Chicago Public Square will take a break for a few days. Back Tuesday. And now, the news:
Kill Lake Shore Drive? Chicago magazine’s Edward McClelland advances a modest proposal: With Chicago’s iconic highway continually threatened by rising water, just get rid of it altogether.
■ Preservationists are hoping someone steps up to save the Union Station Power House from the wrecker’s ball.
‘This is obviously tied up … with corruption.’ Support’s growing among Illinois lawmakers for a plan to ban red-light cameras.
■ Block Club Chicago: A how-to guide for clearing Chicago city sticker ticket debt.
‘These guys with their idiot attack.’ The Tribune dissects Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s organization’s effort to keep a college student for from running for alderman—and finds “relentless visits, repeated voicemails and yelling.”
■ Top Democrats in the Illinois Senate aren’t rushing to strip power from under-investigation Sen. Martin Sandoval.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s five-year plan to bring more good-paying well-paying jobs to Illinois—posted online here—focuses on farming, energy, information technology, health care, manufacturing and transportation.
Convenient ‘coffee.’ Hundreds of pages of newly released records on Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke’s murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald confirm that Van Dyke lied and disobeyed orders during the investigation of the case … and that one of his supervisors rewrote detectives’ accounts of the crime after their originals were “damaged by coffee.”
■ Cops have released surveillance images of three men sought for violently invading a woman’s Lincoln Park apartment, where they handcuffed, beat and robbed her.
‘Someone is going to have to manage cars, buildings and IT in one job.’ A veteran of Rahm Emanuel’s administration is among those howling about Mayor Lightfoot’s plan to merge two departments—a change that she says can save taxpayers $1 million.
■ Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was poised today to unveil a budget with no new taxes or fees.
‘Unhinged.’ A Washington Post editorial warns that if lawmakers don’t “flatly reject” President Trump’s declaration that he will ignore any impeachment inquiry, they’ll “shred the constitutional order. They cannot allow the president to say that the law is not the law.”
■ Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband is among 16 high-profile conservative lawyers calling for an “expeditious” impeachment investigation.
■ Want to ask Kellyanne or other presidential aides about impeachment? Good luck.
■ Business Insider looks inside the Conways’ strange, strange relationship.
Apple caves. Another American icon is bowing before the Chinese government: Apple has pulled an app human rights protesters in Hong Kong have been using to track police movements.
■ The Atlantic’s Jonah Blank: China’s power is “forcing American companies and industries to bend to its will.”
■ Detroit Free Press columnist Shawn Windsor: The NBA “sold its soul to China over cash.”
■ The Onion: “Chinese Officials Respond To NBA Controversy By Moving Millions Of Citizens To NHL Re-Fanification Camps.”
Do you know kids who love to run?They’ll love this.
10 Fest Chicago
Sunday.
The Healthy Kids Running Series is a Chicago Public Square advertiser.
A personal note. This month marks the anniversary of my departure in 1989 from a great job at WXRT-FM for a great job at the gone-but-not-forgotten WNUA-FM, where the perks included the opportunity to interview authors, scientists, politicians and entertainers week after week—experience without which Chicago Public Square Podcasts would pale. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to colleagues at both stations.
■ Thanks also to Tim Colburn for flagging an errant preposition above, and to Jim Parks for noting that jobs pay well, not good.
■ The photo that originally accompanied the lead item in this edition depicted Columbus Drive and not Lake Shore Drive. (It was Meyerson’s mistake, not the photographer’s.) Thanks to Todd Bannor for reporting the goof.