Chicago Tribune

Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances. They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund. End of discussion. No muss, no fuss. Right? In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially…

One would think the editorial boards of the nations’ top newspapers – journalism’s brightest and best – wouldn't lightly throw around inflammatory language, slurs and insults. But it appears that an Indiana law protecting the religious freedom of businesses and individuals is so beyond the pale it had the journalistic high-priests at many of America’s top 20 papers sputtering “bigot,” “…

In Chicago, incumbent Mayor and longtime Democrat fixture Rahm Emanuel floated the idea of renaming one of its airports after President Obama. After all, according to Emanuel, both of Chicago's major airports, O'Hare and Midway, are "named after battleships." No they're not, as will be seen after the jump. The Chicago Tribune's Bill Ruthhart failed to recognize Emanuel's startling gaffe until…

A review of the "Big Story" archive at the Associated Press's national site on Jesse Jackson's name returns quite a few instances where the wire service has treated the "Reverend's" self-injection into stories considered nationally important as noteworthy. In addition to the predictable plethora of stories relating to Ferguson, Missouri and "police-communities tension," Jackson's name has…

UPDATE [06/16]: Monday's Today offered a correction on Trump's claim that Blair Kamin had been "fired" from the Chicago Tribune. At the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour, news anchor Natalie Morales explained: "Well, in fact, that critic, Pulitzer Prize winner Blair Kamin, has been with the Chicago Tribune for more than twenty years and also spent the 2013 academic year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard."…

When the government pushes to destroy America’s biggest source of energy, you can certainly trust the media to jump on board. On June 1, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled drastic new limits on carbon emissions, mandating steep emission cuts within 16 years. It’s a move that may cost  hundreds of thousands of jobs each year, but only 13 of the 20 major United States newspapers…

At the Politico, concerning Dean Baquet, the new Executive Editor at the New York Times, Dylan Byers wonders: "How will ... (he) handle the necessary digital transformation facing 'All the news that’s fit to print.'?" The better question is: How will he handle the financial constraints Times management will almost inevitably have to impose on a stagnant if not shrinking newsroom operation? To…

I would say "Only in Illinois," but I suspect that other states have similar problems and would propose "solutions" just as nutty as the Democratic state Speaker Michael Madigan and his party have chosen. The state has an unpaid bills backlog of $5.8 billion, meaning that vendors are going months before they get paid. We're supposed to be thrilled that this total is down from $8.8 billion…

In yet another negative milestone for the bailouts that supposedly saved the U.S. auto industry — already a hard-to-handle claim given that Chrysler, one of the two beneficiaries, is now 100% owned by an Italian company — Volkswagen has surpassed General Motors as the world's number two automaker behind Toyota. The reporting on this development has been quite sparse. It's not news at the…

Attempting to build his national profile, Al Sharpton "took up residence on the West Side (of Chicago) in November and began hosting ... (weekly) town halls as part of an effort to find solutions to the city’s outsize homicide rate among young black males." Rebel Pundit at Breitbart News reports that a Thursday meeting in the city's Hyde Park area not far from President Obama's Chicago home…

The Chicago Tribune slammed its hometown hero in a Monday editorial: “The American public is having a credibility-shattering debate about the president: Did he not bother to learn the details of the law before he told us we could keep our doctors and our insurance, or did he know the truth and flat-out lie?” Perhaps a better question: Why did this same Chicago Tribune editorial board endorse…

In case you haven’t noticed, the government shutdown is all the GOP’s fault.  Today’s Chicago Tribune wanted to make sure readers knew that with a front-page headline titled “Hard-right bloc sticks to its guns: Shutdown stalemate continues as lawmakers in safe seats hold sway.” The article reports that some House Republicans “have chosen to defy Washington’s traditional norms of conversation and…

Dare a top newspaper journalist to play connect-the-dots and chances are he’ll fail miserably – at least with drawing the line between Islam and terrorism. In Nairobi, Kenya last weekend, Islamist militants took over a high-end shopping mall and began executing non-Muslims. In Pakistan, Islamist suicide bombers detonated at a Christian Church on Sunday.  Yet on Monday, September 23, 90…

The September 19, 2013 article “Pope Francis: Church cannot be 'obsessed' with gays, other bans” on The Chicago Tribune’s Web site notes: In a remarkable change from his predecessor Benedict, who said homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder, Francis said that when homosexuals told him they were always condemned by the Church and felt "socially wounded", he told them "the Church does not want…