. By Ray Hanania . I remember my dad buying a new car in the 1960s for about $1,400. It wasn’t a Mercedes, but just a normal car with the basic bells and whistles like air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, a good radio and a great interior. Dad’s income at the time was about…

. By Rich Miller . Way back in 1990, I was making $17,000 a year working for an online Statehouse news and information company. I was too broke for a vacation, so I helped pay for a modest trip by covering a strike at the Delta Pride catfish processing company in Indianola, Miss. for a…

. By Ray Hanania . A bipartisan panel of Democrat and Republicans members of the U.S. Senate held a public hearing on Wednesday, Jan. 31, in which they accused the owners of social media platforms for not doing enough to prevent cyberbullying of children. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee found common ground to identify cyberbullying…

. By Rich Miller . Republican Dennis Reboletti is trying something different in a state legislative race: Stake out a “moderate” position on abortion in a party which completely rejects that stance and in a race against a solidly pro-choice Democrat. Reboletti, the Addison Township Supervisor, has no GOP primary opposition, so he’s essentially free…

. By Ray Hanania . The Chicago City Council was scheduled on Wednesday, Jan. 31, to consider a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel’s extremist government and the Hamas extremist organization. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Hamas have been battling each other for more than two decades, using violence against…

. By Ray Hanania . An armed teenager who had a run-in with police in Oak Lawn back in 2022 has been arrested again, this time in a connection with a robbery and a brutal beating of an innocent man who was exercising at an Orland Park gym on Dec.10. One of the three suspects…

. By Rich Miller . Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget, passed last November, deliberately underfunded programs for asylum-seekers. The meager appropriation authority could be exhausted by April, but nobody knows yet what the city plans to do when it reaches that point. Also last November, Gov. JB Pritzker made it clear to reporters that “the state…

. By Rich Miller . One of the bigger state budget expansion fights we could see play out in Springfield this spring is the creation of a permanent $300 Child Income Tax Credit. The new proposal has been scaled back from last year’s $700 per child tax credit bill, which went nowhere in the House…

. By Ray Hanania . It annoys me immensely when we learn that some politicians served in the militaries of foreign countries, either full-time or as a volunteer, but not in the U.S. military to defend this country. Military service should be an essential requirement to qualify to hold public office and also demonstrate of…

. By Rich Miller . Perhaps the weakest federal criminal charge against former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke was about his plot to extort the Chicago Field Museum because a friend’s daughter never heard back about an internship after Burke sent over her resume. U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Kendall seemed “unimpressed” by federal prosecutors’ reasoning…