Public debate has increased recently in Indiana over the topic of education. Public discourse, as a general matter, is good. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in perhaps his most famous dissent: "But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas---that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get…

   As acrimony has overcome harmony in political discourse, so too have those who wield verbal cudgels sought to tweak otherwise vituperative rants with polite words.

   The words "batshit crazy" have been flung about to describe members of the opposition to that of a particular speaker's. Most often the phrase arises when an image of Michele Bachmann appears on the screen. The reaction is visceral and spontaneous amongst many people---except for a very thin majority of the registered…

   Prior to the Japanese attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and the air bases at Hickam and Wheeler Fields, on December 7, 1941, there was strong sentiment against United States involvement in what would become called World War II. The Japanese attack muted much of the opposition in the United States. The following day, the United States Congress declared war on the Japanese Empire. Japan on September 27, 1940 had entered into the Tripartite Agreement with Germany and…

   Before The Show yesterday, I conversed with one of the artists at The Stutz Building---excellent place for artists and small businesses, and I really, really want an Auburn Boat-tail Speedster---about the nature of news media today. We discussed the absence of focus for the much greater amount of information available, thanks to the internet, compared to three decades ago. I mentioned that in the 1970s-1980s, national news primarily came through the three major networks. As the artist…

   Today we shall stream live, from 11 am to 1 pm, from the Stutz Building I, at 212 West 10th Street, Indianapolis. The Stutz Bearcat was manufactured in the complex, and even competed in the Indianapolis 500. The Stutz Artists Association is the largest association of working artists in Indiana. There are a lot of studios, but also spaces for other small- and mid-sized businesses in the two-building complex, refurbished, owned and managed by Indianapolis commercial developer Turned…

   Acronyms are handy. They short-hand complex topics. If a person, in a confident voice, throws three or four acronyms into a conversation, some people are more prone to accept the person's opinion as informed. If the person also quotes representatives of several prominent forces in a community, the person's statements on the given topic appear, on surface, validated.

   There is a FaceBook page captioned "Say No to TIFs in Broad Ripple." TIFs are Tax-Increment Finance districts. As…

   Tax-Increment Financing districts ("TIFs") were developed in California in the 1950s. The idea was to infuse areas desperate for investment with public funds. A specific area would be designated as a TIF. By "specific," I mean specific blocks would be designated as within the boundaries of that TIF's "footprint." Projects would be designed for the TIF. Bonds would be floated by (most often) the municipal government of the place in which the TIF was to be created. Money from the bonds…

We'll stream live, from 11 am to 1 pm from Ramada Inn Indy-East.

   Fifty years ago on this date, as we all know from massive coverage of acknowledgment of the event, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The cliche is true for me: I remember where I was and what happened. Mrs. Coleford was our third-grade teacher at New London Elementary School. Early afternoon, Mr. Kincaid, the principal, entered our classroom. Mrs. Coleford was one of my favorite elementary school teachers. She was kind, patient and made school interesting. Mr.…

   An item on Yahoo reports "It's a Wonderful Life" will have a sequel. The 1946 film, directed by Frank Capra, starred Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. The American Film Institute named it one of the 100 Best Films made.

   There is no mention of Capra in the article. There is mention, however, of the way in which the producers want to capture the original spirit of the 1946 flick. Apparently George Bailey's children relive the concept of what the world would be like had one or more of…

   Tomorrow's Show will stream live from Moore's Bar, 17 South Indiana, in beautiful Greencastle, Indiana. DePauw University will host Wabash College, a school of cretinous misogynists located in Crawfordsville.

   Wabash has won the past four meetings. There use to be a debate each year, in a series known as the Monon Bell debates. Those debates were after my time. We debated Wabash, at tournaments and in audience settings, and won. I do not recall a loss to Wabash. The Monon Bell…

   In Salt Lake City, from November 19 to 24, chief negotiators will meet for a summit on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, described by one observer as "the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world's GDP."  "Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed," PopularResistance.org, 11/13/09. When one has to find out details of trade treaties from Wikileaks, one is left with a skeptical opinion of what the latest treaty holds.

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   Alums of DePauw and alums of Wabash should gather at the Broad Ripple Tavern around 5 p.m. as a counter to the males-only "stag" held at about the same time at the Murat. DePauw alumnae and Wabash transgender alums are welcome to attend the informal gathering at 735 Broad Ripple Avenue. The same cannot be said about the "stag," an event that was on hiatus from the late 1980s until a couple of years ago. Wear your school colors, or not. Saturday the game will be played at Blackstock…

   Private colleges have more latitude, in some respects, than public universities. Race is not part of that latitude. Bob Jones University originally did not accept African-Americans for enrollment. In 1970 BJU softened that position. Black students were accepted for enrollment, but interracial dating was prohibited. Students guilty of such conduct could be expelled. Even membership in an organization that espoused a belief that interracial dating should be allowed subjected a student to…

   This Saturday is the Monon Bell Game, the annual contest between the football teams of DePauw University and Wabash College. I graduated from DePauw. As I wrote last week, I received an e-mail invitation from the DePauw Alumni Association to the Monon Bell Stag, a party held, this year at the Murat, in which drinks are served, dinner had and humorous speakers speak. The "stag" did not occur for about a dozen years. Perhaps the notion of an all-male event for alumni of two schools, one of…

   In a column in "The Washington Post," Fareed Zakaria quotes former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as saying there are more members of military marching bands than members of the United States foreign service. The United States spends more than the next seventeen countries most generous to their defense budgets.

   In the last couple years' debates on the national deficit, much has been made of cuts to "entitlements." Implicit in the label "entitlements" is the notion people are…

   I moved to Broad Ripple in 1987, at the start of my second year of law school. There are aspects of Broad Ripple one must live here to understand. For example, for several years I thought Christ the King was a portable casino under a big tent. Also, I never understood how to find Conner's Pub, only that under certain circumstances, I ended up there, sort of like explorers stumbled onto Shangri-la, but without the mountains and snow and with a juke box heavy on my kind of music as beer was…

   My father was vague about what he did in the years 1929 to about 1935. He maintained several stories that, when later I considered them, were inconsistent or simply did not make sense. He said he served in the United States Army, variously as an artillery person or a pilot of biplanes. Enlistment in the military was something many men in the depression that hit agricultural communities of the United States and in the Later Great Depression sought out. In the military, one had a job, three…

   In an episode pf M*A*SH, Hawkeye becomes angry at an infantry officer. The officer insists on taking his unit back up into the hills to recover the bodies of members of his unit killed in battle the previous night. Hawkeye emphasizes the pointlessness in risking lives for those already dead. When I saw the episode---not as a re-run, but I have seen it since---I had worked construction, during school breaks, with a veteran of the Korean War (or, more accurately in history books, "police…

   Matt Stone has been a guest panelist every few weeks since our podcast began in early 2011. Last Saturday our Show focused on breast cancer. Matt did an excellent interview of his mother, a breast cancer survivor, and his sister. Matt blogged, over at his blog site "Indy Student," about the difficulty an interview of such a personal nature poses. You can listen to the interview, and the entire Show, on the Civil Discourse Now Face Book page, Live365, or at Indiana Talks. Our three guest…