A fare-free CTA? / SIU storm / Yes, they did

A fare-free CTA? The Metropolitan Planning Council’s Jeremy Glover takes a look at how it could happen—and who would pay for it. (Photo: Brian Crawford for the Chicago Public Square Flickr group.)
■ The Tribune’s Mary Schmich: Don’t let Chicago’s Riverwalk become a waterfront frat party.

‘If you have kids, in this world today, it’s ...’ Words fail the mother of a Dixon student accused of using her rifle to fire shots near his high school in Dixon, Ill.
■ Birth rates in the U.S. have hit a record low for the second year in a row.

SIU storm. The president of Southern Illinois University is apologizing for calling those opposed to transferring funding from the Carbondale campus to the Edwardsville campus “bitchers.”
■ … but not before a state representative suggested the president “go to hell, sir,” and resign.

Yes, they did. Despite hours of protest testimony, the Chicago Plan Commission unsurprisingly and unanimously has approved plans for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park—setting the stage for approval by the City Council as soon as next week. (Screengrab from Chicago Sun-Times video.)
■ In a decision welcomed by opponents accused of trying to keep minority residents out of Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, an affordable housing project has failed to qualify for state tax credits.
■ Chicago’s offering a fresh set of 3,219 vacant lots to city residents for $1 apiece.
■ … and you can apply here.

A Chicago Public Square advertiser. Your ad here.

Just because he said it is no reason to use it against him. President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani objected to being shown a clip of him saying something that contradicted what he’d just said.
■ HuffPost compiles “A Comprehensive List Of Everything Don Jr. Doesn’t Know About That Infamous Meeting.”
■ Microsoft founder Bill Gates says his wife didn’t like Donald Trump’s interaction with their kid: “It was … scary how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance.”

So now he needs a new home, too. A New York lawyer who went on a racist rant against people speaking Spanish at a restaurant has been kicked out of his office and faces a formal disciplinary complaint.
■ At all Chicago police districts Saturday, lawyers will be offering free advice.

‘A major, major game-changer in the outbreak.’ For the first time, Ebola’s reared its head in an urban area of Congo.
■ Why it matters: Ebola’s fatal about 90 percent of the time.
■ A growing resistance among the world’s patients to antifungal drugs threatens what researchers writing in Science call “critical failures in medicine and food security.”
■ The U.S. FDA has OK’d the first drug developed to prevent chronic migraines.

Not unlike Chicago Public Square. The new Google News app for the iPhone “opens your mind to opposing viewpoints.”
■ You can help keep Chicago Public Square coming by joining Chicago Public Squarians like Roy Robert Lagemann, Kevin Lampe and Joseph Lynn. (And if you’re paying attention, you’ll note we’re working our way through the list alphabetically. So if your last name begins with M, N or O, act quickly to see your name here in an upcoming edition. Here’s how.)

Corrections.
■ Faithful-to-the-end reader Mike Braden caught a letter missing in the last word of the last item of yesterday’s Chicago Public Square.
■ … and Beth Kujawski spotted a backward closing quotation mark.