This is the time of year when classroom responsibilities overwhelm my journalistic passions, and my writing tends to be more reflection than exposition. And let me tell you, nothing spurs reflexive contemplation like finding yourself in polar opposition to someone whose life work has profoundly influenced your own.

In my case, that someone is Dr. Philip J. Landrigan from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, whose research at the Children's Environmental Health Center there first caught my attention in the late 1990s when I was a senior environmental writer at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). When I began exploring the links between toxic pollution and autism 17 months ago, a 2006 study Landrigan co-wrote titled "Developmental neurotoxicity of industrial chemicals" was the first link that Google produced when I searched for "autism and environment."

Nearly a year and a half later, I am persuaded that mercury and/or other chemicals in vaccines are among the industrial chemicals that caused the autism epidemic of the past two decades. I do not believe that vaccines caused the epidemic, but my work has convinced me that neurotoxins in them contributed to it. And in some children, they did cause autism. The question for them isn't whether, it's how, and it demands an answer.

As anyone who has walked the halls of the U.S. Capitol can attest, the hairstyles of male politicians oftentimes rival Stonehenge for implausible construction.

Perhaps it is easy for me to say, since I don't have to brandish my own rapidly receding hairline on C-Span, but Indiana voters seem to be treated to more than our share of toupees, hair plugs and comb-overs elaborate enough to make Donald Trump blush.

But, if hair provided the window on the political soul, the true look of the moment would be the faux-hawk.

CWA Local 4730 issued the following statement on Feb. 23 in response to IU President Michael McRobbie's State of the University.

Indiana University continues to ignore the needs of its support staff. While many departments have acted responsibly and creatively to avoid cutting staffing levels, it has only tempered the damage caused by having a workforce that is constantly overworked while being chronically underpaid.

The October 2009 Board of Trustees meeting provided ample evidence that IU is willing to continue to fund buildings and faculty hires but not provide for the financial needs of its current staff.

Marty Pieratt's awareness of autism began when the 1988 movie Rain Man was being filmed in Cincinnati, a year or so before his son, Carter, was born. Pieratt worked as a reporter on local television, and his editors assigned him stories on autism, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. In the movie, Hoffman plays an autistic savant, Cruise his long-lost brother.

"I can remember doing stories on autism," Pieratt said. "But little did I know that I'd personally be faced with the quintessential autism story."

Carter was born on "12-11-87," Marty says lyrically, and for the first three years of his life, "He was perfect, a mouthy little toddler." But soon after the family purchased a small farm in Walton on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River Valley about 20 miles from Cincinnati, Marty noticed his son had an unusual fascination with the grass after mowing. Carter also ran wind sprints, over and over again.

If they saw Alice's suffering close up, I think that WellPoint executives, Republican members of Congress and conservative pundits would help her.

Alice is one of my Indiana Legal Services clients, who lives alone in a town in eastern Indiana. Several years ago, she was crushed in a gruesome car accident, which left her with injuries severe enough that she was quickly declared fully disabled by the Social Security Administration.

But, like many other Hoosiers with devastating illnesses and injuries, Alice has been told by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration that she does not meet our state's standard for being disabled and thus does not qualify for Medicaid health insurance coverage.

On Thursday, Jan. 21, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that’s already reverberating throughout the nation.

The decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allows business corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to electoral campaigns, including attack ads. The Court ruled that for-profit corporations can exercise their First Amendment rights to lobby candidates by buying the outcomes of elections.

Even President Obama, in an ephemeral moment of liberal feeling, opposes the decision. According to the New York Times, right after the court issued the decision, Obama called it “a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.”

With all of the fear spewing from the conservative Right about hope and change destroying this country, we have seen little to back up their claim over the last year. Wall Street and the financial industries have received billions, while homeowners lose their homes and file for bankruptcy. The military-industrial complex continues to grow while being fed regular doses of cash.

Health care reform proposals went from a universal, single-payer system down to a public option to expanding Medicare for those 55 and older to nothing. However, as the debate comes to a close, health care reform may lead to people forced to buy insurance, or face a financial penalty, and being taxed if fortunate enough to have medical coverage!

Now, the playing field for working people has became more uneven with the ruling by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Overturning a precedent set over 60 years ago, the decision found that corporations, nonprofit organizations and labor unions no longer would be restricted from utilizing their own funds to create and run ad campaigns for the purpose of supporting or defeating candidates.

Earlier this month, Indiana House and Senate committees delivered bipartisan support for a proposed amendment to the Indiana Constitution that would permanently cap property taxes. And Governor Daniels insisted that slashing the budget for K-12 education was a necessary "last resort" in response to the state budget woes.

It is tempting to criticize these developments. After all, responding to short-term political expediency by locking in property tax caps is the fiscal equivalent of painting ourselves into a corner and burying land mines under all the exit paths. Ask the folks in California how Proposition 13 is working these days.

But, on second thought, perhaps I should get with the times. If constitutional amendments are the flavor of the moment, I would like to propose my own addition to the Indiana Constitution.

On a bench outside the First United Methodist Church, John Hammond, 52, sits clutching a black lighter and a slowly burning cigarette. Across the street, people mingle at the bus stop, their hands shoved into pockets, their faces downturned against the cutting November wind. An empty Styrofoam cup drifts down the sidewalk, colliding with the skittering leaves left over from fall.

The sound of buses makes the otherwise quiet street sound monstrous. Groans of engines and the screech of brakes echo against the stone face of the church. Women in business suits pass by, walking quickly and avoiding eye contact. Men in shaggy coats nod and say hello.

Hammond's bright blue eyes see it all from below the brim of his red and white baseball cap. "I worked all my life," he says. "My background is psychology and business management from IU, with 25 years' management experience. You wouldn't expect to find somebody like me down here. But it can happen to anybody."

Hunger, homelessness and pestilence stalk the land. We are not talking here about Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, Iraq or Pakistan. The territory in question is distant from the occupied, war-ravaged regions of the world where cruise missiles and ordnance have turned once proud cities into rubble and devastated the economic infrastructure of nations and where the wretched of the earth, the living dead, the maimed or injured survivors of aerial bombardment and ground battles -- orphans, bereaved parents, wives, husbands and other victims of violence -- crowd in their millions or are herded into refugee camps.

This country situated thousands of miles from the theater of war in West, Central and South Asia is none other the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the world.