Help nail corrupt pols. Illinois State Police have launched a new online form letting citizens accuse government officials of criminal misconduct.
■ But, a veteran University of Illinois political scientist warns WTTW, “The mandate they’re claiming is incredibly broad. … If you’re overloading your plate, you’re not being as effective.”
Poison pen. Soil at Chicago’s emerging Brighton Park migrant camp is plagued by high levels of mercury, arsenic and lead.
■ A report buried at the bottom of the city’s page of frequently asked questions about “new arrivals” explains the city’s pouring a 6-inch layer of “crushed clean stone” (downloadable file link) over the property.
■ A Tribune editorial: The Brighton Park project exemplifies “poor decision-making emanating from Mayor Johnson’s administration,” and Gov. Pritzker should kill it.
■ Sun-Times analysis: The migrant crisis is at the heart of “real frustration” on both sides of a tense relationship between Pritzker and Johnson.
‘It must be depressing work to be a COP protestor.’ At the international climate conference in Dubai, Chicago’s Mike Fourcher reports “a tussle over science belief while financiers gab.”
■ Among the attendees: Six Chicago-area high school kids representing a youth environmental advocacy program, It’s Our Future.
Nazis in the news. Popular Information reports that the Texas Republican Party has rejected a ban on its association “with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial.”
■ The Atlantic, last week: “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.”
■ Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney warns that the U.S. is “sleepwalking into dictatorship.”
‘If we’ve gotten to the point where we admire anyone who’s not Donald Trump, we’ve fallen to a very low place.’ Media critic Mark Jacob punctures “the media’s momentary fascination with Nikki Haley.”
■ Fox on Saturday cut off a live broadcast of Trump’s Iowa rally to correct his lies about the 2020 election …
■ … lies that cost Fox three-quarters of a billion dollars in April.
‘Your body might be carved up … for the entertainment of a grown man in a fedora.’ Last Week Tonight host—and proud organ donor—John Oliver took a critical look last night at shortcomings in U.S. programs overseeing the donation of organs and bodies.
■ Illinois played key roles in Oliver’s report, which included callbacks to a June story—“3 severed heads from donor bodies left at employee’s desk after complaints raised about alleged misconduct”—and a 2017 account, “Organ recipient gifts heartbeat recording to donor family.”
■ Oliver nevertheless encouraged viewers to register as an organ, eye and tissue donor after their deaths, and to consider making a living donation of a kidney.
■ See the segment or read a transcript.
‘Celebrating its terribleness.’ Critic Richard Roeper praises a new documentary—available Tuesday—about “the looniest, most disjointed, garish, ill-conceived and at times indecipherably bizarre and undeniably dreadful television programming in the history of the medium,” 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special …
■ … which aired just once, but endures on YouTube.
‘We only make the smallest of plans.’ An item in Friday’s Chicago Public Square about plans for more bus-only lanes prompted reader Benjy Blenner to bemoan the state of Chicago-area mass transit: “We seem to be constantly falling short of what we should be doing. … When I look at pictures of Chicago from decades and centuries past, I am struck by the plethora of surface rail, street cars and elevated lines. We even had the electric buses before we gave in to the obsession with gas power. I can’t help but think about how, despite its price tag, we should be going out of our way to build more rail. So long as a car, non-city bus or truck can get into a ‘bus only’ lane, buses will continue to be stuck behind cars and in the middle of crosswalks while we are forced to breathe in ever-more-polluted air.”
■ Streetsblog Chicago: “Los Angeles, a larger but historically much more car-centric city than Chicago, has finally overtaken us for transit ridership.”
■ Streetsblog Chicago: “Los Angeles, a larger but historically much more car-centric city than Chicago, has finally overtaken us for transit ridership.”
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■ … just as fans including Carolyn Grisko have done.
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A Square public service announcement …
Illinois Senate President Don Harmon speaks. He’ll provide a legislative update and address social justice issues in Illinois—online and in-person—this Sunday at Third Unitarian Church, 301 N. Mayfield, Chicago (just off the Green Line’s Austin stop). To join online, email thirdunitarianchurch@gmail.com.
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