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…

    The decision of Texas public officials not to perform an autopsy on the body of the late Justice Antonin Scalia is imprudent.

    First, one should realize autopsies are unpleasant for the novice observer, and unpleasant for survivors of the deceased.  I have not witnessed an autopsy in person, but have read quite a few autopsy reports, primarily during work on appeals of homicide convictions. A “Y” is cut into the thorax of the body, the organs examined, and photographs taken.  The…

    With the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, many more people seem aware of what Professor Sheila Suess Kennedy had pointed out on February 3, 2016, on her blog, the Supreme Court is the most important issue for voters in the 2016 election.

    The impact of Justice Scalia’s death on the presidential campaign already has been felt and is, and will continue to be, significant.  Senator Mitch McConnell vowed that a nominee of President Obama will not be approved; that the confirmation…

   Garlic is very healthy and imparts great taste to food.

   Garlic also is feared by vampires.

   Today’s blog is not meant as an appeal to belief in the unnatural. I am a taxpayer. The political leaders of the city in which I live decided long ago to subsidize, with money obtained from our tax dollars, professional sports franchise owners. The National Football League® is a —try not to choke on your food as you read this—not-for-profit corporation. The owners of the 32 franchises…

   If I were made head of the GOP, there are several moves I would push.

   Please realize I am not registered as a person who has voted Republican in any elections. I have voted for some candidates from the “R” party, but the number of those is relatively small. I have found the Democratic Party to have some bad candidates. In some races, in the general election, I have left blank the vote for a particular office. If the candidate of another party is on the ballot, I seriously consider…

   In June, on the morning of my birthday, I had an appointment with a neurologist, at IU Clarian North.  A too-long drive was one of several reasons I had decided to switch neurologists.

   My reality has been shaped, significantly, since January, 1994, when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I have blogged previously about the events that led up to the diagnosis. By the second day of what became a nine-day stay in the hospital, I was paralyzed from the waist down. I could not…

   The headline on the front page of IBJ reads: “TIF glitch may imperil projects in Midtown.”  (IBJ, Vol. 36, No. 27, p. 1.)  The article carries over to page 39.

   After a description of projects lined up to use TIF funds, the tone of the article echoed the headline. A $39 million development aimed for the area around College Avenue and Kessler “would bring much-needed density along the corridor that is part of a planned rapid-transit route running from Carmel to Greenwood.”  (Id., p.…

   A trip to the Indiana State Fair in the early 1960s was a festive event. The place seemed huge to young eyes. There were a lot of pieces of farm and construction equipment. In the livestock barns, the old man would point out the various breeds of cattle, sheep, and goats and explain why each was unique as the kids who were there to show the animals sweated and lounged on bales of straw or fold-out chairs. The really big room with aluminum siding sales pitches was okay. On the midway, some…

   Steve Rowe was a bailiff at Marion Superior Court-Juvenile Division when our paths first crossed in about 1989. We struck up a conversation.  A couple of days later I ran into him and his girlfriend at The (old pre-Harley) Stone Mug. They lived close by in Broad Ripple, only a couple of blocks away from me.

   We cooked out a lot. Together, after much trial and error, we developed the World’s Best rib sauce. I do not know how many times we made babybacks together. I cannot remember…

On this date in 1971, James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of The Doors and a poet, died of a heart attack in a Paris bordello. I shall toast Morrison this afternoon, hopefully to the tune either of “Roadhouse Blues” or “Texas Radio & the Big Beat”: “No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”