James Krohe Jr.

 Usually when the subject is Illinois governors and someone brings up cuffs, you know what they mean. But this week I’m talking about attire, not arrests. We’ve had chief executives who preferred casual clothes – Jim Edgar comes to mind – but Bruce Rauner prefers what I call casualty clothes, because he looks likes a […]

 In “Unplugged” I wondered why Illinois’ internet service is so backward. I probably should have specified Downstate Illinois. These days Comcast customers in suburbs can get service with downloads speeds reliably in 125-135 Mbps range for under seventy bucks. Last month Comcast announced its plans to offer 1-gigabit-per-second Internet service to Chicago residential and business customers […]

A faithful reader was kind enough to share her own recollections of Adrian Belew in Springfield. She writes: Back in 1982 or so, I was at my parent’s house visiting. I grew up on South State. My mom was a precinct committee woman (wrong party, but I kept my mouth shut MOST of the time). She said that […]

 This week in the print edition of IT we reran an old Prejudices column of mine about the brief sojourn of rock guitarist Adrian Belew in mid-Illinois. That version of the column had to be edited for length; here’s the original, uncut, as it appeared on June 17, 1982. OCTOBER 15, 1979: I encounter the […]

 In 2014, in “Where is Illinois?” I stuck my big nose into the issue of regional identity.  You would think that the one inarguable fact about Illinois is that it is a Midwestern place. Walt Hickey, a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, commissioned a web poll of self-identified Midwesterners that asked them which states they […]

 In “Back on the roads again,” I noted that Mr Rauner’s proposed budget  would cut funding for public transit in the Chicago area (in spite of increased demand). I asked, is it wise to continue to spend so much of Illinois’ transportation money where its people ain’t? For Illinois to work, Chicago must work. And for Chicago […]

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R.-Paranoia) is a sponsor of  the SAFE Act, recently passed in the House by representatives fretting that members of ISIS might gain entry into the U.S. disguised as refugees. Shimkus was quoted about that in a recent Illinois Issues article about the refugee situation. (There is no reason to call it a “problem.”) […]

 In “With 772 you get eggroll,” we re-ran excerpts from a 1981 column that examined the immigration issue as it appeared in the Springfield of that day. I promised to post the original, much longer essay, so here it is, as it appeared in our paper of Sept. 3, 1981.   Which come first? The […]