“Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it.” — Garrison Keillor by Craig Ladwig (Fort Wayne) — Lutherans are known as apolitical even here where Germanfest is just another summer weekend. So the news was greeted with surprise — or an emotion as close to that as Lutherans allow — when one group’s president issued a politically edged press statement. Until that moment, you see, some in this fiercely independent…

For the use of the membership only. by Tom Huston In a recent column, David Brooks of the New York Times  called for the name of Robert E. Lee to be stripped from schools, highways, bridges and other monuments and memorials except for those, such as Washington and Lee University, which are clearly related to his post-war activity. The idea is that by erasing historic memory and reimagining the past, you affirm your commitment to…

by Andrea Neal Though his name is not nearly as familiar as John Deere’s, James Oliver of South Bend revolutionized agriculture with his invention of a new type of plow. An 1878 advertisement for the Oliver Chilled Plow boasted: “Buy no other. Will last for years, and no blacksmith’s bill to pay. It is the only guaranteed chilled plow made.” That wasn’t hyperbole. At its height, Oliver’s company produced 300 plows a day, exporting them…

by Bruce Ippel, M.D. Melting ice caps: Many drown. Massive droughts: Many more starve. Climate change: Ruins everything for those who are left. These types of thoughts are behind the worldwide drumbeat of our news media. Yikes! If it’s anything like they predicted for Y2K, we might as well all spend an hour in a closed garage with the car running. Or not. As a physician, I’ve learned to be a cynical optimist. That means…

For the use of the membership only (675 words) THE RECORD-BREAKING two-and-a-half-hour Cadillac Barbie IN Pride Parade last week was a great success. Aside from the visual interest, it signaled that a new culture had arrived, the old one having been redefined to a point of irrelevance. Progress, you say, down with bigotry! OK, but let’s reflect in passing. The event was given above-the-fold coverage by the “Equality Matters” reporter of the Indianapolis Star, which…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. We saw the face of evil in Charleston, South Carolina. A 21- year-old man, Dylann Roof, took the lives of nine innocent people who had welcomed him into their house of worship. If any crime calls for the death sentence, this is it. We saw the same face two years ago in Boston when a 26-year-old man and his 19-year-old brother planted a bomb at a marathon race killing three and…

For the use of the membership only. THE NUMBER ONE ITEM on the agenda of the Indiana Democratic Party these days is gay rights. It is all that party leaders talk about, and it is all that the party’s principal organ – the Indianapolis Star – writes about. There are a number of reasons why the gay agenda has top priority among Hoosier Democrats: 1) The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community is a key…

“’Quiet, man!’ said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. ‘Give me a fountain pen!’ he snapped. — “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber in the March 18, 1939, New Yorker   WALTER MITTY IS ALIVE AND WELL editing the Indianapolis Star. This week — in his head — he launched a daring multi-faceted…

For the use of the membership only. by Tom Huston Lots of people seem to think it is inappropriate for unauthorized people to seek the presidency. While they don’t seem to agree on who does the authorizing, Democrats are convinced that too many aspirants are trying to climb aboard what they love to call the Republican clown car, and nervous Republicans are worried that too many choices are a bad thing except when shopping at…

“In a recent Quinnipiac poll of New York City voters, 61 percent of black respondents said they wanted the police to actively enforce quality-of-life laws in their neighborhood, compared with 59 percent of white voters.” —Heather Mac Donald in the June 14 Wall Street Journal For immediate release (645 words). by Joe Squadrito Before we let the media redefine what it means to be a police officer, it would be wise to explore the word’s origin.…