Editorials

Indiana University made the right decision in rejecting an effort to take down a painting that has been hanging in one of its lecture halls for more than 75 years.

The painting by Thomas Hart Benton shows hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross in front of a church.

Our email boxes regularly runneth over with messages from political parties and, to be honest, most of those don’t get that much attention, especially in an off-year in which there are no elections.

But a few recent emails from Indiana’s Republican party and from U.S. Senate candidate Todd Rokita concern us. They raise criticism of Sen. Joe Donnelly for profiting from a family business that had shipped jobs out of the country, in this case, Mexico.

We wish the best of luck to organizers who met in Rome Thursday night to seek ways to both honor the upcoming bicentennial of the Rome Courthouse and to preserve it for future generations.

The courthouse needs work and most pressing, perhaps, is its roof. Other parts of the building need work and updates, such as the kitchen, for it to continue serving the community for events such as the annual Dogwood Tour.

Ever since Mozart Street was widened and extended in the 1990s, it has become one of the two main east-west through streets in central Tell City, along with Tell Street.

That necessitated installing a traffic light at the intersection of 12th and Mozart streets. But a change in the past month of the controlling of the signal there means Mozart Street drivers spend a lot more time idling at red lights – if they obey the signal.