Emanuel hasn’t fixed Chicago’s crime problem. Will the next mayor?
No one, other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel, will ever know exactly why he decided against seeking re-election. But there can be little doubt that the decision to sit on the...
Home > Reviews
All Stories
Emanuel and Rauner: A squandered relationship that cost the city and the state
Rahm and Rauner. Rauner and Rahm. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner could have made beautiful music together. Instead, there has been nothing but discord. Theirs is as petty...
Can Chicago’s mayoral candidates stomach powerful inspectors general?
Chicago politics is filled with unwritten rules befitting the city’s clout-drenched history. One such classic was once directed at a young Abner Mikva, who went on to become a federal...
When will Chicago’s violence evoke true citywide outrage?
The first freshly dead body I ever saw lay in the back of a police vehicle, an African-American teenager who had tried to shoot an off-duty cop. He missed, and...
The glut of lowbrow gubernatorial TV ads
The dueling tycoons are filling the summer airwaves with an onslaught of ads that are memorable for their meanness and estrangement from the truth — and utterly devoid of solutions...
Could Emanuel lose his re-election bid? It depends.
It was a case of police abuse that riveted the nation. Videotaped violence, under the cloak of darkness, at the hands of uniformed cops. Cries for reform and soul searching...
The Janus ruling doesn’t have to be a death knell for public unions
The U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling in favor of Mark Janus’ free speech rights to withhold a $45 monthly payment to the union at his Illinois government workplace, struck a...
Will Musk’s Chicago dream come true?
Mayor Rahm Emanuel may never get his Amazon HQ2. Other cities look like they’re the front-runners for one of the biggest job-creation engines of the digital age. But it looks...
Blagojevich’s golden lesson in ‘fundraising’ — and his play for Trump’s sympathy
Rod Blagojevich was a golden boy in Illinois politics, jetting from Congress to the governor’s mansion in a flash. Once there, it seems, he had his eye on the gold,...
Judge Gaughan’s gag order risks an insidious impact on society
From the time Laquan McDonald was shot by police Officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014, issues surrounding the public’s right to know, in real time whenever possible, have been front...