Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune/MCT American presidents love their pets. The Obamas adopted a dog named Bo shortly after Barack’s election in 2009, the Clintons brought Socks the cat and Buddy the dog to Washington, and John F. Kennedy kept a pony named Macaroni on White House grounds. What other typical and atypical pets have called the […]
washington
Posted inOpinion
The real scandal in Denny Hastert’s life
Washington’s establishment of politicos, lobbyists and media sparklies are shocked – shocked to their very core! – by the scandalous sexual revelations about Dennis Hastert. The portly Republican, who’d been Speaker of the House a decade ago, was an affable, non-descript Midwesterner who was popular with his fellow lawmakers. A former high school wrestling coach […]
Posted inOpinion
A bold shift in America’s minimum wage debate
At last, our political leaders in Washington are taking action for low-wage workers and the middle class, striking a bold blow for America’s historic values of economic fairness and common good. Gosh, I hope you don’t think I meant Washington, D.C.! No, no – the same old corporate mentality of stiffing workers and stripping any […]
Posted inMusic
No maybe for May music
James Armstrong and band plays Casey’s Pub on Thursday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m. Wow, what a month of May music coming up. Yessiree, there’s no maybe about it; we are in for a blast of interesting and exciting music moments in the next several weeks. That then leads right into the summer season, including […]
Posted inOpinion
Employment Policies Institute flimflam
In L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard turns out to be a big phony – just an eccentric old guy sitting behind a curtain, using his booming voice to spew nonsense in a vain effort to fool people. But now, a century after Baum’s fictional Oz, a real-life incarnation of […]
Posted inOpinion
The millionaires’ Congress vs. the people
The rich truly are different from you and me – they tend to hold seats in Congress. Our nation purports to be a representative democracy, yet you don’t find many plumbers, mineworkers, dirt farmers, Wal-Mart associates, roofers, beauty parlor operators, taxi drivers, or other “get-the-job-done” Americans among the 535 members of the U.S. House and […]
Posted inOpinion
The passage of the Illinois gay marriage bill
Perhaps the biggest loser in last Tuesday’s historic passage of a gay marriage bill in Springfield was the National Organization for Marriage. The group, based in Washington, D.C., has been at the forefront of attempts to stop gay marriage in states throughout the country. A Maine investigation uncovered alleged internal NOM documents about the group’s […]
Posted inOpinion
Quinn vows to veto ADM, cites pension reform ‘issue of a lifetime’
Gov. Pat Quinn refused to say for several days whether he’d support a $1.2 million a year tax break for Archer Daniels Midland to move 100 jobs out of Decatur and open up a world headquarters and new tech center in Chicago. But last week he made it clear that without pension reform, the ADM […]
Posted inOpinion
Militarizing America’s police forces
Attention citizens: I have received inside information revealing that global terrorists are targeting us again. Their target is not Washington, New York City or even Disneyland. Rather, it is: Concord. You know, in New Hampshire. The state capital. Even though only about 43,000 people live there, Concord apparently has some sort of secret significance that […]
Posted inOpinion
Let us commence toward the common good
Ironically, June is both the month of the summer solstice and of America’s biggest annual blizzard. I don’t mean a weather event blowing in from the Arctic, but a merciless storm of words blowing from commencement speakers at high school and college graduation events. This year, I was one of the blowhards, the chief speechifyer […]
Posted inOpinion
‘The Dow’ versus ‘The Doug’
“It’s a sign,” exclaims a February Associated Press story – a sign that our economy is “healing.” “It signals that things are getting back to normal,” added a delighted market analyst. And a March 4 New York Times report heralded it as “a golden age.” The “it” they’re hailing is the Dow, that mystical force […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Eastern points
This Engaged Citizenship Common Experience Speaker Series at the University of Illinois Springfield is one you won’t want to miss to learn more about countries bombarding the news lately, particularly North Korea and China. The key challenges and opportunities presented to the U.S. by the historic rise of Asia will be discussed by Robert M. […]
