“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.”

   In the wake of the mass shooting in the Charleston, South Carolina church Wednesday evening, several commentators have expressed concern that Indiana has no “hate crime” among its statutes. As noted on Wikipedia (my 1996 pocket edition of Black’s Law Dictionary lacks a definition of “hate crime”): “Hate crime laws protect against hate crimes (also known as bias crimes) motivated by enmity or animus against a protected class. Although state laws vary, current statutes permit federal…

   On Wednesday, another mass shooting took place in the United States.

   Before the gun nuts get revved up, this blog will not address the absurd proliferation (oddly, “prolife” is the first part of the word “proliferation”) of assault weapons, etc., in this country. Instead, I want to address another aspect of the incident.

   An individual identified as a forensic psychiatrist appeared on The Charlie Brooker Show after a school shooting in Winenden, Germany, in March, 2009. In…

   For me the hour was late. 9:00 p.m. is when I usually pass into the arms of Morpheus. I get up at 4:40 a.m.

   Someone knocked at my door. I live in a big city and, therefore, with Indy’s cutbacks on safety, I was apprehensive. I saw a short man, oddly dressed in the fashion of the early Twentieth Century. He looked familiar. In one hand he held an umbrella. In the other hand he held an unlit cigar. He rapped again at the door, with the handle (now I saw) of the umbrella. I asked him…

  On this 43rd anniversary of the Watergate break-in, I thought of politics and irony.

   President Nixon was on his way to a landslide re-election victory in 1972, in part because of such tactics as exemplified by the Watergate fiasco, but also because Nixon had made a lot of what today would be called progressive moves (like creating the EPA) although simultaneously prolonging direct United States military involvement in Vietnam so he could make a grandstand peace deal as the 1972…

   There have been several signs, posted on lamp posts, the past couple of weeks, about missing pets in the Warfleigh neighborhood where I live.  This is an area in Broad Ripple west of College, north of the canal, south of the river, and east of Meridian.

   Last week, on my morning walk, I saw a coyote.  Two days ago, again on my morning walk, I saw a coyote.  Perhaps I saw the same coyote.  Perhaps I saw different coyotes.  Coyotes are carnivores.  Jokes about Acme Corporation and…

   The contract Mayor Ballard entered into a contract with Vision Fleet has garnered attention from the media of communications and news coverage that seem most comprehensive in our local political goings-on these days: the local blogosphere.

   As I understand the numbers, the City would pay $35 million for 400 French-manufactured electric vehicles. Photos I have seen of the vehicles purportedly to be provided by the terms of the lease show tiny cars. I was reminded of the original…

   A colleague called me yesterday morning to say The Indiana Law Blog had an item about the picture of a roller coaster having been superimposed on the video of oral argument in Whistle Stop Inn, et al v. City of Indianapolis in which I argued for Appellants/Plaintiffs Monday afternoon.

   First, I was concerned someone might believe I had something to do with the matter. There would be little point to illustrating an oral argument with a graphic the judges could not see. Also, without…

   Broad Ripple—“maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives”—will become a “brand.” In the presentation a couple of years ago about the Whole Foods complex planned for the Village—because, as one presenter noted (to a chorus of boos from the audience that consisted of many customers and fans of longtime locally-owned and operated organic food store Good Earth) Broad Ripple lacks an organic food store—one of the “suits” on the stage of the Broad Ripple Methodist Church said…