New Boss Just Like the Old Boss THE INDIANA SENATE leadership announced new committee chairmen recently for the 2023 session. We thought it would be interesting to compare the outgoing chairmen with the incoming chairmen. A handy way to do that is to compare ratings of the individual legislators on IndianaScorecard.org, an independent web site that measures how our representatives vote on central issues such as private property and personal liberty. Has the leadership sensed new populist…

Civil Rights Rethought For the use of the membership only. HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT, we’re going to talk about race. What would you think if your city council started all over on civil rights, dismantled its “equity” mechanisms and agencies, erased all references from the municipal code and operations? Before you answer, know that we have reached a point where we don’t have a classless society but rather two classes at each other’s throats. The…

by Leo Morris There was a story out of Inner Mongolia in North China last month about a flock of sheep in a farmer’s pen walking around and around in circles for 12 days. Sheep are famous for copying the behavior of other members of the flock, which causes them to, among other things, follow the animal in front of them to avoid predators and make the individual less vulnerable. Still, this walking-in-a-circle phenomenon was…

by Mark Franke The student loan crisis is back in the news and will get much more attention now that the election is past. The very real questions about the unsupportable rise in the cost of college, the amount of borrowing which occurs and the abysmally low graduation rates are still unanswered. Maybe they will get answered someday, right after Social Security is made solvent and Middle East peace occurs. Right. Meanwhile there is still…

by Mark Franke Has there ever been a time and place whose residents were blessed as generously as we Americans are in this year of our Lord 2022? I am a student of history and I sure can’t think of one. So why do we engage in so much interminable complaining? Could it be that our abundance has inured us to these very blessings? We are too often motivated by the cardinal sin of avarice,…

by Leo Morris Came across this amusing story the other day: “According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter “is home to around $700 quintillion” worth of precious metals, “— that’s $100 billion for every one of the seven billion people on Earth.” Of course, the story is a bit outdated; the Earth now has eight billion souls, so we’re only talking $87.5 billion, not a nice round…

Ouch, the Bigot Card Is Played “Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.” — C.K. Chesterton IN A 50-YEAR JOURNALISM CAREER it was bound to happen, especially given the times. They have played the  “bigot” card on me with the label “white supremacist dinosaur” thrown in for good measure. The surprise was that this ad hominem attack came from KPC Media,…

Trash In, Trash Out I LOVE THE IDEA of recycling. It makes such illuminating public policy. Recycling is good. I know that because people, some of them in high office, have been telling me that for the last 20 years. Indeed, they made it mandatory. What they did not tell me was that it made no sense. “Americans who’ve spent the last few decades recycling might think their hands are clean. Alas, they are not,” writes John Miltmore…

by Leo Morris There is an old joke whose origins are unknown but which you have probably heard in more than one movie or TV show. P.J. O’Rourke borrowed it for the title of one of his cynical books about politics: Don’t vote – it just encourages them. But that really is our function as members of the electorate in a representative democracy, isn’t it? We don’t have a pure democracy in which the majority…

Eli Wax of South Bend Eli Wax, who represents the 5th District for the South Bend City Council, was elected in a Republican caucus vote.  Q. — Why do you think the caucus elected you? A. — The office I hold was previously held by Jake Teshka and became vacant when he won election for Indiana State Representative in November 2020. I ran against a few other conservative republicans including Clifton French, who runs a…