by Mark Franke Joe Manchin is hard to figure out. He likes to see himself as a moderate who thinks independently of party and ideology. Many desperately want to believe that. His recent decision not to seek reelection as a senator from West Virginia has been spun to meet the interests, might I say delusions, of the never-Trump and not-Biden tribes. Was it a principled decision driven by the insurmountable divisiveness in Washington, a climate…

Exposing the Eco-Devo Game AT LAST, an actually issue of critical economic importance in the governor’s race. Mike Braun has called attention to his GOP primary opponent’s role in creating a statewide eco-devo network that runs on favors and political connections. “Eric Doden has been using donations from people who received taxpayer-funded benefits while he was running the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Greater Fort Wayne to fund his campaign to hide from his liberal…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. About a month ago, the Indianapolis Star reported that “One of Indianapolis’s most popular charter schools is expanding to create an all-girls STEM-focused K-8 school.” Inside Indiana Business said “the school, called Girls IN STEM Academy . . .  will open in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, Every Girl Can STEM and Purdue Polytechnic High School.” The likely impetus for such a school was educational data regarding undergraduate majors by…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. James C. Capretta, fellow at the American Enterprise Institutes, asks, “How can the largest items in the federal budget, Social Security and Medicare, be preserved without more borrowing? (Tightening the Terms of the Social Contract, Law and Liberty, Nov. 7, 2023)” The original concept of tying retiree benefit payouts to the payroll taxes has been stretched. Due to the growing gap between Social Security and Medicare contributions and payouts, the federal…

by Mark Franke ”Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These words of Thomas Jefferson can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, immediately after the more recognizable “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson writes that it is to secure these rights that governments exist. The argument of the day was that King and Parliament did not have the consent of…

A Man Without a City I HAVE THE COMPLETE off-year election results in front of me. My analysis? God seems to use elections to warn us that democracy is not going to be our salvation. Around here, we unthinkably reelect everybody. Our top council vote-getter is a race merchant with a socialist bent. Our pay-to-play mayor won his fifth term without risking a single original thought. Democracy killed Socrates, you know, the father of Western philosophy — and on a…

Pausing for a Silent Moment of Malfeasance FOR A JOURNALIST, malfeasance is something for which you expect to have to dig. You are surprised to find it on top of the ground or, in this particular case, sitting on a council table wrapped up as a $50-million present to special interests. The discussion last week in my city council turned to routinely — it was hoped — approving its odd relationship ($300,000 annually) with a private economic-consulting group. Fortunately for…

Deport Them; They’ll Like It THE ADMINISTRATION of Indiana University is deep into what my colleague Mark Franke has identified as cognitive-dissonance reduction, a way of cramming inconvenient facts into an impossible ideology. Pamela Whitten, with a doctorate in communication studies, is the university’s first female president if that is important to you. She seems confused or perhaps just stymied as to why students from foreign countries can be expelled for something as innocuous as shouting “Free Palestine.”  That is so…

by Mark Franke I learned something new the other day in a Wall Street Journal column: the term “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” a form of mental gymnastics used to fit inconvenient facts to the ideology. I know what cognitive dissonance is, having run into the term in my undergraduate business school classes. Think of it as a propensity to always second guess your opinions, a mortal sin in the left-wing catechism. It turns into a vile application…

I LOVE TO TELL HER STORY. She is an inspiration that you can bloom where you are planted, you don’t need a high affirmative-action score or special favors to succeed. Heck, you don’t even need a college degree. Bobbi Ann Mlynar and I had the same English teacher our senior year, an eccentric word fiend who had figured out how to instill in teen-age miscreants a love for Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and a dozen other literary giants.…