“One of the vehicles crashed into a telephone pole in the 3400 block of Wells Street and two suspects fled into the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. Parts of the zoo were evacuated as police apprehended two of the suspects.” — June 14, 2019, WANE TV “A man was shot to death in the Walmart parking lot on Coldwater Road (the retail center of the city) as the sun shone and customers looked on.” — June…

by Leo Morris It pains me to confess this, but I am an ultracrepidarian. You might not want to hear it, but there’s a good chance you are one as well. The word describes people who “express opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise.” It comes from the Latin for “beyond the sandal or shoe,” adapted from the longer “‘the cobbler should not judge beyond his shoe.” That, according to Pliny…

Since 2004, about 1,800 newspapers or 20 percent of the total have folded or merged, while in the last decade 32,000 of the industry’s employees have lost their jobs. — The Washington Times, June 12, 2019 YOU WOULD THINK it would be the kind of story journalists would fight to get. It has it all — Main Street crony capitalists, venal out-of-state investors, legal manipulations, compliant if not compromised local officials. And it is sitting…

by Leo Morris Perhaps it’s time we stop obsessing so much over fake news and worry a little more about fake reviews. It’s not that fake news isn’t a problem. It’s a big one. But constantly complaining about the fake variety elevates the “real” news to a lofty position it probably hasn’t deserved in a long time. The fourth-estate ideal, of the press as an honest watchdog of government and a fair and impartial chronicler…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. The four-year-old howled when big brother called him, “Little Tiny Stinky Baby.” After being chastised by parents and promising never to do it again, the seven-year-old simply continued taunting little brother by calling him “L.T.S.B.” Big brother, following an awakening through sessions at school and church, confessed to mom that he was acting like a bully and would try to stop. Less inclined to share personal regrets for having bullied,…

INDIANA’S REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR is siding with those who say the state’s shifting definition of “hate” trumps a thousand years of common law. The front office of the Pacers may drop the word “owner” because it supposedly implies slavery. And a city administration sees nothing wrong with using tax money to fund a local “news” magazine that proclaims the mayor’s programs a success. What those three positions have in common is a delusion that individual rights…

by Leo Morris I can barely keep track of all the shaming going on these days. There is fat shaming. And slut shaming. And stay-at-home-mom shaming and LGBTQ shaming and even religion shaming. And we have apparently become so judgmental that as soon as we feel properly chastised about one form of shaming, another one comes around. It’s almost impossible for me to keep up, even when so many others seem aware. There is a…

by Leo Morris Have you ever driven a car without wearing your seatbelt? Shame on you. That makes you just one of the scofflaws, those people who think they can do whatever they want to, regardless of the rules everyone else has agreed to abide by. You deserve whatever punishment you get. Have you ever ridden a motorcycle without wearing a helmet? Bravo for you. That makes you a champion of individual rights, who realizes…

by Leo Morris “Socialism” has become such a loose term, open to such a variety of interpretations, that people can end up arguing past each other, some of us attacking something we incorrectly think the other side is defending. Those of us on the attack tend to be thinking of the formal, classical definition in which the state takes over the means of production, which means we focus on the horrible things that happen when…

by Andrew Horning Orwell was right. “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” So it’s natural that people today (perhaps Mayor Pete Buttigieg) think our nation’s founders were not just slaveholders and sexists, but also idiots. However, before we eliminate the Electoral College, grant illegal aliens the legal right to vote, lower the voting age again, try to…