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.

We tend to take for granted that the press in the United States is free.

How House Bill 1873 didn't garner unanimous approval when the House considered it is mystifying. The measure seeks to double ticket fines for motorists who don't stop for school buses.

By now, the problems are well-documented: More Illinois roads and bridges are falling into disrepair, and the state's financial straits have left less money on the table to address the growing list of infrastructure deficiencies.

The evidence keeps piling up that Illinois must toughen its law on vaccine exemptions.

Walter Ginter began using heroin in the early 1970s while serving in the Army. By 1977, desperate to kick the habit, he turned to daily doses of methadone, a synthetic opioid that eases withdrawal and decreases cravings. The treatment worked.

It has been a long time coming, but Illinois and Missouri are now issuing Real ID-compliant driver's licenses, which will be needed to board planes or enter some federally controlled buildings starting next year.

After a second Illinois state trooper was killed in a week on Illinois roads, state police are alarmed, and you should be, too.

For more than two decades after the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, Illinois lawmakers bitterly debated a question important to many families: Should parents know that their daughter, who's younger than 18, intends to have an abortion?

Officials estimate that $5.3 million would be generated annually for public school districts in Effingham County, based on 2018 sales, if voters on Tuesday approve the Illinois County School Facility Tax, also called the 1 Cent Sales Tax.

State and local leaders are ramping up their efforts in preparation for the 2020 census. While the actual numbers won't be counted until next year, the importance of getting residents to respond can't be overstated.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has unveiled details of his promised push for a graduated income tax. He campaigned on the issue. He delivered.

Another tragedy has befallen our communities at the point of a gun, this one claiming the lives of five innocent people working at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora and leaving five police officers wounded.

Illinois' new governor made a triumphant appearance before legislators last week, delivering a well-received speech about the state's woes that included promises to tax and spend his way to a $38.7 billion balanced budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Some people may oppose President Donald Trump's declaration of a national emergency on immigration because it sidesteps the Constitution's explicit assignment of spending powers to Congress, not the president.

We understand the meaningless gesture by some state legislators from our area suggesting that a cleaver be taken to the Illinois map, separating Chicago from the rest of us.

If a disease were striking children, causing rash and fever and sometimes escalating to brain swelling, pneumonia and even death, there would be a public demand to do something about it.

State Comptroller Susana Mendoza is spending most of her time these days running for mayor of Chicago. But back at the office, her worker bees have been reviewing the state's finances, releasing a report last week that lays out the numbers.

Former Democratic state Rep. Daniel Burke was unceremoniously tossed out of office last year by the residents of his increasingly Hispanic Chicago district.

We've said before that there's no need to rush to legalize recreational marijuana, and it bears repeating now.

How fitting is it that President Trump's first Oval Office address, which he requested be televised live in prime time by every major network, was aimed at stirring up the American public about a crisis largely of his own making?

December saw many of us nestled inside watching romantic Hallmark Channel movies, but January brings a counterpunch: a twisted Lifetime saga of sexual abuse and control. Not romance-gone-wrong escapism, this is a six-part documentary: "Surviving R. Kelly," an examination of a long history of…

With the election of J.B. Pritzker as governor, Democrats will control the governor's mansion, the Senate and the House for the first time in four years. While Illinois remains a blue state, Southern Illinois' congressional contingent got a bit redder in November when Republican Patrick Wind…

Paying at the pump has been a little cheaper lately in Springfield. Gas was hovering around $2 a gallon in some parts of Springfield on Friday. That's a huge improvement over last month, when AAA said the average price of a gallon of gas in Springfield was $2.502. It beats a year ago, when i…

When he takes office in January, Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker will have fewer constituents than he might have expected. Unfortunately he'll also have fewer constituents working and paying taxes to support Illinois' state and local governments. Every time a worker departs, the tax burden on those…

U.S. House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has — once again — showed why she's a consummate manager of her party's caucus.