Cap City

School, everyone knows, has a reputation for not being fun, and after a summer of leisure, it’s easy to understand why kids might not be eager to go back indoors to learn about stuff like math and science and history. Enter the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, which is holding a free back-to-school event this Saturday […]

Readers might recall recent news that the Illinois State Police Heritage Foundation, the folks who built the downtown memorial park for fallen officers, had gotten ripped off from someone on the inside. Details were scant. The foundation acknowledged that the group’s treasurer has left that position and that the FBI is investigating. It’s still not […]

The Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum is hosting a public tour of the “colored section” of Oak Ridge Cemetery. The tour and presentation will be led by longtime Springfield historian Richard E. Hart. “Many African-Americans buried in this beautiful section of Oak Ridge Cemetery have descendants still living in the Springfield community,” […]

In a May 14 order that surfaced just last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago decided that U.S. District Court Judge Colin Bruce, removed from criminal cases last year, should be sidelined until Sept. 1, when he’ll again be allowed to preside over criminal matters. The judge, once a prosecutor, had been […]

If you think sex offenders have it tough, try being an ad rep for a cannabis company. Rapists, under state law, can live or hang out as close as 500 feet to a school or playground. But the law legalizing weed establishes a 1,000-foot rule for cannabis ads – can’t be any closer than that […]

Some Springfield City Council members not long ago said the price the city pays, if it ever does pay, for land to build a proposed hotel near the downtown Amtrak station is between the developer who would receive tax increment financing money and the owner of land where Club Station House now sits. Aldermen in […]

When we think steamy historic romances, our eye turns to Elizabeth Bacon Custer and her husband George Armstrong, who was court martialed on charges of abandoning his duties to visit his beloved, whom, after her husband’s death, spent the remainder of her life spinning webs of heroism at Little Bighorn. There’s also Jimmy Carter, whose […]

There is no truth to the rumor that a 30-foot-high statue of beleaguered nice guy Joe Crain, erstwhile TV meteorologist, has been commissioned for installation outside city hall, but lordy, stranger things have happened. Crain, as folks from coast to coast know, got pulled from the air by Sinclair Broadcasting last week after observing that […]

Let’s say you want to build something but the land isn’t properly zoned. For Dollar General, that hasn’t been a problem for a store at the intersection of 11th and Ash streets, where construction began a month before the city council on May 21 approved a rezone from industrial uses. Mayor Jim Langfelder, who allowed […]

For now, at least, Springfield has given up on a grand promenade leading down Capitol Avenue to the hallowed dome where legislators work their magic. The state and feds initially forked over more than $10 million to put fake-brick paving on the street between South 12th and Fifth streets and install some plants and sculptures […]

On April 23 the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to allow a citizenship status question on the 2020 Census. The high court will need to reach a decision quickly once oral arguments are presented, because the Census Bureau intends to have questionnaires printed no later than June 30. In 2016, Pew Research estimated that […]