If I had a dollar for every time I read a news article or post about a public official getting busted for sending or exchanging inappropriate emails and texts to fellow officials, colleagues and subordinates, I’d be well on my way to financial freedom.
While I have been a bookaholic since elementary school, few books made as much of an impression on me as E.D. Hirsch’s “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” It was released in book form in 1987, rising to second on the New York Times Best Sellers List behind Allan Bloom’s less-readable but also influential and important “Closing of the American Mind.”
Legislatures in Iowa and California have seen the wisdom of eliminating partisan gerrymandering and the polarized bodies it generates. The call for redistricting reform is growing now that the federal government has been shut down and the nation’s credit and the world’s economy threatened.
In the state law that requires government meetings to be open to the public, there’s a wonderful preamble expressing the philosophy behind the statute. The intent of the Open Door Law, it declares, is “that the official action of public agencies be conducted and taken openly … in order that the people may be fully informed.”
We have a disconnect in Indiana that we need to fix.
The next legislative session is likely to feature several bills affecting “social” issues like same-sex marriage, curriculum controversies and religious activities in public schools, abortion and public prayer.
For those who can still bear to look, Indiana’s unemployment rate remains stuck above 8 percent.
The Indy Chamber is opposing the proposed state constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages and civil unions. Fifty years ago—even 10 years ago—such a position would have been unthinkable. This is a remarkable change.
Twenty-fourteen will be a year of love and politics in Indiana.
We sometimes hear the advice to “get on the right side of history.”
Since it’s selling itself as both an entertainment venue and a dining spot, I thought I’d take its lead and combine my A&E and dining columns this week.
The leaves are falling fast in Pendleton. But the news is very different than what’s reported in bigger cities.
The Colts-Broncos game lived up to the circus that led up to it.
Thank you for including the [Oct. 7] article on the Global AgeWatch Index and the need for societies to better prepare for the impact of an aging population.
Your [Oct. 14] editorial encouraging Asian immigration was spot-on. I have been saying for years that the United States, and Indianapolis in particular, should encourage Asians to migrate here.
I really enjoyed Kathleen McLaughlin’s “Bike City” article [Oct. 14], with one exception.
For many, the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 was the formal commencement of the Great Recession. Within days, we learned that American International Group and Merrill Lynch would be next in line.
In 1957, then-Sen. John Kennedy published “Profiles in Courage,” chronicling stories of senators who (in Kennedy’s rendition) risked careers to do the right thing in the face of political pressure. Eleanor Roosevelt, who thought JFK more a show horse than a work horse, remarked that Kennedy himself needed “less profile and more courage.”
Some of them are heroes; others will scare the living daylights out of you.
Few contemporary political skirmishes break down so cleanly into two sides: The right side of history, and the wrong.
