I do not like “smart” phones.  I am not all that fond of cell phones, generally.

   Before cell phones, 98 percent of what people said on the phone was crap. After cell phones, the “traffic”—i.e., number of calls made—via cell phones versus land lines (that really are not land lines anymore) has multiplied by a few magnitudes. Valuable content hardly has increased. The percentage of crap has gone up. We easily are above 99 percent.

   Before cell phones, there were no…

   People fondly deny reality.  Denial starts early.  There is no Santa Claus—but those of us “in” on the truth are encouraged to keep the truth from little ones lest their hopes be dashed.  

   After the debacle by which an individual now occupies the Oval Office though he lost by some three million popular votes, the first denial was of Russian meddling.

   The first denial has little credence.    

   The United States Congress has voted to impose sanctions on Russia for Russia…

Treason, it often is said, is the only crime defined by the Constitution.  Article III, Section 3 provides: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort...”

   There is more in Art. III, Sec. 3.  The standard for conviction on a charge of treason also is set:  “...No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in…

   The Framers of the Constitution tried, in 1787 at the Convention, to address many things in the document that became the Constitution. Of course they institutionalized and protected the most evil institution in our history—slavery—although the delegates were products of the Enlightenment.

    As to the selection of what they termed, early in the Convention, as the “Chief Magistrate,” and what we call the President, they were conscious of efforts foreign powers might to interfere in…

The podcast “Civil Discourse Now” will return to the local pod “scene” for all the pod people who are interested in events that seem to shape our lives. If you want to view The Show, watch for it on FaceBook, the most popular blog roll in Indiana, or at civildiscoursenow dot com.

   In the pasture, when I was a kid, a Sycamore tree—I will capitalize the name of this great type of tree—stood alone and apart from everything. The tree was old, the darkened bark long before fallen away on parts of the trunk and branches.  The white and gray were exposed.  The huge leaves covered the ground in the fall, but it was pasture land and eventually mulched.  The tree was older than I was (obviously), and I have no clue how old.  The tree was gigantic—as mature Sycamores tend to…

  Robo-calls annoy me, but amuse me at rare times.

  One aspect of robo-calls is the development of computers that speak in complete phrases and answer questions.

  The past few months, after the feel came that “HAL” (see “2001: A Space Odyssey”) was on the other end of the line, I have asked, “Are you a computer?”  At first the calls simply ended. The programmers must have adapted, and other people asked questions similar to mine, because the computers began to say something to the…

   If one wishes to find weaknesses in the position of “originalists”—those who believe we should follow strictly the intentions of those men who drafted the Constitution of the United States in the summer of 1787—the process by which the President is selected is a good place to start.

   There were general premises upon which the Framers seem to have based the principles that guided their construction of the government the Constitution created.  A basic premise was distrust of, and the…

   The election is past. The Democratic Party offered, as a candidate for President of the United States, a person who already had staked out a claim to the nomination, through use of long-time connections within the party. The Republican Party “regulars” were reluctant to endorse the individual who won the primary/caucus process as he extolled many views people find abhorrent.

   Both candidates were reported as having the highest “unfavorable” ratings of any two candidates for the…

  We lived on Arlington Place, in a one-bedroom apartment with a Pullman kitchen—i.e., down-sized appliances arrayed in a line that could be hidden when the louvered doors were pulled across and shut.  On the first floor of the building was an Italian restaurant called Salvatore’s.

  We had moved there after she graduated from Purdue. We were young, broke, and didn’t care. She had a job at one of the exchanges as a runner. I obtained employment at Northwestern University School of Law as…

   I was contacted by individuals with no connection to the campaign of Donald Trump® and asked, in the wake of yesterday’s announcement by the Man Who Would Be—Well I’ll Settle for President that he would impose a really strict test on those who would try to enter the United States to draft such a test. The folks in question would have to past a test to ascertain whether those folks understand The Constitution. One reasonably infers Mr. Trump® meant the Constitution of the United States,…

   I have suggested IndyGo, to acculturate the citizens of Indianapolis and Marion County to take mass transit, should:

   1) Increase the number of bus routes to optimize the number of potential riders.  We should have bus routes in areas where the numbers of potential riders is greatest.

   2) Increase the number of buses on those routes so that during peak hours, especially, someone need wait no more than ten minutes for a bus.

   3) Make sure the buses run on time and are…

   In 1986, when I moved to Marion County to attend law school, I was surprised at the relatively primitive mass transit system.  One had to wait an hour at a stop for a bus.  I had lived in Chicago, where buses were frequent and dependable, fares cheap enough to make driving a car a much-less-preferred option for daily transportation, and everyone rode the bus.  By that I mean there was no stigma to riding the bus.  I rode the 151 Sheridan bus for about a year, from a stop in Lincoln Park a…

  Andrew Jackson’s image on the twenty-dollar bill soon will be replaced by that of Harriet Tubman. Earlier the push had been to bump Alexander Hamilton’s image from the ten-dollar bill. After all, Hamilton “only” was Secretary of the Treasury, favored a strong central national government, and was partial to the upper class. Some countered that Jackson had horrible policies against indigenous peoples (e.g., many deaths during The Trail of Tears) and claimed ownership over other human beings…

  Of 435 voting seats in the United States House of Representatives—all up for election this year, as members of the House run on a two-year cycle (U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 2—246 are held by members of the Republican Party and 188 by members of the Democratic Party, with one (1) seat currently vacant.  The Democratic Party needs to win thirty (30) seats to gain control of that chamber.  According to the website 270towin, 56 seats are “competitive.  Of those, 38, by my count, are held…

  Today, April 4, 2016, is the deadline if one wishes to vote in the Indiana primary election on May 3, 2016.  Indianavoters.com has links for information on where and how to register.

With all the ballyhoo about the races for United States President, some have lost sight of the seats in both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives up for election this fall.

  Republicans hold a 54-46 majority in the Senate.  Two of the seats included amongst the Democratic side of the chamber are held by Independents—Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine—who caucus with the Democratic Party.

  Thirty-four (34) seats in the Senate are up…

  “Pop-up” ads or informative pieces generally annoy me.  Occasionally I read one that enlightens its reader.  This morning I read one such informative piece.  The piece was about “11 Cancer Causing Foods You Eat Every Day.”  One of the foods or, in this instance, a group or category of food, was “processed meats.”  The piece notes: “According to a 13-year study, 1 out of 17 people who ate 160 grams of processed meats died.” If this is true, the converse of the results would be 16 out of 17…

  On the way between the Memorial Student Union where “And Now for Something Completely Different” and wherever it was Freshman year at DePauw that I read “Mother Courage,” I encountered Reducio A. Absurdum. Maybe the setting was a kegger, a social function at DePauw in the 1970’s at which students practiced a Darwinian approach to intellectual improvement through consumption of large quantities of alcohol to kill brain cells that deserved to die, leaving, as survivors, the cells hardy and…

    Once again my friend Paul Ogden has written an inaccurate assessment of the jurisprudence of those with whom he disagrees.  Mr. Ogden prefers the originalism—a term, apparently, he does not like—of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.  Any theory by which one construes our Nation’s Constitution, its interplay with statutes, the constitutions of the 46 States and four Commonwealths (Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Massachusetts), their statutes, as well as the various treaties into…