THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE NAILS IT — You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to have figured out that the last-minute ambush of Judge Brett Kavanaugh was organized by the Washington Post and Sen. Diane Feinstein in coordination with the “victim” and her publicist lawyer. Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii insists that men should just shut up about the credibility of accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, presumably because they are: a) sexist; b) incompetent to fairly weigh evidence; and c) too dumb to understand…

by Leo Morris It has been several weeks now, and I still can’t fathom the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s decision to endorse Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly in the U.S. Senate race. The Chamber has always endorsed the Republican in Senate races, and all the candidates it is endorsing in this year’s U.S. House races are Republicans, so the Donnelly pick goes against everything in the group’s history. In the absence of a reasonable explanation from…

Please note that Monday is national Constitution Day. (For immediate release; click on mug shot for high-resolution image.) by Mark Franke James Madison is generally known as the Father of the Constitution, and rightfully so. His record of the debates at the Constitutional Convention are a historical treasure. His partnership with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in authoring the Federalist Papers may be the most effective one in our history. Where we would we be…

by Mark Franke This column is about immigration. And about the American War for Independence. And about Indiana counties. What do these three topics have to do with each other? Quite a bit, in fact, and it isn’t a stretch to see the linkages. Leo Morris, my colleague at the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, recently wrote on op-ed piece on how the idea of legal immigration is lost in in all the excessive rhetoric in…

by Leo Morris I realized today that I would be sitting down to compose my 51st weekly column for The Indiana Policy Review, just one masterpiece away from that happy anniversary when I will have completed a whole year’s worth of work. So, since I’m sick to death of the bitter political divide that has deteriorated into outright tribalism in this country, I decided to make this piece a happily neutral one. Therefore, following (in…

by Mark Franke I recently completed a three-day tour of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. It was quite educational as well as introducing me to a few new labels to try now that I am back home. Not everything I learned was blissfully enlightening however. At one of the distillery tours, the guide said that the wholesale price for its product was 60 percent federal and state taxes, 30 percent ingredients and processing, and just 10…

IT’S A WAYS OFF but this Veterans Day let’s vow to use the distinction “hero” with more precision. The mass media has gotten into the habit of assigning it to all dead veterans, preferably ones outside the conservative sphere. Reading such a hero’s recent obituary, I took down the family military medals from a box on my book shelf. The more recent veterans who did not see combat received more medals than those who actually…

by Craig Ladwig Knowing for whom to vote is difficult these days. It won’t be any easier if journalists, whatever their political leaning, muddy the ideological labels. Economists talk about “rational” ignorance. Average citizens are “rationally ignorant and apathetic,” writes Dr. Eric Schansberg in the current issue of The Indiana Policy Review. “They know little and take little action — and rationally so, since their individual efforts can rarely move the political needle.” When you…

by Leo Morris In the dog days of summer, when the news dries up even as the humidity soars, it can be tough to find a current crisis over which to obsess. So we must turn to our earnest statisticians, always ready to furnish bored journalists with a fresh batch of state-by-state comparisons around which to build a good scare story. Here we see that Indiana is the 20th worst state when it comes to…

by Leo Morris Indiana Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly is a brave politician who went against his party to support President Donald Trump’s demands for billions of dollars to build a border wall. So says one of his campaign ads. No, no, no, insist attack ads aimed against him. Donnelly supported amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants and has waffled on the wall. Well, goodness. You suppose illegal immigration might be an important issue in Indiana?…