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 it is in itself bad that Latinos make up almost 7 percent of the state’s population but less than 1…

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 your tax-exempt donation by clicking HERE. The seminar is part of our attempt as a foundation to become better prepared for a…

(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. The problem is that most of the newly engaged are grabbing hold of issues that have been banging around for…

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 to detect operations. This is a uniquely difficult profile for the security services to contend with. Electronic surveillance of international…

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 factory workers, mostly ordinary people from the wide middle of society,” says historian James H. Madison in Hoosiers – A…

(For the use of the membership only; not for publication, duplication or quotation.)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 evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.” — the late M. Stanton Evans, the Indianapolis Star ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, it is…

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, I had conducted some fairly complex business and complex litigation cases, especially in the area of business fraud and securities…

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 against a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender power play. Now comes an about-face on a promise to eschew Washington-defined pre-school education. That…

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 the economic conditions he inherits from his predecessor. Moreover, an outgoing administration’s final fiscal year doesn’t end until Oct. 1…

by Andrea Neal “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose, especially their lives.” With those words — and a few more like them — Hoosier socialist Eugene Debs gave federal agents cause to arrest him for violating the Espionage Act in…