KENNEDY: Daniels diminishing higher learning
The current political focus on what we used to call “vocational education” not only minimizes the value of a liberal education, it ignores the reality of today’s job market.
Taking Issue
Articles
RUSTHOVEN: Carter keeps the world ‘enlightened’
Former President Jimmy Carter recently volunteered his wisdom on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In Carter’s view, hostilities were not sparked by Hamas’ firing rockets at Israeli citizens, nor tunneling from Gaza into Israel to kill and kidnap civilians.
KENNEDY: Indianapolis needs a commuter tax
No matter how nostalgically we think of Indiana as a patchwork of small, quaint towns and family farms, those days are gone. Indiana’s workforce and population are increasingly metropolitan, and our growth will continue to be in our urban centers.
Pence, gay marriage and media bias
The notion that Pence put gay marriage in “legal limbo” is fanciful. The limbo is due to the legal situation, with one court striking down the law, gay couples getting married before the stay, and no one knowing how the case will come out.
KENNEDY: Buggy whips, rotary phones and coal
he history of business success has been the history of innovation—the triumph of visionary entrepreneurs who saw where the wind was blowing and left their more stubbornly traditional compatriots in the dust.
RUSTHOVEN: Lawsuit could rein in Obama overreach
Speaker John Boehner’s plans to have the House file a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s refusals to enforce federal laws has elicited predictable derision in liberal and media circles (which overlap on a Venn diagram).
KENNEDY: We need to connect the civic dots
It isn’t only democratic institutions and behaviors that are affected by profound ignorance of our history and government.
RUSTHOVEN: Things you don’t know about Hobby Lobby
From reaction on the left to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, you’d think it ruled that corporations have First Amendment “free exercise of religion” rights, allowing them to refuse contraceptive coverage for women employees despite the Affordable Care Act’s statutory command. You’d be wrong. Literally none of this is true.
KENNEDY: Maybe it’s a systems failure
Next weekend is the Fourth of July. Along with the barbecues, parades and neighborhood get-togethers, we’ll hear speeches about Truth, Justice and the American Way. We might raise a toast to the Founders, and count ourselves fortunate to live in a (mostly still) democratic country.
RUSTHOVEN: Tea Party victories send wrong message
One benefit of writing a regular column is reader feedback. Occasional kind comments from friends are, of course, encouraging. But critiques are more frequent and often more interesting.
KENNEDY: Constitutional convention is idea whose time is not now
Periodically, lawmakers impatient to change government policies of which they disapprove will call for a constitutional convention.
RUSTHOVEN: Tea Party, Chocola never seem to learn
On June 3, Mississippi Republicans took a step down the path traveled two years ago by their Indiana counterparts. Ordinarily, Hoosiers might think Mississippians would do well to follow our lead. Not this time.
KENNEDY: A rose by any other name
What was that line from Romeo and Juliet? “That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.”
RUSTHOVEN: Pence pushes plan to national stature
A while back, we wrote about Gov. Pence’s efforts to use federal health care dollars for our state’s successful Healthy Indiana Plan, rather than expanding the failure that is Medicaid.
KENNEDY: The luck of the (economic) draw
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently testified before a Senate committee on the issue of America’s growing inequality. His observations were sobering.
RUSTHOVEN: The union vote proved toothless
Two races on my 2014 watch list were challenges to GOP state representatives Bob Behning of Indianapolis and Jerry Torr of Carmel. The issues differed, but each race showed continued erosion of union political power.
KENNEDY: The tax-cutters are too clever by half
Tax cuts have consequences as predictable as the sunrise. The politicians who cut taxes boast about their concern for taxpayers and their superior efficiency; they assure us that our low taxes will lure new business, then they run for higher office or otherwise head for greener pastures where the accuracy of those claims is unlikely to be tested. The politicians who have been left to operate with less money engage in equally predictable behaviors.
RUSTHOVEN: High court opted for common sense
In Plessy vs. Ferguson, decided in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court held it constitutional for states to discriminate on the basis of race, pronouncing the now-discredited notion that “separate but equal” comported with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.”
KENNEDY: First, eat the spinach
There is probably not a parent on the planet who hasn’t delivered the time-honored dinner lecture, “No dessert unless you eat your vegetables.” We want our children to understand that first things come first—that consuming healthy food has to come before sugary treats, no matter how tempting.
RUSTHOVEN: Glad Kentucky went down in the finals
In sports, I typically root for my team to win, not for another team to lose. Exceptions are the New England Patriots (Colts loyalists need no explanation) and the New York Yankees, justly despised by all us Boston Red Sox fans and other real Americans.