Is it time for sainthood or a public reckoning? I was thinking about that Sunday as my phone beeped with tribute after tribute for Kobe Bryant. No one can deny Bryant was one of the great athletes of his generation and died much too soon. But it is also undeniable that a 2003 sexual assault […]
Scott Reeder
Scott Reeder is a staff writer at Illinois Times.
Posted inOpinion
U of I stifles press freedom
I’ve sat across from many victims of violent crime and had them share what they have suffered. The more intimate the violation the less likely they are to want to be identified. I can appreciate this. It took me 40 years to publicly disclose that I was sexually assaulted when I was 12. Victims often […]
Posted inOpinion
Losing Mom
GALESBURG – My mother’s breathing was ragged. I held her left hand with each labored gasp. My dad, her husband of almost 59 years, gripped her right. As she breathed slowly, shallowly, my dad cried out, “Save a place for me in heaven.” Tears fell down the face of my sister, who sat at the […]
Posted inOpinion
Paul Findley remembered names
There is power in names. That is something of which former Illinois Congressman Paul Findley was keenly aware. Findley, a Republican from Jacksonville, died last month at age 98. Findley, who served in the U.S. House from 1960 until 1982, was an early critic of American military involvement in Vietnam. “We were looking for a […]
Posted inOpinion
Consider more inpatient mental health treatment
Santa Fe, Texas – Last week, I sat in this small Texas town and listened to a mother tell me how a gunman killed her son as he hunkered in a classroom closet. Her boy was one of 10 people killed in the May 18, 2018, shooting at Santa Fe High School. In the wake […]
Posted inOpinion
Denied communion but who cares?
After being elected to the Illinois legislature in 1936, Richard J. Daley would do the same thing every morning in Springfield. The future mayor of Chicago would kneel and a priest would intone: Corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam, Amen.” And then the Host would be placed on his tongue. […]
Posted inOpinion
What happened to a journalist who did his job
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -Edmund BurkeMichael Leathers is a good man who did something. And it cost him his job. Back in 2002, he was the editor of Illinois Baptist, a newspaper covering Southern Baptist congregations across the Land of Lincoln. When he […]
Posted inOpinion
I too waited 40 years to report sexual assault
“Do most women wait 40 years to claim someone tried to rape them? Or is that just liberal women?” –A meme posted on my Facebook news feed by a high school friend. When I read those words, I sighed. Last December I wrote about being assaulted when I was 12. And it took me 40 years […]
Posted inOpinion
Who to believe? The gov or a jailhouse snitch?
Whose word is less reliable, a jailhouse snitch’s or Gov. Bruce Rauner’s? That’s a question I have been asking myself these past two weeks. You’ll remember that the governor ran four years ago on a platform of free-market capitalism and criminal justice reform. Some cynics, at the time, questioned his sincerity. Was he just trying […]
Posted inNews
Jeanne Ives’ GOP insurgency
“Don’t you think this will be the year of the insurgent?“ Jeanne Ives said as she strolled across the lawn of the Illinois Statehouse. Synonyms for insurgent include rebel or revolutionary, agitator, renegade, freedom fighter. Ives like to think those terms describe her candidacy. The state representative from Wheaton is challenging Gov. Bruce Rauner in […]
Posted inNews
Local landmark
Even in his hometown of Springfield, Mark Janus is a relatively unknown figure. Janus is a state employee who works in a nondescript office investigating child support claims. He’s also a divorced father of two adult children and he volunteers to help Boy Scouts. Until recently there was little in the 65-year-old man’s life that […]
Posted inNews
The GOP’s fresh face
It’s not unusual for Illinois politicians to end up in prison, but usually it happens after they are elected, not before. For Erika Harold, the only Republican running for Illinois attorney general, prison is a place she visits often as part of her ministry with Prison Fellowship. With last month’s surprise announcement by Attorney General […]
