A commercial fisherman caught a 20-pound Asian carp at Lake Calumet on Chicago’s South Side, news that sends chills up the spines of people who love Lake Michigan.

The news may be chilling, but to people who know fish, it’s not surprising.
It’s chilling because the location is well beyond a multimillion-dollar “electric barrier” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed in the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal several years ago. The barrier is supposed to block the fish from swimming up the canal and into Lake Michigan, where they could devastate …

Discussions on school choice in Illinois are currently focused on the Rev. Sen. James Meeks’ school voucher bill and the use of public funds to pay for children from failing schools to be educated in private schools. But the debate – and proposals from legislators – shouldn’t stop there. School choice isn’t just about vouchers and failing schools, it’s about making a wide range of educational options available to parents.

In addition to the restricted vouchers proposed by Sen. Meeks, other vouchers could target the needs of special education students. A …

Nothing brings a greedy gleam to the eye of a plaintiff’s trial lawyer like a “baby case,” as they crudely call them. They mean a case against a doctor or hospital involving a baby allegedly injured or killed during the birthing process. The lawyers stand to pocket millions of dollars without even breaking a sweat. That is exactly the situation the Illinois Supreme Court decided to perpetuate by ruling last Thursday (Feb. 4, 2010) ceilings on noneconomic damages are unconstitutional.

Damages fall into two categories: economic and noneconomic.  Economic …

Conflict-of-interest accusations are swirling around U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D) nomination of his girlfriend to be Montana’s U.S. Attorney. That’s not an unusual reaction, but there’s another side to this story, an unforeseen consequence of the equal rights act and women’s liberation.
Thirty-five years ago, former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson (R) was U.S. Attorney in Chicago, and his wife-to-be, Jayne Carr, was one of his top aides. They were married shortly before he was elected to the first of his four terms as Illinois governor in 1976. …

In late 2009, the credibility of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took a serious hit when email exchanges between some of its senior authors and editors revealed deliberate efforts to falsify data and silence dissenting scientists. The IPCC’s reputation was already waning in the wake of scandals concerning Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” temperature diagram and the role of government officials and environmental activists in its so-called “peer review” process. The IPCC Email Scandal of November 2009 meant the IPCC could no longer claim to represent the …

Recent weeks have seen concern from parents over a celebrity-studded “I Pledge” YouTube video that largely supports a left-leaning agenda, and a speech last week by President Barack Obama directly to the nation’s students.
But a more obvious activist effort is circulating in high schools of five of the nation’s major metropolitan areas, including Chicago—and it’s all in favor of a particular political interest. Students are hearing that we face a “planetary emergency” due to global warming. Despite copious evidence to the contrary—dropping temperatures, record Antarctic ice extent, cooling oceans, a …

When you boil off all the frothy rhetoric, what health reform is really all about is a power grab. It is 16 percent of the national economy and $2.7 trillion in annual spending. It is the biggest opportunity politicians and their cronies have ever seen for enriching themselves.

For a sneak peak at what lies ahead, look at the city where Barack Obama cut his teeth first as a community organizer then as a state legislator, then as U.S. Senator: Chicago. Extortion, bribery, back scratching, and nepotism are all coins …