LOLLAPALOOZA PERIL. TMZ reports (and a law enforcement official confirms to USA Today) the records of Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel show Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock booked two rooms directly overlooking Lolla in August. (Photo of a Blackstone computer screen: TMZ.)
■ Paddock may also have been casing a Vegas concert featuring Chicago’s Chance the Rapper.
■ Vegas sheriff: “He had to have had some help.”
■ A source tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the gunman targeted nearby jet fuel tanks Sunday night.
■ The “doodad” used in the Vegas massacre—a device that lets a rifle unleash up to 100 rounds in seven seconds—was OK’d under the Obama administration.
■ In what may mark a breakthrough toward bipartisan cooperation on gun control, Republicans are asking the feds to review the legality of so-called “bump stocks.”
■ Two people close to Ch. 7’s Windy City Live cohost Ryan Chiaverini died in the Vegas attack.
■ Mother Jones, two years ago: “Inside the Race to Stop the Next Mass Shooter.”
‘UNLAWFUL FORCE AGAINST … INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES.’ The ACLU is going to court against the Chicago Police Department, accusing it of failing to train cops to deal with people who have mental illness or developmental disability.
■ An ex-cop and ex-firefighter on the Chicago City Council calls a report on abuse of police overtime a “crock of b.s.”
THAT TIME AN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY KILLED THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Columnist Mark Brown revisits 1971, when NIU’s president ordered The Star-Spangled Banner not be played before home basketball games.
■ Siri confused the song Despacito with Bulgaria’s national anthem.
RUSH HOSPITAL CHAIN GROWING. Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park is joining the secular Rush chain—but will stay Catholic.
■ The healthcare fight lives on in the tax-overhaul debate.
‘MORON’ CLARIFICATION. Yesterday’s Square incompletely conveyed the epithet Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly used to describe Trump.
■ Stephen Colbert: “Nobody calls our president a moron except me.”
■ Senior editor of The Atlantic David Frum paraphrases a Trump tweet this morning: “The president demands a Senate investigation whether he is a moron.”
■ In 1974, a U.S. senator held a news conference to deny a magazine’s assertion he was the dumbest member of Congress. The results were what you’d expect. (Washington Post, 2013.)
‘I WILL TAKE PERSONAL TIME TO SEEK HELP.’ A U.S. congressman who’s a member of the Pro-Life Caucus is retiring after a report that he asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.
■ The Onion mocks: “New Bill Would Limit Abortion To Cases Where Procedure Necessary To Save Promising Political Career.”
■ Not satire: Attorney General Sessions has reversed a policy protecting transgender workers from discrimination.
■ BuzzFeed: Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch is a hero to the media biz in its conflict with Google and Facebook.
■ Ezra Klein in Vox: “The media [sic] is more invigorated, more profitable, and more trusted” since Trump’s election.
■ Columbia Journalism Review spotlights “the most difficult place in America to practice journalism.”
WAIT … WAIT … The ad for Peter Sagal’s appearance at Dominican University in yesterday’s emailed edition of Square linked to the wrong address. That’s been fixed.
