FALLUJAH, IRAQ – “Ego Buster” was painted clearly on the side of an American tank that rumbled past the Fallujah police headquarters. Below the tank’s name, its crew had painted a motto: “1-2 to the head.” The tank was part of a convoy of heavily armored U.S. infantry vehicles patrolling Fallujah, while a handful of […]
Rich Miller
Posted inOpinion
Republican roundup
This seems like a good time to rate our various U.S. Senate candidates. Let’s start with the Republicans. • Jack Ryan. A handsome multimillionaire with three Ivy League degrees, he quit his career as an investment banker and went to work as a teacher in an inner-city school. This guy could catch fire. He’s putting […]
Posted inOpinion
Grim realities
BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Fadia was crying when we arrived, but she quickly explained that it wasn’t serious. The teenager was hungry and had a stomachache. The pain would soon pass, she said, as tears welled up in her red and swollen eyes. Her family’s home–in a tiny, poverty-stricken Christian ghetto in Baghdad–was one of my […]
Posted inOpinion
Groveling for 50 bucks per month
BAGHDAD, IRAQ – The line sometimes stretches a mile long. Former soldiers and employees of the Iraqi Army, 400,000 in all, are paid a $50- per-month “pension” by the occupying forces. The only catch is, they have to stand in line to get the money. The lines in Baghdad are the worst. There is only […]
Posted inOpinion
Prisoners of war
BAGHDAD, IRAQ – The American soldiers smashed through 68-year-old Ali Ahmed’s door at 2:30 in the morning. According to Ali, the Americans roughed up one of his four sons, then handcuffed everyone except his wife and 12-year-old boy. The soldiers ransacked their tiny apartment, took what little money they had, and finally hauled Ali and […]
Posted inOpinion
Did the governor tee-off on a 14-year-old girl?
One of the most peculiar stories to come out of the Illinois State Fair concerned an animal-doping controversy. The story was actually about a costly mistake by the parents of a 4-H Club member, but it quickly turned into some bad publicity for Rod Blagojevich. Representative Shane Cultra (R-Onarga) even demanded an apology from the […]
Posted inOpinion
How the governor swore off video games
Even with everyone focused on “the worst fiscal crisis in the state’s history,” Governor Rod Blagojevich continues to be obsessed with his public image. Some state employees were required to monitor local TV news broadcasts for any mention of Blagojevich, until bad publicity forced the governor to reconsider the practice this week. In one instance, […]
Posted inOpinion
The Patriot Act . . . Now at your local library
Last week was a public relations nightmare for Rod Blagojevich. A few months after freezing the wages of nonunion state employees and deducting 4 percent from their checks to pay for their pension contributions, a month after vetoing pay raises for legislators and judges, two weeks after unilaterally slashing the operating budgets of two statewide […]
Posted inOpinion
Playing hardball
After months of publicly jabbing the General Assembly for its hidebound ways, Governor Rod Blagojevich is now aiming at his fellow constitutional officers, including his most likely re-election rival. Four weeks after the final state budget passed–and just one day before the new fiscal year was set to begin–the governor summoned all statewide elected officials–the […]
Posted inOpinion
Bye, George!
In the summer of 1997, Illinois Times published “Curious George,” a feature about George Ryan when he was running for governor. The feature detailed Ryan’s political past and lined it up with what he was proposing to do as governor. We predicted that Ryan would certainly make good on some of his numerous promises as […]
Posted inOpinion
Read his lips
By now, you’ve heard that Governor Rod Blagojevich was so surprised about the state’s budget deficit that he is considering raising taxes. He claims the deficit is $4.8 billion–at least a billion higher than he’d expected–and not the kind of hole he can just cut his way out of. If he really didn’t know the […]
Posted inOpinion
Peace without prosperity
State legislators are rebelling across the country. You’ve heard about the Texas Democrats who fled to Oklahoma in order to kill a Republican redistricting bill? Here are some other stories: • In Arizona, the Republican Senate rejected the Democratic governor’s budget, then put together its own plan. But the Republicans can’t pass it because one […]
