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.
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.”
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…
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.
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.
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.
After Cyrus McCormick and other prominent Chicagoans moved out, Rush Street became Deadfall Lane. Now the home of the Viagra Triangle is a blend of the old and the new.
At a fundraiser in Chicago on Wednesday night, President Obama singled out the rookie Democrat from Missouri. “I just love her so whenever I have an excuse to see her I’m happy,” he gushed. McCaskill’s presence—and Obama’s shout-out—is a sure sign that he is making a slight but real comeback…
Michelle Obama makes news in the biggest dog-bites-man story of the new year, and her husband returns home for a whirlwind fundraising trip.
As aldermen Ed Burke and Brendan Reilly propose that CPL employees forego a scheduled raise to keep the libraries open six days a week, here’s a look at public library salaries in context.
