We often tell visiting out-of-towners that they’ll know they’re in Effingham when they see the big cross at the side of the interstate. It’s a better signpost than any signpost. For many who live here, and those who visit, The Cross at the Crossroads represents Effingham.

Great fortunes provide great flexibility, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker has demonstrated.

The next time you think lawmakers should DO SOMETHING to make things better for you and me, consider this: More than 250 new laws took effect in Illinois on Jan. 1 and many of them will hit you in the pocketbook.

For much of the past two years, ominous clouds have hung over America’s trade relations with the rest of the world. It’s too soon to forecast blue skies and pleasant breezes, but the weather is improving.

Alaina Hampton, one of several women who came forward with sexual harassment allegations that rocked Illinois Democratic circles, has settled a lawsuit against political committees backing House Speaker Michael Madigan. Yet in some ways, Hampton is just getting started in demonstrating what …

About a month ago, Gov. J.B. Pritzker released a task force report calling for the consolidation of downstate municipal fire and police pension funds and called for quick action by the legislature to pass it into law.

When you say the name John Cullerton, our editorial board thinks of an afternoon in early January 2017, when the president of the Illinois Senate sat next to then-Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno in our board room and said “enough.”

Public officials in some states see income taxes as the path to economic salvation, a surefire way to pay for what programs legislators can come up wit h.

In the aftermath of bribery charges filed against a state representative, leaders of the Illinois General Assembly offered responses ringing with the typical righteous indignation.

Let’s imagine a Southern Illinois University football player makes a leaping interception against Missouri State.

The impeachment fat was already in the fire. Last week’s partisan vote by the full U.S. House of Representatives to proceed with a formal impeachment process produced a roaring blaze. It won’t be long before the impending conflagration starts claiming victims.

Illinois doesn’t see many unicorns. But there’s been a sighting in Normal, where an electric truck manufacturer called Rivian operates out of the former Mitsubishi auto plant.

When top state officials discuss the need to invest more resources into the Department of Children and Family Services to produce better results, people, generally speaking, understand why.

A central Illinois harvest is a time of prosperity and beauty. It’s a time of long days and nights for our farmers whose livelihood is complicated by many factors including the weather.

Illinois is a real contender when it comes to a race to the fiscal bottom

The United States remains home to some of the greatest doctors, surgeons and medical facilities in the world.

For a couple of decades, Illinois has allowed roads and bridges to crumble, which doesn’t make much sense for a state whose economy is based on being a transportation hub for the nation.

Liz Boshardy packed a lot of life into her 29 years. She was a ballet dancer, then a data scientist. She married her high school sweetheart. She visited Nepal and the Galapagos Islands. She went dog-sledding in Norway and whale-watching in Hawaii. She had a promising career at Trunk Club, on…

A San Diego State University survey of more than a million teens found the percentage of high school seniors who read a book, magazine or newspaper every day has plummeted from 60 percent in the 1970s to 16 percent in 2016.

The health hazards of vaping are becoming more evident by the day, and Illinois officials must take steps to curb the risk.

Our legislators passed a law they contend would outlaw big payoffs to high-ranking public employees who lose their jobs.

In 1998, Jesse White was elected to lead an Illinois Secretary of State’s office that was mired in scandal.

A criminal investigation isn’t over until it’s over, especially when there’s a do-over.

The recent death of an Israeli flight attendant from measles should serve as a tragic reminder of something too many people in the U.S. and elsewhere have forgotten: This is a dangerous disease, and those driving its resurgence with anti-vaccination movements around the world are playing with fire.

Katie Williams, the 2008 Altamont Community High School grad who has been banned from the 2019 Ms. America pageant, is now more famous than any Ms. America we can name.

Rod Blagojevich has spent seven years in jail for crimes of his own making; he’s due to spend another seven, unless President Trump commutes his sentence.

In the aftermath of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, an Illinois House member has called for the Legislature to pass and the governor to sign a bill that would reinstate the death penalty.

Worry about measles fades over the summer. Kids scatter to parks and beaches instead of congregating in classrooms and cafeterias, where a cough or sneeze can leave the virus hanging in the air for up to two hours. By late August, with school back in session or nearly so, the scarring pox po…

An Effingham County Board committee began an important discussion this week that we should all take part in. You'll have plenty of opportunity in the coming months as Illinois prepares for recreational marijuana to become legal on Jan. 1. That's when people over the age of 21 will be able to…

President Donald Trump recently suggested, as he has in the past, that he's considering commuting former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's 14-year prison sentence on multiple corruption convictions.

People have to wise up to the dangers of using their phones while they drive.

In a day of testifying on Capitol Hill, former special counsel Robert Mueller spent much of his time declining to address matters raised by House members. But he was strikingly forthright on one issue. "Over the course of my career, I've seen a number of challenges to our democracy," he said…

In recent days, Republican and Democratic organizations in Illinois shared tasteless, race-based images on social media. Encouragingly, both sides renounced the posts and vowed to do better. Voters should hold them to their pledges.

Fifty years ago Saturday, July 20, an amazing thing happened when two humans – Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin – landed on the moon and stepped onto its dusty surface. The fact their craft didn't hurtle to the ground and turn the moon into their grave was, in itself, hard to believe. …

The headlines were alarming – a study showing that three-quarters of Illinois students aren't ready for kindergarten when they get there.

Illinois' roads need repair and improvement - and that requires investment.

Playing hot potato with pension problems hardly qualifies as a solution.

A plethora of studies give us dramatically different sides to ponder when discussing legalized recreational cannabis.

The world needs more men like William Jackson Smart.

One of the clichés of politics is that candidates campaign in poetry and govern in prose. That means they forget about a lot of what they said before being elected.

While Illinois legislators wrestled with the issue of legalizing marijuana, their counterparts in Oregon were addressing an unanticipated problem from their decision to legalize it.

Voters deserve to have public policy set by legislators who aren't getting cash from one side of the debate.

Coming your way in November 2020: the option to change Illinois' flat income tax to graduated rates.

"Infrastructure" is a boring bureaucratic word that undersells a serious problem facing Gov. J.B. Pritzker: Illinois needs to repair its crumbling roads and bridges. Is that a slightly sexier sell? Pritzker and lawmakers are hashing out plans for a six-year capital construction spending spre…

The unrelenting wave across the country to legalize the recreational use of marijuana began in 2012 when Colorado and Washington by way of referendum became the first states in the union to grant that liberty.

Effingham’s new mayor, Mike Schutzbach, didn’t waste any time announcing his presence with authority.

Motorists, get ready – here come the tax increases.

It is not a "death tax."

The bidding war for votes in the Democratic presidential primary escalated quickly this week with a proposal by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to wipe out student debt, courtesy of the taxpayers.

A disagreeable odor surrounds the recent discussion about the future of Effingham Police Chief Jeff Fuesting. The talk is cloaked in a vagueness that is, nevertheless, charged with passion on both sides.