Opinion

Well, well. George W. Bush is getting a political comeuppance — and it’s coming from conservatives. At issue is his enthusiasm for the liberty-busting USA Patriot Act, a little shop of autocratic horrors that the Bush administration rammed through Congress under cover of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Several of its most intrusive, anti-democratic provisions expire […]

If you feel like we’ve been bashed with a load of lumber, it’s not your imagination. It’s true. It happened on Sunday, when the mighty Chicago Tribune published a feature-length review describing our new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum as a “flop.” The writer, Blair Kamin, is a Pulitzer Prize winner who prides himself on being […]

Isn’t it just pure pleasure to fly the friendly skies these days? I’m sure there are mule trains that offer more joy per mile. I know that airlines have been hard hit financially. But what management genius decided to cut back on employees that serve the public, eliminate everything from meals to movies, jam people […]

When Forbes magazine gleefully headlined its recent article on the re-emergence of nuclear power “The Silence of the Nuke Protesters,” it was, in a way, taunting the complacency of Springfield. “Atomic power is making a comeback,” read the accompanying blurb, “and you hear only muffled squawks from the usual opponents. Could that have something to […]

If you’re confused at all on the question of who is served by Washington, look no further for clarity than the recent enactment of a bankruptcy “reform” law. Ask yourself this: Were you the one clamoring for bankruptcy reform? No. The vast majority of us had no idea that this was even in the works, much […]

Excuse me while I throw up. I’m nauseated by the disgusting treatment that the Bush administration gives to the troops it publicly professes to love. We’ve learned about the Pentagon’s failure to provide body and vehicle armor, plus the administration’s shameful policy to keep America’s wounded soldiers out of the public eye and its efforts […]

“No one’s death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humaneness.” — Hermann Broch, novelist (1886-1951) I have been wondering about the impression Terri Schiavo’s life and death will leave on those of us touched by her parents’ […]

Over the last decade and a half, and especially since the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon has developed methods to intervene in other countries without resorting to direct military force. The military has adopted tactics usually reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency as a means of avoiding congressional oversight and curious journalists. As is generally the […]

Are you smart enough to be a banker with the Export-Import Bank of the United States? Here’s a test: Would you loan $5 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money to a British-owned company so that it can make a profit by selling U.S. nuclear technology to China, which in turn is likely to copy that technology […]

The cover article by Chicago writer Alex Kotlowitz, “Suddenly, a Terrorist?”, in the March 20 New York Times Magazine, is about a small-town Michigan restaurant owner, Ibrahim Parlak, who had been minding his own business, making friends, and raising a family for 13 years until July 29, when the federal government arrested him as a […]

Back in the summer of 1999, Tony Leone had an apartment in Chicago, just behind the Wrigley Building. It was the same summer that Chicago was invaded by some 300 psychedelic cows — bovine monuments, that is, each painted or decorated by an artist, for a project called Cows on Parade. At summer’s end, the […]