A year ago, I decided I did not know enough about Indiana’s history and set out on a project to blog all 200 years’ worth of it. The project spiraled out of control and ended up spanning more than 110,000 words and 100 posts over the course of a year.
Read MoreHistorically, Hoosiers had a more intimate understanding of government and the electoral process because they were rubbing elbows with it on a regular basis.
Read MoreSchools help create a knowledgeable citizenry that can be economically productive and civically involved.
An honest look at kids these days suggests they are probably doing a little better than we were.
We have a presidential candidate displaying the hallmarks of a grifter rising to power by exploiting anxieties and weariness of change. In more than a few ways, his pitch resembles that of D.C. Stephenson in the ’20s.
There is really no reason to lack ambition when we consider the possibilities.
Policy ideas with superficial appeal are pernicious when their real effect is useless or counterproductive.
While things worked out very well in 1787, there is no particular reason to believe the delegates we would send to a modern convention would have the wisdom of the framers.
The recent wave of testing hysteria to which the state has succumbed is damaging our schools and our children.
History has shown that internal improvements benefit the economic prospects of our citizens and that failing to secure reliable funding for the improvements can result in fiscal disaster for the state government.
What makes human life more valuable than the lives of other animals? Is it the biographical life we value or is it the mere fact of human biology we find consequential?
The world is getting more tightly intertwined all the time. We are now immediately immersed in events that take place thousands of miles away. Far-off atrocities are now the subject of swift political decisions and corresponding lawsuits.
We as a nation have a firearm problem. Mass murder by firearm is a steady drumbeat in the news.
Indiana celebrates being a place others merely pass through, declaring ourselves the Crossroads of America. But those roads are getting a little bumpy.
In 1854, the Indiana Democratic Party was led by Jesse Bright, a man described as “hateful and extraordinarily ambitious.” He rose to power as a bully and apparently remained one. His pugnaciousness was no small part of the events that led to a two-year period in which Indiana had only one U.S. senator.
The Indiana Office of Tourism Development has announced that “Honest to Goodness Indiana” is the new slogan with which it will attempt to promote the state to tourists. IBJ reported that slogan was the product of a panel of 30 individuals within the travel, tourism and hospitality industries, government leaders, and representatives from both the public and private sectors as well as a development process including input from nearly 8,000 consumers.
We spend our limited resources on testing companies that waste our kids’ educational time in order to provide information the teachers and principals already know.
We ask juries to do a lot in Indiana. In simple terms, juries are a body empaneled to be fact finders as part of the judicial process for resolving criminal charges or civil disputes.
Former Gov. Daniels seems to have a good grasp of Orwell’s notion that who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.
"Privacy" comes from a Latin word meaning “separated from the rest,” initially thought of in negative terms, mostly having to do with deprivation of the ability to participate in government.
Americans in general and Hoosiers in particular like to see the economy as a morality play. If you are rich, it is because you are hard-working and clever. If you are poor, it is because you are lazy and stupid.
As I recall the story, the guys in my dad’s fraternity used to haze the pledges by cracking eggs, emptying them down the stairwell and making the new guys catch them in their mouths down at the bottom.
