Daniel Lee

Sports Leagues and TV Networks Like the Gambling Odds

Once you had to go to Nevada to wager legally on the big game. Now most can do it from the couch. Princeton, Ind. We gambled a little at the Gibson County Ambulance Service in the late 1970s. Nothing serious, a bit of quarter and dollar poker between…

The Midwest’s Tornadoes Predate Global Warming

Activists wasted no time attributing last week’s tragic tornado outbreak in the Midwest to climate change. My hometown in southwest Indiana would like a word. Princeton, Ind., was the final community struck by the terrible 1925 Tri-State tornado…

In the Civil War Graveyard, Every Headstone Tells a Story

The ghost tales we heard in a local cemetery had nothing on the real lives of the people buried there. Princeton, Ind. Near the YMCA’s Camp Carson here in southwest Indiana, there is a tiny abandoned cemetery hidden beyond a steep, weedy road cut.…

You Can Play Through History on Michigan’s Mackinac Island

A golf course dedicated to tradition proves it’s easier to defend certain values than it is to recover them. Mackinac Island, Mich. Play the 123-year-old Wawashkamo Golf Course on Michigan’s Mackinac Island and you won’t soon forget it, not least…

Submission Is on Exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art

A progressive cultural institution issues a groveling mea culpa for a poorly worded job posting. Indianapolis “Battle Between Carnival and Lent” is a 17th-century oil painting by Jan Miense Molenaer in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of…

Our American family — my family — survived one Civil War. Can we make it through another?

With Confederate soldiers on one side and Union soldiers on the other, my family shows how our differences don't have to divide us. Opinion contributor My maternal great-great grandfather finished the Civil War at Hart Island Prisoner of War camp,…

At a Georgia Graveyard, Reflections on a Divided Nation

My ancestors lie on a peaceful tree-covered hill overlooking the site of the Battle of Atlanta. Atlanta Sylvester Cemetery clings to a steep, magnolia- and oak-covered hillside east of downtown Atlanta, on ground where Federal and Confederate troops…

Gentlemen, Don’t Start Your Engines

With the Indy 500 postponed until August, it’s been an unusually quiet spring in Indianapolis. Indianapolis For more than a century the month of May has meant one thing in Indiana: The Indianapolis 500, our annual celebration of spring and the…

Stocking Shelves in Covid-19 America

Retail and grocery workers persevere, wondering which is worse: disease or economic devastation? Greenwood, Ind. Employees now receive health checks at the department store where I work part-time. I’m asked about fevers and chills, unexplained…

Why The Roger Stone Brouhaha Is Not Simply A Rorschach Test Of Your Politics

A bit of video has been making the rounds of the Internet lately, showing at some distance a guy on a swing set. The distance and the low light in the clip makes it one of those reversible images; he seems at first to be swinging with his back to…

Could the Internet Power a Small-Town Renaissance?

Online retailers are doing to the mall what the mall once did to my hometown of Princeton, Indiana. Indianapolis This time of year, the late-night sky southeast of the city sparkles with what looks like a long line of evening stars: transport jets…

The Best Way to Learn Gun Safety Is With Real Guns

Wielding force is nothing compared with the power of controlling, disciplining and managing it. Recently I found a fascinating remnant of America’s long relationship with guns: a 1956 Life magazine about a conservation officer teaching firearm safety…

New York Mag: Don’t Say ‘Gun Control’ So We Don’t Scare Americans With The Truth

‘There is no need to alienate the many Americans who might be receptive to what is generally a popular cause, but who fear – rationally or not – that some of their rights will be stripped away.’ A piece in New York Magazine last weekend pressed the…

It was mere chance that tragedy struck Florida and not here in Indiana

The day of the shooting, our own children sang a piece of devotional music, asking us to acknowledge sorrow and tragedy. Opinion contributor As despairing parents in Parkland, Florida waited last Wednesday night for news of children still missing…

A ‘School Shooting’ With a Pellet Gun

I spent five years as an emergency medical technician and saw the result of more than one shooting up close. Every case horrifies in its own way, and each has its own tangle of causes. But school shootings are the most painful. The shooting this week…

Addressing America’s Opiate Crisis Should Involve Making People Responsible For Their Behavior

Sheriff Richard K. Jones of Ohio’s Butler County says his deputies won’t carry Narcan, a drug that can almost miraculously reverse overdoses of heroin and opiate pain medications that might otherwise be fatal. At nearly $40 a dose, the drug (known…

President Trump Has Certainly Unified The Country’s Political Class—Against Him

As far back as October 2015, candidate Donald Trump billed himself as duct tape for a broken nation. “I’m going to unify. This country is totally divided,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. It turns out he was right about being a unifier, at least in…

We Need Guns Before the Cops Arrive

The attack on congressmen last week illustrates the realities of sudden violence. There’s a saying among gun-carry permit advocates: “When seconds count, police are minutes away.” That was not the case last week but only because Majority Whip Steve…

Butler University Offers Credit For Joining Trump ‘Resistance’

How exactly does one grade participation in a protest? Do broken civilian car windows count less than those of police cars? It’s hard not to wonder if the Butler University bookstore will have the class supplies needed for a fall course called…

What the other Washington thinks of President Trump

Skip to main content Opinions Editorial Board The Opinions Essay Global Opinions Voices Across America Post Opinión D.C., Md. & Va. Cartoons Podcasts This city of 11,000, nestled among a handful of low hills rising from table-flat Hoosier farm…