Cap City

Untitled Document ILLUMINATIILLUMINATED Watch out, Abe, and step back, Obama — we’ve got some new celebrities in town. Kevin Smith and the rest of Illuminati Motor Works are steppin’ right outta the cornfields and directly into the limelight . . . the TV limelight, that is. Since we last heard from them [see Amanda Robert, “Eyes […]

Untitled Document A SOBERINGTASC African-Americans were nine times more likely than whites to go to prison in Illinois in 2005. Logic dictates, then, that black people do way more bad stuff than white people, right? Of course not — don’t be silly. Prisons in Illinois and elsewhere are bursting at the seams with nonviolent drug […]

Untitled Document THAT NOXIOUS ODOR . . .   . . . that pervaded Springfield last week was, for once, not eau de Archer Daniels Midland plant wafting westward from Decatur but rather the brief presence of Chicago Sun-Times professional sourpuss Neil Steinberg. Prompted by the need to take some sort of spring-break sojourn with […]

Untitled Document You are not alone Want to check the pulse of Springfield? The Internet may be the last place to go. Local Web logs are replete with tales of woe, apparently produced by middle-aged men who spend their nights in their underpants, typing about their unrequited dreams and day-to-day anxiety and trading funny clips […]

Untitled Document READYTOROCK Thirty reflective jackets, 22 chainsaws, 10 axes, eight crowbars, four industrial-sized ladders, and enough safety glasses-rope-and-gloves-for-an-army later — Brad Schaive, business manager of Laborers Local 477, says the Emergency Response Coalition is “ready to rock.” Schaive, along with fellow business managers from the Teamsters, Operating Engineers, and Carpenters unions and Ward 10 […]

Untitled Document IFIWEREACARPENTER . . . Used to be, anytime Paul Carpenter’s name was in the newspaper you could bet that the story was about his law-enforcement expertise. As a detective with Springfield Police Department’s major-case squad, Carpenter and his partner, Jim Graham, worked tirelessly to solve the city’s most serious crimes. In May 2005, […]

Untitled Document CHANCESARE, HISNICKNAMEISN’TZIPPY A few months ago it was noted in an Illinois Times story that criminal cases against Dan Mills and John “Jake” Kelley — the two former assistant Sangamon County state’s attorneys named in the “cocaine ring” investigation — would be virtually impossible to prosecute because of the protection conferred by immunity […]

Untitled Document PACHYDERMSAND JACKASSES OK, our adopted son Barack Obama handily beat our native daughter Hillary Clinton in the Illinois Democratic primary.  Predictable though the outcome may have been in the Land of Lincoln, the presidential campaigns on the whole have had all the suspense of this year’s Super Bowl — complete with coaching controversies […]