Editor’s Note

As you’ll read in Patrick Yeagle’s cover story this week, Springfield is the capital of video gambling in Illinois. It has the most establishments offering video gambling – 176 – of any city, and the most terminals – 576. In the four years that video gambling has been legal, Springfield gamblers have lost $80 million […]

 If you haven’t voted yet, it’s time to get to the poll and make your voice heard. There are great candidates on the ballot in every category. The super-enthused electorate, happy not angry, has already turned out in record numbers, knowing that even if their favorite candidate doesn’t win, this will still be the best […]

Sangamon County is eerily quiet during this election campaign. True, Illinois as a blue state isn’t in play for the presidential election, so that cuts us out of a lot of hoopla. But what about the area state representative races, where the three incumbents running were all hand-picked by Gov. Bruce Rauner, supposedly the most […]

Chuck Todd, the political director of NBC News and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” was informative and entertaining as he commented on the current political news for the Better Government Association’s annual banquet in Chicago this week. Hillary Clinton’s illness was less important for what it revealed about her health than it was as […]

 One person who wasn’t surprised by the sudden closure of ITT Technical Institute in Springfield and three other cities in Illinois was U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Springfield, who has been warning the nation for years about the financial shenanigans of for-profit schools. Only 10 percent of college students attend for-profit schools, but they take in […]

In a political climate with intolerance as a theme, the goodheartedness that shows up in Springfield is remarkable. Last Thursday evening the big sanctuary at Westminster Presbyterian Church was nearly filled when more than 400 Christians and Jews and the curious of all stripes came out to hear Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine [see “Levine and […]

It looks like Tammy Duckworth is going to be our next U.S. senator, so we’d better start getting to know her. Sen. Mark Kirk’s ads against Duckworth are so shrill as to be unconvincing. Nobody believes Duckworth, the military veteran, is blind to national security concerns, but we don’t really know what she’s like or […]

Watching Bruce Rauner throw his money around brings mixed feelings. First he buys Republican politicians, then the champion steer. He plans to renovate the governor’s mansion with private money, beginning with his own, and now he’s launched a foundation to renovate the fairgrounds the same way. It’s wrong for him to keep state government artificially […]

Too bad that the federal judge denied Rod Blagojevich’s appeal to reduce his prison sentence from 14 years to five. The full sentence seems excessive, considering that the hapless Rod is remorseful and won’t hurt anybody. Now he’s just part of the crowd of thousands of prisoners serving excessive sentences, many in prison for life […]

During this week when Democrats are celebrating a historic achievement by a woman, one who has accumulated a record of public service through decades of hard work in the trenches, this newspaper nominates its own candidate for woman of the year. This week Beth Irwin, our senior sales representative, marks her 30th anniversary on the […]

 Those of us watching the Republican National Convention to see whether Donald Trump can appeal beyond his base have been disappointed by all the attention to his family. Whether Melania’s speech was plagiarized is of no importance compared to the candidate’s stance on trade, immigration and foreign policy. That Sen. Mark Kirk and Gov. Bruce […]

 Two days after the police killings in Dallas, as the nation struggled once again to respond to racial violence, the annual business meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia in Austin was about to conclude when a member brought up the need to continue working on the organization’s lack of diversity. A quick look around […]