Feature | Wednesday, April 16,2008

Addicted to coal

The battles being waged here will shape the nation’s energy debate

Untitled Document All across Illinois — at town-hall meetings, in federal courts, in the Capitol — battles are raging over coal power, the outcome of which

Feature | Wednesday, April 9,2008

The folly of turning water into fuel

The government’s ethanol push is depleting essential aquifers — and hastening the next Dust Bowl

By Stan Cox

Untitled Document With corn selling at record-high prices, Steve Albracht expects to have no trouble paying his electric bills this year. Albracht irrigates 1,000 acres of corn n

Feature | Wednesday, April 9,2008

The payday loan trap

Lawmakers try to close a loophole that left Illinoisans vulnerable to predatory lenders

By R. L. Nave

Untitled Document All is quiet at a Springfield quick-loan business on a recent Saturday afternoon. The color scheme of the building’s façade resembles

Feature | Wednesday, April 2,2008

Demonizing Obama

Why Christian conservatives are worried sick about Barack Obama

By Jeannette Batz Cooperman

Untitled Document We’re in the middle of the most Bible-toting, Scripture-quoting presidential campaign in recent memory. So where are the Christians — the

Feature | Wednesday, April 2,2008

Devil’s in the details

James Earl Ray had ties to Chicago mob, says his book-promoting brother

By C. D. Stelzer

Untitled Document The last time John Larry Ray visited New York City was in 1965. He was between jobs, collecting unemployment benefits. While there, he remembers, Ma

Feature | Wednesday, March 26,2008

The $3 Trillion War

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz explains the punishing cost of staying in Iraq

By Peter Kadzis

Untitled Document Five years later, President George W. Bush and his minions were wrong about the need to fight in Iraq, wrong about the way to fight in Iraq, and wro

Feature | Wednesday, March 19,2008

Echoes of injustice

An Illinois author discusses his experiences in JFK’s White House as the first black Secret Service agent

By R. L. Nave

Untitled Document In April 1961, John F. Kennedy came to Chicago to pay tribute to Mayor Richard Daley, who just a few months earlier had delivered Illinois to the Democrat in th

Feature | Wednesday, March 19,2008

Danny the dealer

The leader of Springfield's notorious cocaine ring talks about his life in crime — and why he's glad he was caught

By Dusty Rhodes

Untitled Document On Oct. 28, 2005, Danny J. Sidener Jr. went to Family Video on MacArthur Boulevard to accept a delivery from a Chicago business associate. This ass

Feature | Wednesday, March 12,2008

Winging it

At least 18 species of gulls have been spotted on Lake Springfield

By H. David Bohlen

Untitled Document They may look like little blizzards, but those fast-moving cloudlike formations over Lake Springfield aren’t precipitation. They’re gulls, flying lo

Feature | Wednesday, March 12,2008

Thinking small

Nanotechnology represents one of the fastest-growing industries of the future, but its promises and risks may be overstated.

By Todd Seavey

Untitled Document By the middle of the century, the inventor Ray Kurzweil suggests in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, human beings will live in perpetual cloud