Guest Opinion

 I’ve had a number of conversations recently that convince me our country is divided into two political camps separated by a deep and uncomfortably wide gap. No, I’m not talking about liberals and conservatives, or pro- and anti-Trump voters. I’m talking about people who believe in politics and our political system, and people who don’t. […]

 Having passed the Illinois Senate on May 17 and pending in the House, Senate Bill 7 would authorize a Chicago Casino Development Authority (CCDA) as a government unto itself via a “perpetual” license with all owned or “leased” property tax exempt. CCDA is legislatively designed to be a self-governing entity with extensive and abusive government […]

Think about this for a moment: Two days away from a federal shutdown, Congress comes up with a stopgap measure to keep the government operating… for a week. A few days later it arrives at a bipartisan budget deal lasting a bit over four months. This, in turn, moves the president to take to Twitter […]

 As I reflected on last month’s Earth Day and the current attack by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I considered what impact this agency has had on the environment and the health of the nation. The impact on the environment is easier to see. When the first […]

 Yeats’s famous line of poetry during the dark times after the Great War comes eerily down to us today: “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” Yet in the preliminary French elections on April 23 the center did hold, or so it seems. Let’s unravel this most important election which could decide whether the European […]

Leaders on Capitol Hill are about to turn their attention to health care reform again. While “repeal and replace” has the most attention, what is at stake is beyond the fate of the Affordable Care Act. We have the opportunity to strengthen health care for the future and create a more effective and efficient system […]

 In the president’s proposed budget, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts would be eliminated in an attempt to cut “wasteful spending.” This reflects a common, though mistaken, line of thinking to the effect that art is a frivolous and unnecessary expenditure in the face of real bread-and-butter issues of lost jobs and stagnant […]

 Holy Week is a reflective time for people of many faiths, and Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are marked by tens of millions around the world. However, Holy Week in 1865 was a defining period in American history. On Palm Sunday, April 9, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to […]

 The announcement by FBI Director James Comey that his agency is investigating links between members of President Trump’s campaign and Russia has upended Washington. Yet there needs to be an even stronger and broader investigation to get to the bottom of what happened. There are really two questions at hand. The first involves Russian meddling […]

One of the common plot devices of horror films is to have a climactic event where a threatening evil is defeated. The triumphant characters breathe a sigh of relief, begin putting their lives together and then, BANG! The supposedly vanquished terror unexpectedly raises its ugly head again in a final effort to overcome the forces […]

 As you watch the health care proceedings on Capitol Hill, imagine what things might be like if we lived in more functional political times. In particular, what if Congress were run by pragmatists? It would not change the issues at hand. On the one side, you’d have the Republican majority in Congress, which for the […]

In a recent column in the Catholic Times, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki addressed transgender issues in the context of the Boy Scouts’ recent decision to accept transgender youth among their ranks. After clarifying that local troops affiliated with Catholic schools and parishes will not follow suit, he proceeded to spread multiple falsehoods about transgender people, […]