Indiana’s Equity Commissar Gets Paid IT IS PAINFUL to follow the public discussion but somebody has to do it. I can tell you that it is devoid of what most of us would recognize as common sense, let alone that necessary to continue a democratic republic.  Gov. Eric Holcomb, an always ready example of the haplessly shallow, was defending his decision this week on how to fund the office of the state’s office of equity, inclusion and opportunity, the creation of…

Redistricting: Power Delineated by Leo Morris Here’s the remarkable opening sentence of one of the many stories about the Hoosier GOP’s “disputed” and “contentious” redistricting plan: “Two independent analyses of Indiana’s redistricting maps say the districts drawn by Republicans are heavily skewed in favor of Republicans.” Seriously? The party in charge of redrawing election maps redraws them so that it stays in control? How in the world did that happen? A little clarification here for those who…

Returning Civility to America’s Discourse by Mark Franke America was built by a group of people who disagreed about many things but still found enough common ground to write our Constitution and forge a stable republic. The battle for ratification had its elevated oratory, to be sure, but the new nation began in an environment marked by enthusiastic optimism for what the future held. The feel-good times lasted only a few years, as Thomas Jefferson…

Is Stupidity a Dominant Gene? by Mark Franke Several weeks ago the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed column entitled “You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity.” That got my attention, even without my wife’s not-so-subtle hinting I should read it.   The author, Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote a humorous yet thought-provoking analysis of America’s seeming fascination with being and doing stupid. Forrest Gump was right, according to Morrow. …

Is Debt ‘Ceiling’ the Right Term? by Leo Morris A modest request to news organizations: Please stop referring to the federal “debt ceiling.” It is a grotesquely inappropriate term. It is preposterous to refer to something that is constantly being moved as a “ceiling,” which we all know is fixed in place forever. Remember that other ceiling metaphor – the “glass” one that women in business are trapped by? They can see through it, forever…

The Public’s Right to Be Heard by Leo Morris At the conclusion of a recent Allen County Commission meeting, the commission president became annoyed with a woman who refused to shut up when her allotted time expired under the public speaking rules. He warned her that people not following the rules risked having no public comment at all. “Local government boards,” the newspaper article chronicling the meeting gently reminded its readers, “are not legally obligated…

The Biden Difference CONSERVATIVES CAN STOP scoffing at Joe Biden’s statement that his $3 trillion-plus spending plan won’t cost anything. The rest of the world, and increasingly large numbers of Americans, think the same way. What he means is it won’t cost the government anything. That is because he intends to raise taxes to pay for it, and as his press secretary explained earlier this week it would be “unfair and absurd” for businesses to pass that cost down to customers. These people…

Coveting: America’s Favorite Deadly Sin by Mark Franke I attended a Lutheran elementary school, grades one through eight, back during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. It was a traditional education with a lot of memorization—presidents, state capitals, books of the Bible and so forth. I still can recite those lists but it gets tougher with each passing year. The key to our memory work, as we called it back then, was the Small Catechism written…

Journalism and the Lost Art of the Quirky OTHER THAN SOLID INFORMATION on which to base viewpoints and life strategies, the thing I miss most in my morning reading is quirkiness. There’s no time for those little stories that remind us how heroic — and how ridiculous —  is the human race. Yes, I have examples.  There was the item in the microfilm archive of a man passing through town in the 1850s on his way to…

by Leo Morris I did some really stupid things when I was young and dumb. Who didn’t? Some of them were embarrassing, and some of them made me feel downright ashamed. But I recognized my failings and tried to learn from my mistakes, which is all any of us can do. I think I became a better person in the process. But how would it have gone, I wonder today, if, at the depth of…