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…

Holcomb Opens the Door to Biden’s Conflagration “A year before planes crashed into the World Trade Center, George W. Bush denounced airport security procedures that ‘racially profiled’ Arab air travelers as potential hijackers and promised to end air travel safety discrimination against Arabs.” — former National Review columnist Steve Sailer THERE SEEMS TO BE a misunderstanding. Gov. Eric Holcomb has the impression that things are going well for average Hoosiers out here, so well that they can shoulder the extraordinary…

Air Travel Is Back to Normal: Awful by Leo Morris (Somewhere outside of Wimberley, Tex.) – I’m sitting on the deck at the Roadrunner Ranch, my brother’s place in Hill Country, Texas. The good news is that real life still exists outside of the bitter political divide that seems to loom over everything these days, where people can visit with loved ones to talk pleasantly about everything and nothing at all. As I write, my brother…