Opinion

Look for a big push by the Bush administration this year to restrict your right to sue corporations that harm or cheat you. President George W. Bush claims that you unruly citizens are treating big corporations unfairly, constantly filing “frivolous lawsuits” against them. So to protect the poor corporations, Bush says, he must limit your […]

My mother used a vast repertoire of pithy proverbs in her attempts to raise me right. I shudder when I hear myself repeating them to my kids, but only because it shows I’m getting old. The aphorisms themselves are, as Mother would say, good as gold. “Let sleeping dogs and babies lie,” was one of […]

If you’re an aspiring performer who wants to be on the screen, Chicago might be your kind of town. In fact, virtually everyone in the Windy City will soon be seen — by various police authorities. In a leap into the abyss of the surveillance society, Chicago authorities are installing a web of spy cameras […]

My first memory of Bob Reid is the poverty series. In the early 1970s, Reid was managing editor at the Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale, and I was a staff reporter. The publisher had apparently asked for something special so that they could sell extra ads, and Bob had said, “I’ll give you something special.” […]

Demarcus Holmesdoesn’t have to work. He lives in a nice house with his mother, older sister, and two brothers, all of whom dote on 21-year-old Demarcus. He spends his days with his grandmother, often joining her friends for morning walks at the mall, where everybody seems happy to see Demarcus. And he doesn’t even need […]

In the cacophony of Christmas commercialism, it can be difficult even to recall that it’s about Jesus. But this hardly is the only time that Jesus gets lost in our modern swirl. Take politics. In the recent presidential run, much was made by George W. Bush’s supporters of his supposedly superior moral values based on […]

Every morning about 2 o’clock, the “train they call the City of New Orleans” rolls south through Cairo with its indomitable “Good morning, America, how are you?” “Not so good” might be the reply from the town at the southernmost tip of Illinois, where the mighty rivers meet. It is Cairo’s turn to say, “Don’t […]

Being rich really can be tough. Yes, you do have a lot of stuff — houses, cars, clothes, gadgets, games, gizmos, and other toys to keep you amused as you idle away your time. But then you have all that stuff to deal with. Just keeping it dusted must be taxing. And of course you […]

On Friday, Dec. 3, another of President George W. Bush’s foot soldiers for faux freedom announced his departure: Tommy Thompson was quitting. The secretary of health and human services, who’d called himself the director of “America’s Department of Compassion,” had waged the good fight for four years. Thompson was tapped by Bush four years ago […]

There’s only one thing I know for sure about this health department debate: it makes my stomach churn and my head hurt. If promises, predictions or statistics could provide an answer, I’d be cured. Both sides offer plenty of all that. But it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s placebo when everything comes packaged […]

What is it about ultra-right conservatives who build careers as tongue-clucking scolds? They constantly preach about the moral failings of the rest of us — yet they keep getting caught with their own pants down, morally speaking. I don’t merely mean the Falwells, Swaggarts, and other publicly compromised televangelists — I’m also talking about the […]