I wouldn’t want to be quoted on it, but I think it was Michael Burlingame, in his comprehensive biography of the 16th president, who revealed that Abraham Lincoln started thinking about a new career in Washington because he could never find a parking place downtown. In this complaint Lincoln – who was in so many […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Get Out of Jail cards
Writers of newspaper columns, it turns out, are not the only people who have trouble getting sentences right. Eyebrows, if not voices, were raised when federal judge James Zagel set 14 years in prison as the price Rod Blagojevich must pay for nearly committing a crime. That’s only one year short of the maximum that […]
Posted inOpinion
Good and true
Here’s a recap for those who spent the past few weeks standing in line at Walmart: In November, Bill Cellini, Springfield’s very own robber baron, was convicted on federal charges of attempting to extort a Hollywood producer eager to protect a profitable business deal with a State of Illinois agency. After the trial, it was […]
Posted inOpinion
Making noises in civics class
Have you ever thought about how much Freddie Mercury’s Queen owed to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan? You have? Okay, we’ll talk about something else. The other day State Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-Hickory Point Mall) introduced a resolution in the Statehouse that would ask Illinois voters to decide by referendum whether Cook County should […]
Posted inOpinion
War without the killing
Certain Republicans have given way to fits of partisan bloodlust lately and tried to beat the current president with the bones of one of his long-dead Democratic predecessors. Franklin Roosevelt, they insist, deserves no credit for ending the Great Depression, since it was not FDR’s recovery policies that put Americans back to work but spending […]
Posted inOpinion
Lies, damned lies and politics
Perhaps you have read about, if not seen, Mitt Romney’s latest TV campaign ad. Mr. Romney, keep in mind, is the responsible GOP contender, the grown-up in the room, the calm voice on platforms otherwise crowded with gibbering idiots. He also is the candidate who, for those reasons, the GOP rank and file seem loathe […]
Posted inOpinion
A house in a day
“Go east young man,” a neighbor advised my father, and in 1949 he and the rest of us did just that. For a veteran, it was cheaper in those days to buy than to rent, so we said goodbye to our apartment next to the Sangamo Dairy and headed to a GI Bill subdivision on […]
Posted inOpinion
Asphalt somethingness
Returning to Springfield after a trip, even a local patriot sees as if for the first time what catches the eye of so many visitors. Pretend that the gaudy billboards do not exist. Look the other way when passing the prefab buildings that are more appropriate to house a disc harrow than a business in […]
Posted inOpinion
Three strikes and you’re in
I have no idea what the American Dream means to the 63 persons from 25 nations who were welcomed into the fraternity of the free and the brave in October ceremonies at the Old Capitol. In my version of it, it means being able to order affordable restaurant dishes from south of the border whose […]
Posted inOpinion
Poor housing
If its aldermen were running Springfield’s fire stations, the city would have burned down years ago. On Oct. 18 the Springfield City Council passed a complex new ordinance that stiffened the penalties for owners of dilapidated buildings. The vote came a mere nine years after consultants urged that such action was necessary to slow the […]
Posted inOpinion
Gizmo-maker as god
Steve Jobs is dead, and the world talked about little else for a week. By now we have arrived at the transitional moment that was neatly described by columnist Rick Polito in the Pacific Sun – the one between “He was a genius who will be sorely missed” and “The battery has to be replaced […]
Posted inOpinion
The Durbin Fee
Is it really possible – even in a nation whose congresspeople believe that laying off people creates jobs and whose wealthy believe that helping to pay to run the country that made them rich is unpatriotic – that some people still believed there is such as thing as free banking? Apparently, judging from the hoohah […]
