WE FEEL LUCKY to get through a Super Bowl these days without seeing a commercial that includes a corporate message shaming us to mind our political correctness. The copywriters for Nike and Budweiser can say what they may but Joseph Epstein, past editor of the American Scholar, has written brilliantly about “the good intentions paving company,” a critique of the ever-expanding rules of political correctness. This particular form of idiocy has rolled over Indiana to the point that serious discussion is impossible. Before getting into…

“Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it.” — Mark Twain by Jason Arp Has the value of American citizenship degraded in recent years?  It is true that official costs do not reflect any reduction in the official value of U.S. citizenship. A recent report in USA Today shows that the price the U.S. charges for application for citizenship jumped in October from $640 to $1,170. And not everyone can apply directly and…

by Mark Franke This is an excellent opportunity for the Republicans in Congress to assume the role of the loyal opposition, as that term is understood in Britain and elsewhere in the Anglosphere. The term was first invoked by a minority Member of Parliament in 1826 to establish that opposition to government legislation did not imply disloyalty to the Crown. Instead, it reaffirmed the minority’s allegiance to the monarch and the nation even as it…

WHAT IF A CABINET-LEVEL APPOINTEE in the Indiana governor’s office made “radical, homophobic and racially divisive” comments when she was in her late 20s?  In today’s media environment, there would be serious inquiries, right? Well, not apparently if that person fills a historic post as the state’s first “chief equity, inclusion and opportunity officer.” All of that was in a report last week from REAL News Michiana, a blog out of South Bend. The reporter, Clifton French, tells us that…

by Leo Morris Man’s best friends are becoming more and more helpful. They have been trained to sniff out bombs and drugs and lost hikers and long-buried bodies. Now, there are dogs that can smell COVID-19. When they detect the virus, they simply sit down by the carrier, and that person can then be whisked off to quarantine hell. Wouldn’t it be nice, I have wondered, if a dog could be trained to smell out…

As a service to the membership, we will provide regular updates on the concern expressed yesterday by MSNBC host Joy Reid that if aliens ever attacked earth it might be because humans had failed to fight climate change. We realize there is a lot to unpack there but that’s it, that’s the news alert.

Let’s see if you can remember when Gov. Eric Holcomb said this: “With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense, As governor, I will defend your right to be free of socialism and tyranny. Your Second Amendment right to keep your family safe and your freedom of speech and religious liberty. Our state needs a leader with the courage to do what’s right, not what’s politically…

by Leo Morris I noticed in a couple of recent news reports that Indiana has been made safe again for the bald eagle, which is a simple piece of good news worth celebrating in this era riven by an angry partisan divide and political revenge disguised as a plea for unity. The eagle, a bird that nests exclusively in North America, was once plentiful but nearly extinct nationwide by the mid-20th century and nowhere to be…

HERE IS A PROPOSAL to help bring us back together after this week’s bizarre inauguration. It involves restraint and precision in the use of our words, something that George Orwell encouraged in his “Politics and the English Language.” “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,”…

by Leo Morris There will come a day of reckoning. No matter how often that is said about the reckless abandon with which Washington keeps adding to the national debt, officials keep printing and borrowing so they can keep spending money they do not have. And they will keep doing it until Stein’s Law kicks in: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” And it’s likely to be an abrupt stop, a horrendous…