by Jeff Abbott, Ph.D., J.D. Oh well, the mayor of Chicago settled a labor contract with the Chicago teachers’ union after an eight day strike. Teachers were happy to secure concessions limiting a school-reform program that they said would harm students and cost teachers jobs. Mayor Rahm Emanuel walked away with a teacher-evaluation system and other changes that he says will make educators more accountable. An eight-year veteran Chicago teacher, however, was disappointed with the…

“(President Barack Obama) spoke of  a ‘colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.’ —  Fouad Ajami in the Sept. 21 Wall Street Journal The editor of my local newspaper, trying to be helpful perhaps, organized reports of recent demonstrations in the Middle East under the awkward but telling headline: “Anti-Islam Film Protests.” Now, you…

For release Sept. 19 and thereafter (660 words) by Andrea Neal At 3.4 percent, Indiana’s personal income tax is one of the nation’s lowest. A half dozen states, including Texas and Florida, don’t charge income tax at all; 41 states impose a rate higher than Indiana’s. At 7 percent, the Indiana sales tax ties for second highest with four other states. The only higher one is California’s at 7.25 percent. Indiana is one of just…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Without identifying the cause, we know when we are ill and hurting. Obviously, it is not advisable to experiment with a variety of remedies to determine which one works. Similarly, in economics, we know that an unemployment rate exceeding eight percent is too high. And even though the situation is desperate for those unemployed, randomly selected policy initiatives are not a solution. The unemployment rate may be parsed into various…

by PHIL TROYER, J.D. Many years ago, I traveled to Las Vegas to attend a wedding. While there, I struck up a conversation with a young man who worked at the hotel in which we were staying. “Do you gamble much?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “I used to, but then I looked around at all of these palatial casinos and realized they could not have been built without suckers like me thinking we could…

As an old editor I concede that you can be too picayunish about words. It no longer makes any difference whether you write auto or motorcar, to pick an example from my vintage stylebook. But some words (liberty, God, Jerusalem, heroism, compassion) matter to some more than others. When they lose their meaning, people lose parts of themselves. Dr. James Boyd White, a University of Michigan law professor and literary critic, addressed this concern in a series of essays…

For release Aug. 29 and thereafter (660 words) by Andrea Neal Don’t blame Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for the ugly tone of the 2012 presidential race. Blame John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They started it. The Election of 1800 was the first time candidates campaigned on partisan platforms, and it’s been that way ever since. To paint the current atmosphere as especially poisonous, as a Washington Post writer called it, or as the worst…

We all know there’s been a shift in political posture from vision to reality. Hard times do that. The question, though, is whether your councilman or legislator will make the turn. Most sitting Hoosier politicians, Republican or Democrat, were elected on “the vision thing,” as George H. Bush once called it. Now they’re trying mightily to learn this new “reality thing.” The transformation can be awkward. For example, legislators are being urged to consider a…