Essays
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Morris: The Hypocrisy Line
Read more: Morris: The Hypocrisy Lineby Leo Morris I’ve mentioned this in passing in a couple of columns, but I think it bears some elaboration: Hypocrisy is a very boring subject. It’s the cheapest sort of complaint to make against somebody, reflexive and shallow. Very high schoolish. When we first understand the power of logic and the beauty of destroying somebody with a superior argument – along about the 10th grade – we also discover that people often say one thing…
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Menge: Hoosier Votes Canceled
Read more: Menge: Hoosier Votes Canceledby Margaret Menge What does Indiana have to do with the allegations of widespread fraud in the presidential election in several Democrat-controlled cities? Quite a lot, if you think about it. It’s likely that the 1.7 million Hoosiers who voted for Donald Trump for President this year were disenfranchised, their votes canceled out by the more than 1 million fraudulent votes that appear to have been counted this year in swing states. We still don’t…
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The Outstater
Read more: The Outstater“Former Reality TV Show Host’s Son Tests Positive for COVID-19” — Yahoo reporting that Donald Trump, Jr., had tested positive for the virus THE THOUGHT OCCURS that the reason criticism of journalism has so little effect is that it is directed at individuals who aren’t actually journalists. The profession has changed into something else entirely, something beyond recognition or accountability and without value. Indeed, the big-time journalist today serves a purpose only in fiction. No, not as he might imagine…
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Franke: We Can Be Thankful Even Now
Read more: Franke: We Can Be Thankful Even Nowby Mark Franke I listened in the other day while my wife read a Thanksgiving story to our grandchildren. It was the traditional story with Pilgrims and Squanto and a shared dinner. Then, the book was published in 1973 before political correctness was running amok. This book, “The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving” by Ann McGovern, paints an idyllic portrait of the first full year of the English settlement at Plymouth Rock. It is a look-back through rose-colored glasses, at…
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Morris: Giving Thanks for our Choices
Read more: Morris: Giving Thanks for our Choicesby Leo Morris Her name was Judy – no point in making up a protect-her-privacy name for her at this point. She was a year behind me in high school – a junior when I was a senior – so our paths did not cross that often. But a few subjects were taught without regard to class distinction, so we had the same speech class. It’s not enough to say she was pretty. To a…
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Half Past the Month
Read more: Half Past the Month“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” — the character Jackie Brown in the 1971 novel “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” by George Higgins. IF YOU WANT your Indiana city to prosper these next few years, there is something you can do. Write your councilman, your party chairman, the prosecuting attorney or anyone else you deem in charge. Tell them you don’t want to be treated “equally.” Wait, don’t get upset, the word no longer…
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Franke: ‘Splitting’ Off
Read more: Franke: ‘Splitting’ Offby Mark Franke When did we as Americans plunge into the abyss of demonizing everyone with whom we disagree? It wasn’t this way for the first 30 years of my life. Some of the most fulfilling times of my undergraduate days were spent debating philosophy, religion and politics with friends of what was then the left wing. At least that beat spending time at the library. We would fight it out at student government meetings and then…
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Menge: Who Owns Indiana’s Voting Machines?
Read more: Menge: Who Owns Indiana’s Voting Machines?by Margaret Menge The question of who owns voting machines and the software they run on has resurfaced since the Nov. 3 election with the Trump campaign pointing fingers at Smartmatic, which was started by three Venezuelans. One company that has escaped scrutiny thus far is Hart InterCivic, the third-largest maker of voting machines in the United States, which makes the voting machines used in seven Indiana counties: Cass, Gibson, Harrison, Monroe, Ohio, Washington and Wayne,…
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Morris: It’s 2020 — What’s Next?
Read more: Morris: It’s 2020 — What’s Next?by Leo Morris It’s such a perfect little story to illustrate this awful, awful year of the pandemic, cities overtaken by anarchy and an election from hell. A deer jumped through a window into an empty classroom at Blackhawk Middle School in Fort Wayne. After trashing the room for 45 minutes, the deer jumped back through the window and ran away. Spokeswoman Krista Stockman said that while the situation was surprising, “it’s 2020.” It’s 2020.…
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The Outstater
Read more: The OutstaterTHE INDIANA GOP is celebrating that the Party’s Black and Hispanic vote increased slightly Nov. 3. The leadership, however, might have stopped patting itself on the back long enough to join a lawsuit seeking to ensure that those Black and Hispanic votes will matter. Indiana was not among 10 states that filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn a partisan ruling that extended the deadline for mail-in ballots. Neighboring Kentucky gets it. “What happens in other states…