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…

‘Infrastructure’ Is an Open Spigot DR. MARYANN O. KEATING, author of the cover article for the current issue of The Indiana Policy Review, is an expert on the economics of infrastructure. Even she was surprised, though, to learn that some Indiana cities don’t prioritize or even coherently define infrastructure in their spending.  A real-time example crossed our desk this week — too late, unfortunately, to accompany the Keating article but one that illustrates her points. In lopsided votes, both Fort…

Learning to Speak Holcombese by Leo Morris I’m a little worried. I think I’m starting to understand Gov. Holcomb. When he was talking about the Afghan refugees, he said he wanted Indiana to “be there on the back end” after the 14-day screening and vetting process. That means that if nothing goes wrong, the state will take all the credit for a job well done. When he criticized President Biden’s mandatory vaccination policy for private…

Save the Babies; Don’t Pay Rent THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR has its entry for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. It is “Do it for the Baby: Indianapolis Renters Plead to Stave off Evictions as Moratorium Ends.” The co-authors are Ko Lyn Cheang and Binghui Huang. Published yesterday, it is a certain winner. If you are too busy to read the entire thing, here is the gist: Rent is unfair. Ms. Cheang and Ms. Huang observe the cardinal rule of any good…

No, Muslims Aren’t Most Maligned by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Our country recently marked the 20th years since the terrifying events of Sept. 11, 2001. Newspapers printed articles both inspirational and tragic regarding the events of that day. Most newspapers also included articles on the bias faced by Muslims. For example, the Wall Street Journal had an article on Sept. 13 entitled, “Growing Muslim Population Sees Fear, Acceptance.” Closer to home, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette printed an article on Sept. 7 entitled, “Two…

The Constitution: A Triumph of Compromise by Mark Franke Compromise. This word wouldn’t score well on a favorability scale these days. People today, and not just politicians, seem to pride themselves in their rigidity of opinion and ossification of rational thought processes. We seem to be living in a world driven to ideological destruction and too many of us are cheering it on. So what is different about our generation compared to those before? I…