Cap City

We can’t imagine, sometimes, what goes on in the minds of the Masters Of The Fourth Estate, aka the Illinois Press Association. A few years ago, they were rigging journalism contests, which led to the departure of president and chief executive officer Dennis DeRossett, who walked away with his full $185,000 salary in 2017, according […]

The best thing to do about wrongful convictions is avoid them. Over and over, the Illinois Innocence Project has learned that bad convictions result from bad police work, whether from jumping to conclusions about a suspect, sloppy gathering of evidence or eliciting a false confession. So the IIP has partnered with the Police Training Institute […]

It’s not too early to start thinking about Christmas, when chestnuts roast and sleigh bells jingle and The Nutcracker becomes a mainstay throughout the land. But there can be no Nutcracker without dancers, and so the Springfield Ballet Company is looking for a few good kids to perform in its annual production of the Christmas […]

With legal cannabis just around the corner, Springfield can expect at least one more pot shop within city limits in addition to two local medical marijuana dispensaries already in operation, one downtown and the other in Grandview. Chris Stone, CEO of HCI Alternatives that sells medical pot on Adams Street, confirms that his company has […]

Compass for Kids needs your help by voting for the organization to receive a $25,000 grant from State Farm. Starting Tuesday, Aug. 14, U.S. residents who are 18 and older with a valid email address could vote for their favorite cause. Compass has until Aug. 23 to rally votes and anyone voting is allowed up […]

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 […]