perhaps this incipient optimism reflects the rolling out…

by Leo Morris I apologize, but this is the time of year when I must do my annual beating-a-dead-horse ritual of imploring the Indiana General Assembly to go to every-other-year sessions. The so-called “short” session was originally supposed to just involve a brief review of potential problems in the two-year budget. But it has become…

by Mark Franke I am not going to resolve in 2021 to exercise more or lose weight. Sure, I need to do both those things and will work on them, but I won’t take the cheap way out and declare them to be my New Year resolutions. They are too easy to make and even easier…

ALTHOUGH THE DEBATE is over as to whether equality should be “of opportunity” or “of results” (we lost), there are doubts that still nag. The bullet points below reflect our random thoughts denying the winning side’s promise of a better society: • There is a rise of diversity “officers” at every level from elementary school to university. We are told…

by Leo Morris Time magazine, demonstrating the legacy media’s continued decline into irrelevance, has deemed 2020 “the worst year ever.” No, not hardly, and that claim is easily dismissed with an expansion of Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” If you are reading this, you are not dead yet. Ergo, not the worst year ever. There…

by Mark Franke A good friend of mine, now sainted, was a professor of theology at our local Lutheran seminary. He had a brilliant mind that was manifested in a pastoral heart. He was known for his pithy statements, expressing profound points in a handful of words. Recently I was reminded of one such. It…

by Leo Morris On a wall of the weight room in my gym at St. Joseph Medical Center downtown is a quote attributed to Mother Teresa that’s been sneaking up on me for the last few months. Many of you probably already know it: People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. /…

THERE IS A SCARY SOUND to the reported debate within the Center for Disease Control as to whether blacks as a group should receive the COVID vaccine ahead of the elderly. It would be a matter of social justice, the argument goes. Congressmen and government employees, as always, have their own rationale for special treatment. But it…

WITH INAUGURATION ceremonies in the works, many are reaching for historical analogies for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. They range wildly from the reign of Commodus to the Council of Trent to the Civil War to the 1960 defeat of Richard Nixon. There is one, however, that best reflects the challenges facing our nation. It is the Battle of Hastings, in which William,…