Upon Further Review

The Wall Street Journal last week made clear what folks who’ve been paying attention have long known: Passenger trains between St. Louis and Chicago aren’t living up to promises. We were supposed to be zipping along at 110 mph by now. We’re not. Thanks to delays in installing safety gear aimed at keeping trains from […]

Gant says he doesn’t deserve a ticket for this roof: “You can’t make a person repair or replace a roof that’s not leaking.” Photo by Bruce Rushton The night before Thanksgiving, I accompanied my neighbor Connie to a meeting of the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission. The city had gone ga-ga over her backyard fence, […]

Many years ago, I attended a seminar on solid waste, aka garbage. The confab was somewhere north of Chicago, the paper where I worked was in Tacoma, somewhere south of Seattle, where a garbage company wanted to build a new landfill, as the existing one was nearly full. The paper wanted to know: Should the […]

Tina Williams talks to the media after addressing the city council. Photo by Bruce Rushton Ward 3 Ald. Doris Turner squawked when Nadine Wright, a write-in candidate for her city council seat, spoke for two minutes at Tuesday’s council meeting. Wright complained about litter, crime and a lack of homeless shelters. Turner called it a […]

Champ with his new owner. Photo courtesy of Clay County Animal Rescue and Shelter Last week’s forums for aldermanic candidates sponsored by Inner City Older Neighborhoods were equally bemusing, informative and maddening. Ward 1 Ald. Chuck “MIA” Redpath was the only incumbent who didn’t show up. He may not have needed to, given that he […]

Dear Kwame, I was there when you were sworn in. I saw you applaud when Comptroller Susana Mendoza called Secretary of State Jesse White the greatest politician in Illinois history. White told me to go away in the spring of 2017 when I asked for the personnel file of Candace Wanzo, a bureaucrat in the […]

Mike Eyer of Jacksonville dug himself a legal hole in the spring of 2017, when he started driving his backhoe home. It began, Eyer recalls, when he got a call from a friend: I’ve got some concrete that’s just been poured but no concrete finisher available. Can you help? Eyer says he figured spreading concrete […]

Valued at $20 million, the ALPLM’s copy of the Gettysburg Address is one of five in existence handwritten by Abraham Lincoln. Glenn Beck’s been down on his luck. The talk show personality with bluster – he’s called Barack Obama a racist and said that relatives of 9/11 victims complain too much –has been laying off […]

Here’s an idea for an amendment to the state constitution: Require that governors and other statewide officeholders be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol, outside, in January, where everyone can see and hear them. I suggest this after having spent three hours on Monday listening to John Philip Sousa marches and speeches from […]

When Peanut was acquired from the Animal Protective League nearly 11 years ago, she had no name. We didn’t know her age. The vet thought three. She seemed to have a bit of puppy in her. She’d fetch balls and play and lick. Oh, how she loved to lick, as if the whole world wanted […]

Daniel Mills, son of U.S. District Court Judge Richard Mills, lost his license to practice law in 2009, three years after he was walked out of the state’s attorney’s office where he’d worked as an assistant prosecutor The state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission says he’d been buying cocaine. In 2008, Mills pleaded guilty to […]