As long as the awful law exists, concerning which the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday, be careful what you say to, or write about, unauthorized immigrants. Congress, in one of the federal government’s increasingly frequent offenses against the First Amendment, makes it a cri…

In 2021, Joe Biden was touted as a bold progressive president in the spirit of FDR. In 2023, he’s suddenly being cast as a center-hugging Bill Clinton.

When Iranian activist Mahsa Amini died mysteriously six months ago in police custody, Iran erupted in protests that have resulted in at least 522 deaths, including 70 children, and nearly 20,000 arrests.

In 1994, President Clinton’s certitudes included these: By 2000, America’s high school graduation rate would be 90 percent (it is still not) and students would be among the world’s best in math and science (they are not). Such blithe thinking frequently caused Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan to…

Question: What is a socialist?

President Ronald Reagan said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Well, he’s been proved right once again, this time by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The bank’s failure – the second-largest in U.S. histo…

The demise of Silicon Valley Bank has put the U.S. government into an uncomfortable position, backstopping depositors like never before to prevent a broader and potentially devastating bank run.

There’s hope yet for Planet Earth. Representatives of 70 nations along with oil companies and major shipping lines have agreed in principle on a plan to stabilize oceans, limit exploitation and preserve habitats for marine life. That might not seem like such a big deal for those in landlocke…

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has been a beacon of anti-Trump sanity in a Republican Party that has too little of it these days. In that sense, his announcement that he won’t seek the 2024 presidential nomination, made in a New York Times op-ed Sunday, is something of a disappointment. Bu…

Fifty-eight years after passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, the fight for equal access to the ballot box goes on. Exercising the right to vote – which President Joe Biden described Sunday as crossing “the threshold of democracy and liberty” – is still more difficult for African Americ…

There are different ways of showing presidential courage. One is getting on a train to visit Kyiv in the middle of the war there. Another is picking up the phone and calling Xi Jinping at a time of sharply deteriorating U.S.-China relations.

In the seventh month of his presidency, Joe Biden from Scranton, Pa., ventured to the swing state of Pennsylvania to burnish his blue-collar credentials among blue-collar voters who have been deserting the Democratic Party. At a Mack Trucks assembly plant, he announced an expansion of Buy Am…

Citing a classified intelligence report provided to members of Congress, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the Energy Department has now concluded with “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely began after an unintentional laboratory leak in China.

I was not raised to say “sir” or “ma’am,” so those words have never been part of my regular vocabulary, except for three years in the Army when they were forced on enlisted personnel as the required way to address officers.

The Indiana Senate passed a bill Monday that would raise the speed limit for trucks and other large vehicles on rural highways and interstates, despite opposition from the state’s largest trucking advocacy group.

In autumn 1941, a few German units in Hitler’s drive toward Moscow reached the city’s outer suburbs, close enough to see the Kremlin’s spires. Then Soviet forces counterattacked against a German army that lacked winter clothing because the high command had promised that the Soviet Union woul…

As a candidate for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter called for a government “as honest and decent and fair and competent and truthful and idealistic as are the American people.” The cynics rolled their eyes. They misjudged him.

When friends of the United States abroad enumerate aspects of our politics they simply can’t understand, I’ve found they often point to the inability of our democracy to deal comprehensively with the mass slaughter our permissive gun laws enable.

While we were all busy monitoring the General Assembly as it slogged through proposed legislation, the Indiana Supreme Court sneaked a pretty big development in on us.

America’s large public debt seems poised to again become an electoral issue as we gear up for the 2024 election cycle. Though we are a long way from real debt reduction, it is helpful to gather a few facts to ponder the challenge of balancing the budget. I must say up front that balancing th…

Today’s fractured politics does not provide a climate for productive bipartisan cooperation on many issues, let alone unanimous agreement. That the Indiana Senate would vote 49-0 on a bill to improve mental health services in the state demonstrates a widespread acknowledgement over just how …

On three successive recent days, three successive shootdowns of yet-to-be-identified aerial objects led some to speculate about the specter of extraterrestrial craft.

If a Chinese military spy craft had tried to violate U.S. airspace days before Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union address, I suspect that the Gipper would have not only ordered our military to shoot it down before it entered our territory – but also invited the pilot who took it out to be hi…

Frail humans, fallen creatures in a broken world, rarely approach perfection in any endeavor. In 2010, however, congressional majorities (including only six Republicans) created a perfectly, meaning comprehensively, unconstitutional entity. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also perfe…

Since 2017, GoodRx has helped millions of people find deals on prescription drugs via an app and website. But what its customers may not have known is that the Santa Monica-based health company had also been sharing information about their prescriptions and illnesses with third parties such …

Several readers have asked what is happening in labor markets, and why it is so difficult to find workers. That’s a common concern in the post-COVID world and is worthy of a deep dive into labor market data. The Indiana experience is similar to many states, but with a few notable twists.

I am not the world’s greatest housekeeper, so if you enter my home, you are likely to detect a musty, stale odor or two.

It would be hard to deny that Hoosier voters have made it clear what they want in a governor.

At the Space Telescope Science Institute, on the Johns Hopkins University campus, a constant torrent of data pours in from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, enabling cosmologists to write ancient history. Not the history of the Greeks and Romans, who lived a mere blink ago. Rather, it is th…

They were known by various names – the book women, the book ladies, the packsaddle librarians.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve presented my 2023 economic forecast to groups here in Indiana and Ohio. My short-term economic forecast through 2023 and into 2024 is similar to that of the Federal Reserve. I’m predicting the U.S. dodges a recession in 2023 and faces instead what is often call…

We hope state Sen. Jon Ford’s persistence will finally pay off for low-income Hoosier families. The Terre Haute Republican’s bill to reset the income eligibility requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program received its second reading Thursday after clearing its commi…

Voracious reading – “I am reminded of Andrew Gordon’s masterful book ‘The Rules of the Game’ about the decline of the Royal Navy before the Battle of Jutland” – fuels the fluent writings of Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.). Their distilled essence is: People who are serious about national securi…

The recurring farce of lifting the US government debt ceiling began again this week. As total debt surpasses $31.4 trillion – the current statutory limit – the Treasury is undertaking a series of bookkeeping maneuvers to disguise new borrowing and keep the government operating. At some point…

The recurring farce of lifting the US government debt ceiling began again this week. As total debt surpasses $31.4 trillion – the current statutory limit – the Treasury is undertaking a series of bookkeeping maneuvers to disguise new borrowing and keep the government operating. At some point…

When the coal started running low at the mine my father worked in, he considered several options.

One area of growing frustration for me is the low quality of information Hoosiers receive about labor markets. It isn’t the incessant political spin about the monthly jobs report, or the use of dubious jobs announcements that vexes me. Indiana is hardly alone in deploying political spin. I’m…

The spin was subtle, but significant, in a Republican announcement of a proposed bill to end Indiana’s long history of nonpartisan school board elections.

Families with dark secrets are rarely pleased when one of their own decides to seek therapy, especially when the couch happens to be on a global stage and the truth-seeker a royal son.

You can’t say the 2022 climate data coming out is surprising. But it sure is alarming.

Engaging with the IRS was hard enough even in a typical year. Then came COVID-19, which led to three tax years of misery for many taxpayers and tax professionals. Pandemic-related return backlogs exposed a woefully understaffed agency hobbled by outdated technology.

Eighty years ago, the hinge of history swung just north of Ukraine. There, the outcome of World War II in Europe was determined in the largest tank battle ever, a boiling cauldron in what was called the Kursk salient. Raging from July 5 to Aug. 23, 1943, the clash between German and Soviet f…

I have always been proud to be a Hoosier, proclaiming it boldly even to coastal snobs who almost think of it as a confession of mental deficiency.

There are three types of public debt. Each imposes some risks to the economic fortunes of the nation or a state. Each type differs in important ways. Each can be politically manipulated to make searing, but often mistaken points. Indeed, it requires a rare level of political integrity to spe…

Matt Bell, president and chief executive officer of the Casino Association of Indiana, says the time has come for state lawmakers to clear the way for online gaming.

After the Justice Department released a staged photo of classified documents – including some marked “Top Secret/SCI” (sensitive compartmented information) – which the FBI had spread on the floor of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, President Biden was asked on “60 Minutes” …

Five days after the 2020 presidential election, Sidney Powell, the fabulist lawyer, appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to say there has been “a massive and coordinated” effort to “delegitimize and destroy” Trump votes and “manufacture” Biden votes. Bartiromo asked her to elaborate. …