Editor’s Note

 The four millennials on the panel at last week’s Citizens Club program were all generous about Springfield, several saying they could see themselves still living here when they are 50 years old. They like the accessibility of a small city, where you can always talk to the mayor, and they find it easy to make […]

 Some of us worry that the distracter-in-chief has done it again, fooling us into worrying about high crimes and misdemeanors while ignoring this administration’s policy failures (see Britt, p. 4). But some leaders are getting ready for a post-Trump world. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has followed her Green New Deal initiative with an expansive package […]

Next time we want a building to help the poor, or a building for any controversial purpose, why not separate the issues of what we want to build from where we want to build it.  That way we who care about the poor can make a case for a better building with more services, with […]

Lest we hereabouts take New Salem for granted, Dr. Mark Pohlad of DePaul University brought from Chicago his passion for the reconstructed pioneer village to the “lunch and learn” audience at University of Illinois Springfield this week. Never mind that the reconstruction of the 1930s didn’t get all the locations and the details right, or […]

The Sangamon County Citizens Survey, released last week and available online, showed that 93% of respondents have health care insurance coverage and 89% have a primary care doctor. Yet despite having doctors and insurance, a lot of residents just don’t feel good. Some 39% said that in the last month there was at least one […]

We knew this, but it is worth reminding ourselves, that national Republicans weren’t always so anti-immigrant as they are today. It was presidential candidate Ronald Reagan who hailed “millions of immigrants from every corner of the earth” as a sign that God made America a “city on a hill.” President George W. Bush championed comprehensive […]

 President Trump thinks it must have been a conspiracy that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to escape suicide watch to kill himself. It’s true, and here’s more. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not had a permanent director since May 2018, and the bureau is seriously understaffed. The Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein was housed, is functioning […]

There is no shortage of good proposals to whittle away at the gun problem. The fact that the Ohio shooter killed nine people in 30 seconds puts the focus once again on AK-47s and large capacity magazines in guns made to kill people, not to hunt wildlife. But the primary focus should be on politics.. […]

 Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. continues to say what needs to be said. Here’s part of his statement issued July 15: “Do not be afraid of that man behind the curtain in the White House. It’s only Donald Trump, the Distractor in Chief, pushing the ‘send’ button on his computer, spreading division and pain across the […]

Now that the Code Red storm has passed, Storm Team 20 still regularly warns us that terrible weather may be coming, but now adds that there is but a “slight to moderate risk” that any of it will happen. The real storm is the one being stirred up by Ana “Bulldog” Espinosa and the news […]

 Abraham Lincoln said it was time, 87 years after the founding Fourth of July, for the nation to have a “new birth of freedom” and it is time again. Nobody knows quite what to do about racism, but equality is valued so we keep trying. Health is another shared value, but disease is the rule, […]

Illinoisans got used to thinking that because we abolished capital punishment in 2011 the moral dilemma of the death penalty now belongs only to residents of other states. But now the guilty verdict in the Brendt Christensen murder case is a reminder that there is work to do. The sentencing phase of the trial will […]