Think About It with Michael Leppert

I am in the business of words. Few people choose a career path that leads to regular debates about whether the use of words like "moreover" or "furthermore" read like the connection of one scolding to another. Even fewer of us enjoy those debates as much as I do. Senate Bill 202 , legislation now on the floor of the Indiana House of Representatives, is an attempt to make public universities more w...

I was inspired to read David Brooks' latest book, "How to Know a Person, The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen," when it came out last fall. I was drawn to it because of a comment a former student made to me around the same time. She said, "I was surprised to find out that your speech class gave me confidence in conversations that used to make me uncomfortable." Teachers love heari...

The "Jesus, He Gets Us" folks made a splash during the Super Bowl on Sunday with their commercial about how "Jesus didn't teach hate, he washed feet." I don't get what their intended return is for that kind of investment, but as far as commercials go, I liked that one as much as any of them this year. The "love your neighbor" messages never get old. To me, anyway. In the last week, the frontrunner...

"What a long, strange trip it's been," said that historic and influential musician, Jerry Garcia. It's astonishing to me that I never fell victim to the evil spell the Grateful Dead cast on so many people over the last fifty years. I have a number of Dead Head friends myself. Lawyers, bankers, you know, the usual folks. Maybe, just maybe when Neil Young was making hits with songs like "Ohio," when...

"Never let a good crisis go to waste," is an adage that is widely attributed to Winston Churchill as the one who said it first. Crediting him with quotes like this is easy to do and difficult to disprove. It sounds like something he would say, right? We know Rahm Emmanuel said it on November 19, 2008, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, as then President-elect Barak Obama's chief of staf...

Representative government in Indiana will look drastically different next year. Or will it? Four of the state's nine U.S. House members from Indiana will not seek reelection this year. Districts currently represented by Reps. Larry Buschon, Jim Banks, Greg Pence, and Victoria Spartz will all get new House members next year. The question is: How will that matter? None of these departing members spe...

For nearly half my life, I have had my eye on the Indiana General Assembly. Looking back on all the things I could have watched during the bulk of the last three decades, I'm deeply saddened by the choice I made. I could have chosen sunsets, priceless art, or what social media now knows is a favorite in my house, Golden Retriever and Dachshund videos. But not Hound Dogs. Nope. The best thing about...

Another government funding deadline looms in Washington on January 19, precisely two weeks before Groundhog Day. While this Congress has been the least productive in modern history, it has produced multiple versions of the shutdown dance, and other predictable jigs, worthy of being added to Groundhog Day 2. How has this movie sequel not been made yet? A movie famously about repeating history hasn'...

During my professional career, I've said it countless times and in countless ways: perception is reality. Oh, I wish I could take those moments back! Not just because of my awful tendency to weave profanity into my version of the cliché, but because the cliché itself has engulfed far too many of us. In 2024, the battle between what is real and what is not will be epic. Yes, yes, it's a big electio...

I am one of those people who is difficult to shop for. Modern Christmas, you know, the capitalist part of the holiday, is something that died in me after my children aged out of the Santa Claus years. Don't get me wrong, those were good times. And those boys got some really cool things that I often enjoyed as much or more than they did. They weren't the only ones who aged out though. I'm old enoug...

t's hard to even recognize good news anymore. No matter what the good news might be, it won't be long before someone from 'the other side' energetically claims it's cherry picked, not completely accurate, or my favorite, that the news is actually bad. Good news of the week: the U.S. economy is outperforming almost every country on Earth.     I should pause there, so those on 'the other side' of th...

Last week, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy attended the New York Times's DealBook event where he was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin. During their discussion, McCarthy reminisced about a striking observation he made during the 2019 State of the Union. "…I look over at the Democrats and they stand up. They look like America. We stand up. We look like the most restrictive country club in Ameri...

I was watching the IU men's team play its first Big Ten game against Maryland with a friend on Friday night when I saw it. During the game's first time out, Mike Braun's newest commercial in his campaign for Governor of Indiana ran. When it was done, we turned and looked at each other for a silent moment before my pal broke the silence, asking, "What the hell is he running for?" My question exactl...

The Portland Public Schools (PPS) and the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) reached a tentative agreement to their labor dispute on Sunday. The impasse had led to a three-week strike, cancelling eleven instructional days in Oregon's largest school district. Students returned to the classroom Monday. The highlights of the dispute weren't novel. Teacher pay was a big item, and this deal landed...

It's that time of year again. The emotions, expectations and traditional series of events converge for six weeks to make up what we refer to as "the holidays." Viewing the goings on around us this opening week of the season might lead one to believe that we all sort of, kind of approach Round One the same way. But obviously, we don't. Thanksgiving is the greatest American holiday. As it exists tod...

With a few vital exceptions across America, the 2023 election was scheduled to deal with local government. Tip O'Neill famously coined the phrase, "all politics is local." Oh, if the former Speaker of the House, who held the gavel for virtually all of the 1980's, could see the America we are living in today. O'Neill's iconic statement still rings true more often than not. Maybe. Sometimes. However...

This one surprised even me. It was a November 1st story by Whitney Downard in the Indiana Capital Chronicle that caught my eye a day after it ran. The story came following an announcement by Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott that the state would purchase $35 million of additional Israeli Bonds, a 55% increase of the $65 million Indiana already held.   Not announcing the purchase would have be...

Las Vegas specializes in making money off of people who just can't walk away. But on Saturday in Sin City, that's exactly what former Vice President Mike Pence did. An ironic place for the most pious politician I've covered to announce what will likely be the end of his political career.   It was a long shot bid from the start, so, its early end was no surprise. "It's become clear to me: This is n...

"A Fever in the Heartland" vividly explains many things about our past. It makes our present feel like a predictable continuum of the same awfulness. The book's subtitle, "The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and The Woman Who Stopped Them," gives context to the story for those who haven't read it yet.   Acclaimed author, Timothy Egan, writes the true story of the rise and fall of both th...

It occurred on February 19, 1942, following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan two months earlier. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, "with the stated intention of preventing espionage on American shores." What the order actually did was one of the greatest atrocities committed by the United States in its history: the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americ...

As news of the horrific attacks in Israel by Hamas began reaching us on Saturday morning, I wondered how long it would take for the political machines in America to begin making it all about us. The clarity to my wonder came quickly. It was almost immediate.   At 11:03 a.m. on Saturday is when I saw the beginning of how the debate will likely be shaped. This is when 2024 presidential candidate, Ni...

I saw the new movie, "Dumb Money," on Friday night. The movie tells the stories of several people, whose only connection to one another was their varied roles in the meteoric ride GameStop took on the stock exchange in 2021. Combined, these stories convey how complicated the concepts of value and values can be.   The term "dumb money" is assigned to individual, noninstitutional investors. Insiders...

It was initially a quiet move made by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last week. As reported by Axios on September 17th , the senate leader had apparently directed the Senate Sergeant at Arms to no longer enforce the chamber's long standing dress code. The code was not changed, modified or modernized. It was, in effect, eliminated.   By September 21 st , Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) was...

Oh, to have the fantastical enthusiasm of a group of people in eastern Oregon! Yes, I meant "fantastical," not fantastic. A group of Oregonians have decided that the best remedy to solve their disagreements with their home state is to have their Oregon turf be ceded to Idaho.   That's right. Citizens for Greater Idaho is a group that is serious about this . They don't identify with the coastal "li...

It is unusual to have certainty of how the executive of a government, whether a mayor, governor, or president, will respond to an unexpected crisis. The responses to those crises often become what defines the leadership of that executive. They define a leader's character.   Whether it is an unexpected foreign war, a horrific terrorist attack, or a deadly pandemic, how the person in charge leads th...