The New Chicago Ward Map Passes
Chicago gets sliced and diced again, especially the Second Ward, where Alderman Fioretti is a “remamp victim of Euclidean geometry as much as politics.”
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The Chicago G8/NATO Summits and the 'Neglected Right of Assembly'
In advance of this spring’s summits, the city moves to close holes in its regulation of public protest. The process hasn’t always been so fine-tuned, one legal scholar argues: the intensive regulation of assembly arose in the second half of the nation’s history.
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The endless potential for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to monetize our underutilized public spaces
Mitt Romney's 'Authenticity' 'Problem'
Is Mitt Romney “authentic”? Does it hurt him? Does it even matter? Perhaps the authenticity problem lies not with Mitt, but with his culture, and ours.
Chicago Slums and the Long Shadow of Lead Paint
The U.S. homicide rate hit a 50-year low last year and violent crime hit a 40-year low in 2010, despite the terrible economy. Lead abatement may offer a substantial explanation—and a challenge to utilitarian theories of crime.
Chicago's Hillbilly Problem During the Great Migration
In the postwar years, the mass migration of Southerners to Chicago caused substantial cultural tensions in the city—and of great official concern were the Appalachians who settled in Uptown and their “primitive jungle tactics.”
What's Really Bothering Michelle Obama?
I just finished reading Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas, and I think I’ve figured out why Michelle Obama is so steamed, why she groused to The Early Show’s Gayle King that she is tired of being portrayed as “some kind of angry black woman.” The First Lady recognizes that her husband will probably run against Mitt Romney, and thus, she herself will be stuck “running” against the warm, blonde, seemingly flawless Ann Romney…
Martin Luther King in Chicago: Somebody Nobody Sent
The man who is recognized every year with a national holiday is a secular saint, but it wasn’t always so. In Chicago, King battled not only a wily mayor but an unfriendly press and decades of history… but not a history that was well known.
Long Reads for a Gray Monday
If you happen to be off today and not leaving the house, here are some good reads on funeral directors, Michael Jordan’s high school coach, and Shel Silverstein’s personal archive.
Bill Daley’s Battered Résumé
After resigning as Chief of Staff, Bill Daley’s D.C. record takes another hit as the president announces that Daley’s old department, Commerce, will be axed in the service of paring down the federal bureaucracy.