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GALLIGAN: Mayor responds to column about canal
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CLERE: Let's talk about education
Of all the weighty issues before the Indiana General Assembly, education should be the furthest removed from politics. Instead, it's among the most political.
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JOHNSON: Return to juvenile hall
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EDITORIAL: Squashing tax credit would hurt New Albany
What works for one may not work for all and New Albany may pay a price for that.
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CUMMINS: The relationship of dogs in relationships
The deficit and national debt is critical and must be reduced. Mention raising taxes and citizens go nuts, so that’s out. Curtail spending, but where? Not in my backyard. Since dogs don’t have constitutional rights, except freedom to bark, and are not legal citizens, why isn’t a tax levied on them? It’s a goldmine. In 2008, Americans spent over $42 billion on pets, $20 billion of which was for health care including toenail hygiene, shiny-fur shampoo and floss.
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DODD: DUMB Act could revive manhood, save marriages
Kim and I tend to have a very common domestic struggle on a daily basis involving the television remote control. I need it, she wants it, and there is little room for compromise.
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HOWEY: A Coats-Bayh race engaged 12 years later
In the very twilight of his Senate career, Dan Coats stopped by my office at NUVO Newsweekly in late 1998 to recap his career and bid farewell.
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STAWAR: Talking longevity 101
I just got back from attending a funeral for my sister’s father-in-law. Pete was a jovial short-statured Italian-American, who lived to be 101 years old. He was actually born in Indiana, but spent his childhood back in Italy.
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STAWAR: Man's worst friend
I recently read with admiration about the local animal shelters and all the wonderful volunteers who work there. The animals are all so appealing. I wish I could feel as positive about our own dog, but I just finished burying the wire for the containment system for the fourth time.
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GREGORY: Reader says give Obama a chance
For the past few weeks, the Republicans on the Hill have been wallowing in their giddiness over the lowering of the poll numbers of Obama’s presidency. It is obvious that the only way they will be satisfied is if he becomes an abject failure, even if it means taking the country down with him.
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NASH: Dying to live a long life
This week marks the anniversary of what has been called “The day the music died.”
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BAYLOR: Starving for education
Are you fed up with words you don’t understand? Tired of picking up the newspaper to read your favorite contrarian columnist, then coming to a screeching halt when he uses “troglodyte” and “disgruntlement” in the same sentence?
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HARBESON: Columnist flummoxed by Oxley’s hiring
In some ways, I can understand why Indiana’s Branchville Correctional Facility decided to hire Dennis Oxley, Jr. as a program director. A major part of the job will be helping inmates learn how to behave once released and as an ex-state legislator, he certainly has a lot of experience telling other people how they should live their lives. The problem is that Oxley hasn’t exactly been a shining example of good behavior lately.
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RINKER: Misconceptions about health care and capitalism
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GESENHUES: Marriage and other difficult situations
One day I will write a memoir about life with my husband titled, “There's No Such Thing as a Good Marriage, Only a Long One.”
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McDONALD: Confront the brutal facts on education
In his book “Good to Great,” author Jim Collins quotes the late Admiral James Stockdale who said when you are in a tough situation you must “confront the brutal facts.”
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RINKER: Misconceptions about health care and capitalism
A sadly misinformed gentleman recently wrote a letter bashing health insurance companies and capitalism in general.
I have dealt with various insurance companies for many years and they do not decide what doctor you use or what medication you take. Even health maintenance organizations allow you to choose your doctor from a list of those that accept that plan — much like Medicare, which some doctors do not accept. Many HMOs allow you to go to any doctor, they just pay a lesser amount for doctors or drugs not on their list.
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CLERE: The wheels are coming off
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HILL: Addressing our economy in the short and long term
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CURRAN: Columnist sounds off on proposed 'district'
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DODD: Chapala was one tough, but tender, hombre
We had just lost a wrestling meet at Charlestown High School during my sophomore year, one in which we were, at least in Coach Tom Chapala’s mind, heavily favored.
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CUMMINS: Doomsday or rapture, take your pick
There’s no getting around it, the world is coming to an end. There are so many things on my mind like balancing my budget and the Super Bowl, I can’t be worried whether the world will end with a doomsday or the rapture. Most everything has two sides. We choose a religion, a liberal or conservative stance and diet or regular.
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JOHNSON: Time out for a laugh or two
People send me things via e-mail. You probably get them, too; chain e-mails with cute pictures, funny stories, calls to political action — and requests for help from Nigerian widows whose husbands left millions in a foreign bank account.
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HOWEY: The decks were stacked against Obama
INDIANAPOLIS — We are not seeing any “1.19.13” bumper stickers — yet — but at the end of President Obama’s first year at the White House, he is receiving a stinging rebuke from the most liberal state in the union with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate.
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President of Animal Control explains Authority’s position on Fraze event
As the President of the New Albany-Floyd County Animal Control Authority, I feel I need to make a statement about the events that occurred over the last two weeks concerning the seizure of Katherine Fraze’s dogs and their stay at the animal shelter.
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STAWAR: A portable feast?
When I grew up in the early 1960s, there weren't as many fast food restaurants as there are today, so whenever we went for a long drive in the country, my father would always take along a smoked sausage, saltines, and a jar of olives. When we kids would complain about being hungry, he would take out his Bull knife and cut us a large hunk of sausage. With some olives and crackers, this was considered quite the treat. It also may explain my lifelong sodium addiction.
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SUDDEATH: Cover your kid’s ears, it’s Tim Tebow
Pushing sex and alcohol apparently doesn’t raise too many eyebrows when it comes to Super Bowl advertisements.
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NASH: Do you have what it takes?
Beginning last Wednesday and continuing until Feb. 19 at noon, citizens wanting to be candidates for elected offices could put their names (and their necks) on the line.
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SMITH: Pray away
New Albany’s nine council members earned their paychecks last Thursday. The Tribune covered the council proceedings quite thoroughly over the next several days. A few times a year, it takes several days for reporters to adequately cover the actions of the city’s legislative body.
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BAYLOR: The Faux in all of us
We interrupt today’s scheduled examination of TIF areas, EDIT funds, CDBG grants and UEZ legislation in order to add a few more acronyms to the raging bonfire of troglodyte discontent, in the form of this Disassociated Press (DP) dispatch.
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HARBESON: Education should respect the individual
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ State of the State address placed a lot of emphasis on the ineffectiveness of the government school system. He told us that Indiana’s education system is failing many elementary-age kids in what most people consider to be its most basic assignment: teaching students to read.
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GESENHUES: Chasing my cousins
Two of my cousins are training for a marathon. They are sisters who also happen to be full-time moms with careers outside of the home. One has a sixteen-year old daughter who is as self-sufficient as a teenager can be. The other has four kids under the age of thirteen; her youngest is only sixteen-months-measuring in on the zero-to-little self-sufficiency scale.
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McDONALD: Columnist moved by impressions
Often as educators, we don’t realize the power of our words or the impression that we make upon our students until years later. As for me, there are days that are frustrating when students just don’t seem to be as engaged as they could be. However, they are watching and listening.
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ALBATYS: Economic recovery calls for hard work, good choices
The questions on the minds of most of us today is whether or not we have seen the worst of the recent recession. And, if the worst is truly behind us, how much damage has been done to the American economy?
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CLERE: I asked and you answered
Thanks to your participation in my survey, I have a better understanding of where you would like the legislature to focus its attention.
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HALL: Mayor says thanks for Christmas spirit
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CURRAN: We should get together and catch up sometime
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DODD: If we only had a brain
I was sitting in my easy chair one evening a couple of weeks ago, and I am one of those people who really zones in when watching television.
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JOHNSON: A three-legged stool
According to their Volunteer Handbook, part of the mission of the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) is “to protect the public by preparing virtually all offenders for community release in the most cost-effective manner ...”
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CUMMINS: The Earth shakes when it wants to
Why? Why does God hate Haiti, and love America so much? Is it because we have we heed his warning? In Revelations 16:18, “And there were voices and thunders and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as has not been since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great.” The word “earthquake” appears 16 times in the Bible, which is warning enough.
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HOWEY: Critical ‘Mass’ reaching Indiana Democrats
INDIANAPOLIS — Usually the people of Massachusetts are seen from the Hoosier perspective as outside the norm: The one state that held out against President Reagan’s landslide in 1984 when morning returned to America.
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STAWAR: Lies and pyramid schemes
A few weeks ago we went to a museum in Cincinnati with our daughter and four young grandchildren. Since we neglected to take along a stroller, my wife Diane rented one at the museum.
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NASH: Thank you for reading
When I first started writing this column I thought I had about three months worth of writing in me. I figured I would run out of things to say and have to retire with my fans begging for more. I am coming up shortly on my sixth month anniversary of writing this column.
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KRUEGER: It doesn’t matter
At the beginning of the 1990s, we were annexed by the town of Clarksville. Our property taxes doubled and, at the urging of some in the area, I ran for councilman.
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HARBESON: It’s time to get deeper with graduation numbers
If you were a business owner with eight stores and only two of them reached your minimum sales goal for the year, would you say it was a success?
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BAYLOR: Doctor, it hurts when you do that
I’m all right now, but last week I was in rough shape. It was the morning after a long night spent chasing the ideal beer to pair with goose liver pate. It turned out to be Baltic Porter, barely nosing out a Trappist-brewed Tripel.
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McDONALD: Comment by French official out of line
French Minister for Humanitarian Relief Alain Joyandet called on the United Nations to clarify the role of the U.S. in Haiti. Joyandet claimed that the U.S. military buildup is hampering aid efforts.
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GESENHUES: The artist in all of us
In April 2008, I got to hear bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert talk at Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville. Her novel “Eat, Pray, Love” had just been published in paperback and she was doing the book tour.
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CLERE: These bills could make a difference
Each member of the House of Representatives is allowed to introduce up to five bills in the short session. Here's a summary of the five I introduced.
