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MENACE II SOCIETY Osama bin Laden might
still be on the lam, but at least the feds finally have Diane Lopez Hughes in custody!
On Monday a federal judge sentenced Hughes to 45 days in prison and
assessed a $500 fine. In November, Hughes and 10 others — three of
whom are Illinois natives — were arrested for trespassing at a
Georgia military base during an annual demonstration at the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School
of Americas, a training camp for Latin American soldiers. Active in local
peace-and-justice activities, Hughes has been arrested for protesting at a
nuclear-weapons test site in Nevada and a processing center for military
personnel near Evanston but this is the first time she has had to serve
time.
ABE IN OIL Beginning next Thursday, Feb. 7, two seldom-seen
portraits of Abraham Lincoln, painted by his contemporaries Alban
Jasper Conant and Edward Dalton Marchant, will be
displayed at the Old State Capitol. The paintings are the property of
Southern Illinois University’s Morris Library, located in Carbondale.
SEARCH FOR A REASON Eighty-two days after an explosion rocked City Water,
Light & Power’s Dallman 1 unit, city officials are still hunting
for the cause. CWLP spokesperson Amber Sabin says two investigative teams and AIG, the power
plant’s insurance company, are now in the data-gathering process and
should uncover the cause of the Nov. 10 blast within the next 45 to 60
days. Two transformers, a generator, and switchgear, along with the
building and roofing that housed the Unit 1 turbine, were severely damaged
in the explosion. CWLP contractor Black & Veatch Corp. has been
selected to evaluate, engineer, procure, and carry out the Unit 1 repairs.
ON AREA BOOKSHELVES James Scott of Quincy,
Ill., was convicted of breaking a levee in 1993 so he could strand his wife
on the other side of the Mississippi and party hearty. Given an unusually
harsh sentence for a crime that caused no deaths or injuries, Scott
isn’t eligible for parole until 2023. Texas journalist Adam Pitluk told Scott’s
story two years ago in Illinois Times [see “Scapegoat,” Jan. 19, 2006]; he offers a
fuller look at the case his new book, Damned
to Eternity (Da Capo Press, 2007). Meanwhile,
contributor Roger Hughes reports that his Illinois Times article, which identified slave owners in George W. Bush’s family
tree, is credited as a source in the new bestseller The Bush Tragedy, by Jacob Weisberg. Hughes, who
lives in Normal, is a veteran journalist; his IT story, “Legacy” [April 5, 2007] is
available at www.illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2008.
