On this week's show, being shot Saturday, October 1, Paul Ogden and I shall discuss two topics. One is the wisdom or folly of forfeiture laws. Those are laws that provide the means by which local government can confiscate private property with fewer restraints, some would say due process, than that in which it otherwise would have to engage. The second is whether all drugs should be legalized.

   We start at 1:00 p.m. at Big Hat Books, 6510 Cornell Avenue, in Broad Ripple.  

   I attended and graduated from a high school that, prior to my enrollment, had a speech team, but not a debate team. A couple of weeks into my first year on the speech team, we attended a debate tournament as a favor to the coach of another school. I was hooked. I loved debate. I was on the team all through high school. The culmination was our making state finals. When I reached Depauw, I already had been in contact with the coach, Doctor Weiss, and one of the debaters. Again, I debated al…

   The deep political theorist and former candidate for Vice President Sarah Palin complained, a couple of years back, about "death panels" in President Obama's health care reform package.

   First, I want to say I think the package was weak. We need national health care, not this weird hybrid first proposed by the Republicans in 1994, one in which private insurance companies play a big role. Second, the plan created no "death panels." In fact, for years private insurance companies…

   In 1973, when I registered for first semester classes at DePauw, I was amazed by the fact DePauw had its own computer. The thing was the size of a two-bedroom house in a blue-colar 1960s subdivision. Its memory was probably less than that of a digital wrist watch---for those who still wear watches---today.

   This explains, in part, the problems we have had with software, etc., and the delay in the show Paul Ogden and I co-host, "Civil Discourse Now," coming on-line. Well, finally…

   Our streets need fixed.

   I wanted to get home from the office in time to watch the kick-off. I stopped at Marsh for a couple of things for chili. I asked the cashier if the percentage of people in Colts regalia decreased after games started. Her non-answer was "I don't think one person should mean so much to people." Okay, this was Sunday, and maybe her reference was in the context of theology. I made it home in time to watch about the only good play the Colts would make, a first…

Pael show. pa.u. l Ogden and mark Small hosting Greg Fettig and Luther Garcia, Show should be up at 11 a.m. Enjot.

This week's show!

Civil Discourse Now, the weekly show Paul Ogden and I co-host, will have a panel discussion today at 1:00 at Big Hat Books, just north of the Brew Pub on North Cornell in beautiful Broad Ripple Village. The first topic for discussion will be the propriety of calling people who espouse principles of the so-called tea party movement "tea baggers." The second topic will involve whether bin Laden achieved his goals with the attacks on the United States staged on…

   In a few days is the 10th anniversary of the attacks plotted by Osama bin Laden and his cronies. Bin Laden's stated goals, as I understand them, were to deprive Americans of their liberty and to wreck our economic system. The use of commercial airliners filled with passengers to crash into buildings was a mechanism to achieve those goals.

   As to our liberties, what occurred in "the aftermath of 9/11"? That is a phrase we have heard or read many times. The (Orwellian-named)…

   In America, the desire for (more) money and material things is viewed as a positive quality. It drives the economy. It is the dynamic behind the free market. In the couple of weeks since the disaster at the State Fairs, plaintiffs' law firms have made an embarrassment of our profession in their efforts to be first to jump in and show themselves to be the champions of the downtrodden---the downtrodden being those who lost their lives or were injured when the stage collapsed before…

Amend the Indiana Constitution: no more 50-year contracts.

Politicians like to give the image of having successfully solved a problem, with little or no cost to the average citizen. The average citizen is happy with this fairy tale. After all, taxes are bad. Higher taxes are even worse. So if a mayor gets money into, for an example, his city, and shortfalls are met and little projects are built, things are marvy-poo for John Q. Public and his spouse Jane. Let us say, for our…

On September 4, "Civil Discourse Now" will premiere at 11 a.m. on the website civildiscoursenow.com. Indianapolis attorneys Mark Small and Paul Ogden will co-host panel discussion on local, state, national, and international political and social topics with different guests each week.

This panel show will be different in several ways. First, no one will talk over anyone else. The discourse, after all, will be civil. Second, the guests will not be quite what one may expect from an Indy…

   Amongst the articles The Indianapolis Star ran about the stage collapse at the State Fair, one centered on the wife of the governor and her daughter. The governor's wife was whisked out of the place by an alert State Trooper. The crowd should have had benefit of that decision-making.

   The line that caught my attention concerned the couple's daughter. The article stated the daughter was there photographing the show on a contract she has with the State Fair. On her website, the…

   I tap this into my lap top as I lounge on the fan tail of the 80 foot boat I purchased yesterday here in St. Lucia. I acted on my own advice for the past couple of weeks. Each time I wrote on this blog that people should sell short, I actually did so. One moment, please---ah, I had to pour a bit more champers into the wine flute. There is not as much noise out here as there is inside, what with the music and dancing. The boat is rocking a bit, but that's what life is about, I…

   George W. Bush was President of the United States for eight years. He was not elected but selected by a Supreme Court, the majority of the members of which had been nominated by his father, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. From 1969 to 2009, only one Democrat, Bill Clinton, held the office of President and nominated anyone to the Court. The Court ignored the law, issued a decsion it said would not be used as precedent, and let Bush move into the mansion on Pennsylvaia Avenue.…

  Oops! Michelle Bachmann got another historical "fact" wrong. This time she was talking about a topic more important than the history of the republic. She was talking about the King. Elvis Presley's birthday is January 8. The date of his death was Agust 16, 1977. I was in Greencastle, Indiana, that day, preparing for the start of my last year a DePauw. I had dined on a fried banana-and-peanut butter on whole wheat sandwich. Well, the part about the sand wich is not true. But the part about…

   There are several quotes about a foreign power's involvement in Iraq:

   "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

   "Iraq could be a model for development and democracy for the entire region."

   "Our policy is actually working, and if 'prematurely curtailed, the result would be disastrous ... Withdrawal would lead inevitably to anarchy.'"

   "The only way to leave with honor would be to redefine the…

Corporations are not people.

Mit Romney, under pressure from Iowans on break from eating deep-fried Twinkies at their State Fair, said yesterday, "Corporations are people!" The rest of his brief comments seemed to indicate he meant since corporate profits go to people, that made corporations people.

Sorry, Mit, but giving an entity profits does not breathe life into it and confer on it the status of human. As I have written before, a corporation is not a living,…