March 30 2021

John Krull commentary: Georgia on our minds

Many Americans have Georgia on their minds these days. The Peach State has become a kind of Rorschach test for this country. People on opposite sides of the United States’ great partisan and ideological dividing line look at the same facts and events in Georgia and see entirely “...”

March 28 2021

John Krull commentary: Evan Bayh, Joe Biden and unlearned lessons

Some lessons people have to learn again and again. And some lessons they never learn at all. Years ago, when Evan Bayh was governor, a Republican chieftain told me his party had made a fundamental mistake with the then young prince of the Indiana Democratic Party. This was near t “...”

March 22 2021

John Krull Commentary: Yesterday’s wrongs, today’s suffering

If there is one thing we Americans should know by now, it is that the mistakes we have made as a nation—the wrongs we have done—live on. With tragic results. This is particularly true of those wrongs born of bigotry. We still struggle with the consequences of the decision to “...”

March 15 2021

John Krull commentary: Enemies, a love story

These days, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb must feel like he’s channeling the late vaudeville comedian Joey Adams. Adams was the first to say, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” Holcomb is having a rough, rough 2021 legislative session. Indiana lawmakers swatted down “...”

March 11 2021

John Krull commentary: An assault on justice and truth

Patricia Payne remembers the moment. The moment when she began to grasp how pernicious systemic racism was and is. It was in the early 1960s. She was just out of Indiana University, a fresh, young second-grade teacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools. An energetic young Black w “...”

March 08 2021

John Krull commentary: Not canceling, just editing

This column started out as something different. I wrote a few hundred words. Then I decided the piece wasn’t working. It didn’t say what I wanted it to. I also worried people would be bothered by some sections and thus miss my overarching point. So, I deleted what I had writt “...”

February 19 2021

John Krull commentary: Lawmakers behaving badly, again

Something about Black people speaking their minds scares the heck out of conservatives who like to present themselves as staunch defenders of liberty. These rightwing tough guys are so freaked out by free speech that they melt down even when the people who are calling them out do “...”

February 08 2021

John Krull commentary: Susan Bayh and the steel behind the smile

When the news broke that Susan Bayh had died, several memories of her floated to the forefront. Strangely, the most prominent one may have been the most trivial. It was from 1992. She and her husband, Evan, were campaigning in Evansville as part of a bus tour with the newly anoin “...”

January 19 2021

John Krull commentary: Holcomb talks, rather than speaks

Gov. Eric Holcomb did something sly with this fifth State of the State address Tuesday night. He made a case for government and government action. Holcomb argued from the start of his prosaic speech that the state was better off because Indiana’s government had functioned and b “...”