There was some notable weather this year in Chicago, but it’s notable for its lack of snow, rain, and cold. This year was all about heat and dryness, but it did stay humid enough for us to surpass the city’s mold-count record in August.
It’s a truism that being identifiably part of the Irish diaspora, at least on a ballot, is a huge advantage in Chicago’s provincial, low-information electoral contests. But a look at judicial elections, among the lowest-information of all, indicates that the advantage is barely statistically significant.
Judicial appointments in Cook County are generally considered to be lifetime appointments; no judge has lost his or her job since 1990. But in 1990, we fired seven of them, almost as many as have been recalled in every other election combined. What happened?
When Charles Dickens toured America for the last time, he gave Chicago the cold shoulder, as well as his widowed Chicago sister-and-law. The local press attacked him as a Scrooge and a hypocrite, but the real story was a sad and complex one closer to Bleak House than A Christmas Carol.
A hot plate used for warmth in an unheated West Englewood apartment that lacked smoke detectors is believed to have caused the deaths of two young, unattended children on early Saturday morning.
OBJECTION!: In Illinois, it’s easy for bad judges to stick around for life. Time for a change.
Giant teddy bears, giant dolls, and other ways of expressing seventeen million dollars worth of Christmas goodies in terrifyingly nightmarish fashion.
This is not the first time the youngest Daley brother has tentatively lobbed his hat in the ring for elective office. His first flirtation goes back some 20 years, but he has always grabbed the hat back.
John Boehner’s Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff got nixed by his own party raising the question of what, if anything, he could get the members he leads to agree to. He could also try to swing some Democrats his way—but that would violate the edict established by his predecessor, Dennis Hastert, which Boehner has made, at his peril, even stronger.
Are fewer people being killed in America because there’s less violence, or because we’re better at saving the wounded? It’s really, really hard to say, because we’re much better at measuring death than life.
