Women Journalists Stressed AN INDIANAPOLIS EDITOR is crusading for more gentlemanly treatment of female journalists. She says they are being merciless trolled by online critics, suspiciously male. After a generation of “I am woman; hear me roar,” we aren’t going to put that on our worry list. An editor for the Capital Chronicle cites a United Nations study finding that 81 percent of black women journalists experienced online harassment as did 64 percent of white women journalists. That…

Hooray for Rokita, Braun TWO MORE OF THE ISSUES in our latest “Indiana Mandate” were taken up this week: The U.S. House wisely chose a single time standard and, more importantly, Indiana rejected socially ruinous affirmative action. Todd Rokita, Indiana Attorney General, issued a formal opinion stating that race and sex-based components of state contracting programs are unconstitutional. Relying on this opinion, Gov. Mike Braun announced the end of the Diversity Business Enterprises Program, replacing it with a…

Indiana’s Muslim Test THE NEED to confront the Muslim scourge in our cities is dividing the Republican Party — or so you would expect. In Indiana, however, only Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is speaking out while other GOP leaders sit silent for fear that Julia Carson’s grandson, Andre, will call them bigots. Indeed, the governor upbraided Beckwith for not choosing his words more carefully, for not thinking before he speaks. OK, if the governor wants a careful word choice, how about “seditious”? That’s when you…

by Mark Franke It’s officially high summer according to the thermometer and, most importantly, according to the school vacation calendar. In the past that meant lots of community parades on Saturdays, most of which were aligned with that town’s summer festival week. Most of Fort Wayne’s  surrounding towns had them. I know, because my Navy veteran father would march with his comrades in each one of them.  The small town parades were special. Civic organizations,…

by John F. Gaski, Ph.D. A prominent political dilemma for Republicans is whether to abolish the Senate filibuster rule. Do so, and legislation will no longer require 60 votes for passage, only a simple majority. Doing so would also abandon a deliberative tradition in force since the mid-1800s. However, there presently is an overhang of another vital concern, an implication so consequential that the “existential” descriptor really does apply.            The Republican reluctance to kill the filibuster rests on the…

Civilizing our ‘Youths’ THE REALITY IS that a couple of generations of urban juveniles have not been socialized — have not been civilized, if you will. The solutions are difficult but generally understood. The problem is in what sequence they should be applied. Both Indianapolis and Fort Wayne experienced multiple shootings over the July 4 weekend involving numbers of “youths,” the media code for fatherless black teenagers running amok at 1 o’clock in the morning. Officials were quick…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. We once built civilizations on the raw edge of uncomfortable speech. Now we demand trigger warnings for the Iliad and therapy puppies for election results. This isn’t progress. It’s civilizational decay. Let’s look back without the rose-tinted glasses of modern sensitivity  and we’ll see the ancient Greeks didn’t invent “safe spaces” — they invented parrhesia, the dangerous right to speak truth bluntly in public assemblies, theaters and philosophy. Socrates died for it. Athenian democracy thrived on…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. We once built civilizations on the raw edge of uncomfortable speech. Now we demand trigger warnings for the Iliad and therapy puppies for election results. This isn’t progress. It’s civilizational decay. Let’s look back without the rose-tinted glasses of modern sensitivity  and we’ll see the ancient Greeks didn’t invent “safe spaces” — they invented parrhesia, the dangerous right to speak truth bluntly in public assemblies, theaters and philosophy. Socrates died for it. Athenian democracy thrived on…

by Mark Franke With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and all, the number of patriotic events and ceremonies seems endless. I’m not complaining about that; I think it is a good thing that we are looking back to this important founding document and its timeless truths. We need its encouragement now more than ever. So it was no surprise when my wife, who is an active member of the Fort Wayne chapter of…

Not a Traitor, Exactly DEMOCRATIC ‘REPRESENTATION’ has lost any meaning. This year, 90 percent of representatives to the U.S. House will be determined before a general election, that is, gerrymandering will allow our “representatives” to choose who they “represent.” Mulling this upside-down state of affairs, the question occurs: Can we even define who we are not? Can anybody be called a  “traitor” anymore? I have a test case. The positions and statements of 7th District U.S.…