When I was in high school, Kokomo had one head shop. At least, Kokomo had one head shop of which I was aware. The little store was on Sycamore next to where the Sipe Theater once had stood. At least one parking space was occupied during hours when the store was open. Word had it that the Kokomo Police Department and the Howard County Sheriff coordinated in surveillance of the store. They took photographs and wrote down names and license plate numbers of the store’s customers. Presumably…

   Someone got through the website and spammed ads for various products. From what I can tell, the products were footwear and nothing related to a fetish.

   One could say I was “wired” to be a lawyer.

   When I was five ro six I watched television shows about trials. “Perry Mason” seemed like a joke, relative to law. Other shows seemed more realistic. When high-profile cases took place, with their sketch-artists’ renditions of that day’s events—the trial of the Chicago Eight, then Seven, is a good example—I listened to the details.

   When I shopped for colleges, I did so largely with the idea of a major that would feed into law…

   What would the city and people of Indianapolis do without the Colts®  and the Pacers®?

   The past couple of months I have expressed paranoia about those franchises’ owners. If they detect any “spare” change rattling about in the City’s coffers, there appears a new need for monies for one or another of the teams.

   To the best of my knowledge, no one has been shown the books of YOUR Indiana Pacers®. The Pacers®  had built for them a new arena in 1999, now called Bankers Life® …

   In the early 1960s, Indianapolis had more than one daily newspaper. Writers from the Indianapolis Times won a few Pulitzers before the paper shut down in 1965. The Indianapolis Star was a decent paper, although very conservative for my tastes. Still, the reporters covered local stories well, and tried to act as a check on local corruption and local politicians. The sports section was pretty good, too.  On Sundays that section was thick with good coverage of major sports and, each May, the…

   The indictment of Texas Governor Rick Perry is as woeful as Congressional Republicans’ threat of a lawsuit against President Obama. At first I wrote “silly,” but changed the adjective, because the criminal action in Texas and the civil action in (presumably) a United States District Court waste public resources and open balance-of-powers questions to litigation.

   First, a word about the Texas situation. I do not like Governor Perry. I consider myself to be left-wing, if that term…

   Sorry, Mayor Gregory "I've Never Met a Tax Raise I Couldn't Okay or a Well-connected Donor I Couldn't Benefit" Ballard and his coterie of campaign contributors will not be on Civil Discourse Now. Instead, two guests today have studied the cronyism that is YOUR Indianapolis city political system for several years.

   Pat Andrews, who blogs at “Had Enough Indy?” and Gary Welsh, of “Advance Indiana” will be our guests when we stream live today from The Sinking Ship, 4923 North…

   I was wakened about 3 a.m. The voice came from the kitchen. I rose, closed the bedroom door quietly behind me, and started to reach for the wall switch. Simultaneously I noticed a strange glow of sufficient strength to find my way, and a voice hiss, “Lights stay out.”

   The latter annoyed me. “This is my house.”

   “Not while Hizzoner’s in it, it ain’t,” the voice hissed in a familiar accent.

   In May I wrote about a seance I had arranged. With corruption so rife in…

   Apparently Mayor Ballard, before he leaves office, wants to commit Indianapolis to as many long-term leases—if he cannot sell City assets cheap—as possible. His latest contract is with a New Jersey waste management corporation—we neither make these things up nor need to make them up. Okay, so the fictional Tony Soprano ran a waste management company in “The Sopranos.” Tony was an environmental sort of guy.

   The pitch of Covanta, the company in question, is that they turn waste into…

   The column was below the fold, but still on page one of Sunday’s edition of what was a fairly good newspaper.  The Indianapolis Star consists of a lot of ads (to make money in a time when many people read the stories the day before on the internet the paper prints the next day; such is technology), sections provided by McNew a/k/a USA Today, a few good articles, and, well, the rest.

   Matthew Tully did not disappoint (if one anticipated he would provide his usual contribution to “the…

   Indianapolis needs a new building for its courts, jail, and police.

   The Ballard administration has floated an idea. The City pays for construction, then hands over the keys to a foreign conglomerate and pays rent to that new landlord.

   Wait—why would be build a structure, give the structure away (i.e., “sell” it for an absurdly low price), and pay rent to the entity to which it was given?

   Here are possible reasons:

   1) The entity that will charge rent and make…

   On “Property Lines” at the IBJ, a blog by Scott Olson announced: “A local developer plans to build a five-story office building on the site of a closed American Legion post in Broad Ripple.  At 85 feet, the ambitious project would be the tallest in the village, even topping by 10 feet Browning Investment, Inc.’s proposed retail-and-apartment development on College Avenue near the Central Canal.”  

   Olson continues: “The Broad Ripple Village Association’s [BRVA] land-use and…