Cook County Board President Todd Stroger on Monday wielded his veto stamp a fourth time on legislation to roll back the unpopular sales tax hike passed a year ago.
Joe Ferguson is the eldest son of a working-class single mom and a father he never knew who survived that rejection -- and the mean streets of Boston -- to become a dogged federal prosecutor in Chicago.
Gov. Quinn took office nearly 10 months ago saying he'd "fumigate state government" in the wake of his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, being booted from office.
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger today wielded his veto stamp a fourth time on legislation to roll back the unpopular sales tax hike passed a year ago. Up to now, he’s been able to fend off a rollback by vetoing the measure and shoring up enough votes to withstand an override, arguing a giveback would “decimate” the three hospitals and clinics serving the uninsured and poor.
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford faces ethics charges he broke state laws more than three dozen times by violating rules on airplane travel and campaign money, according to details of the allegations released Monday.
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration wanted Louis Bertucci hired. So the clout-heavy Bertucci got hired.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman's support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.
LONDON -- Leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war and show plans for the U.S.-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, a newspaper reported Sunday.
CHICAGO -- Gov. Pat Quinn has signed legislation that allows Illinois servicemembers who have been injured abroad to apply for $5,000 grants.
BUCHAREST, Romania -- Romanians voted for new president Sunday, hoping to end a leadership crisis that threatens a euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) IMF loan their country desperately needs to ease a painful recession.
Gov. Quinn was joined by Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) Director Marc Miller and Pike County Farm Bureau President Terry Rush at Blue River Farm near Pittsfield, according to a press release from the governor's office.
Analysis: Mayor Daley's decision to blame the media for Oprah Winfrey's career-altering choice to pull the plug on her syndicated talk show after her 25th season is preposterous. But it's also incredibly revealing. When the mayor said, "You keep kicking people, and people will leave," he just might have been talking about himself. Daley has been on the warpath about the media in recent months -- to the point of aggressively challenging reporters.
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Roland Burris was reprimanded Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics for his "inconsistent, incomplete and misleading" testimony before Springfield lawmakers about his appointment by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the seat once held by President Obama.
Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) was admonished today by the U.S. Senate ethics committee over his testimony in Springfield concerning how he got appointed to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat. But his actions following his appointment by then Gov.-Rod Blagojevich did not rise to level of pursuing ethics charges against Burris, the committee ruled.
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina lawmakers plan to formally consider impeaching Gov. Mark Sanford for the first time next week, the chairman of the committee beginning that work said Friday.
It's back to surgery for Cook County's $800 million health-care system that serves the poor and uninsured, according to its top administrator.
The laws looks to be on Senator Roland Burris’ side — but that doesn’t mean he is not a liar.
A defiant Cook County Board President Todd Stroger says he'll wait until the 11th hour to veto a sales tax rollback commissioners approved this week. Waiting until Monday's veto deadline, Stroger tells the Sun-Times, will give the county's residents a chance to call their elected leaders and tell them to reconsider the half-penny on the dollar giveback.
WASHINGTON -- Trying terrorist suspects now detained at Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba in U.S. federal courtrooms -- rather than military tribunals, which operate under different rules -- met with skeptical questioning by some senators at a Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
SPRINGFIELD -- Should disgraced ex-Gov. George Ryan be given a partial state pension of $60,000 a year for his tenure as a county official, state legislator and lieutenant governor?
Cook County taxpayers will write a $14,022 check to a custodian who claims she twice injured her back by "reaching around to pick up a piece of toilet paper," according to county documents.
Mayor Daley on Wednesday re-appointed his nephew and former campaign finance chief to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority mapping plans for a retail development near U.S. Cellular Field.
The debate over rolling back Cook County's controversial sales tax was nasty at times Tuesday, but at one point Tony Peraica, a west suburban Republican, grabbed the wheel and steered toward bizarreville.
The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday morning about whether disgraced ex-Gov. George Ryan is entitled to part of his lucrative state pension.
Thought you were watching more negative campaign ads on television lately? Not so, said state comptroller Dan Hynes and Gov. Quinn, who defended their gubernatorial primary ads this morning during a mostly cordial debate hosted by the Union Club of Chicago.
The alderman for Chicago’s downtown said today he’s opposed to efforts by commercial property owners to establish a tax subsidy district in the East Loop.
Little more than two months before the primary election, Cook County commissioners approved a half-penny reduction in the sales tax Tuesday and quickly moved to polish what will surely be a campaign slogan of budget reform.
Fee increases for fitness center memberships, children's summer camps and boat slips are part of a $392 million budget introduced by the Chicago Park District introduced this week. An average 5 percent increase in fees will generate an estimated $2 million in revenues.
Chicago Park District officials will ask the park board today to greenlight a $4.2 million design of a 25-acre expanse east of Millennium Park to Lake Shore Drive, said Gia Biagi, the district's planning and development director.
After months of debate, Cook County commissioners today approved a half-cent sales tax break they believe will stick.
SPRINGFIELD—A state law that allows police and municipalities to seize the vehicles of accused repeat drunk drivers or those who have driven repeatedly on revoked licenses was deemed unconstitutional Tuesday.
Chicago has a new problem when it comes to parking. Revenue collected for parking ticket fines was off on average nearly $1 million a month between May and August 2009, compared with the same time in 2008. This comes as the city is trying to fill a $520 million budget hole.
The debate over what to do with Cook County's unpopular sales tax hike has turned into a political tennis match that just won't end.
From Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to Bill Maher's targets in the 2008 comedic documentary "Religulous," those on the right of the spectrum often wind up as subjects of late-night zingers and scorching sendups. They are less often the originators of those sendups -- standouts such as Dennis Miller and his less comedically accomplished conservative compatriot Rush Limbaugh notwithstanding -- especially when it comes to taking conservative comrades to task.
Some of Chicago's most powerful people crumpled with disbelief and pain Monday upon hearing the Cook County medical examiner's ruling that School Board President Michael Scott died at his own hand.
Political double agents -- that seems the right phrase to describe some volunteers working on the Cook County Board president's race. Their true allegiance might not be clear. But their mission is: to topple incumbent County Board President Todd Stroger.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Quinn today ridiculed mounting GOP opposition to President Obama’s plan to transfer inmates from Guantanamo Bay to a near-vacant prison in northwestern Illinois.
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster long ago labeled himself a businessman and a scientist. The Geneva Democrat's apparently pretty good with money, too: Foster ranked 19th in net worth for 2008 in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, which is known for the Web site www.opensecrets.org.
Chicago will be free to demolish hundreds of abandoned homes in suburban Bensenville to make way for new runways at O’Hare Airport, thanks to a $16 million settlement advanced by a City Council committee Monday.
Eric Hanson, of Naperville, convicted of killing his sister, parents and brother-in-law, is there. So is Brian Nelson, who beat to death and later set on fire his ex-girlfriend, her brother, their father and the father's girlfriend in Will County.
It was billed as a forum where all four Democrats running for Cook County Board president would be on a single stage together, but incumbent Todd Stroger was a no-show.
An Illinois prison that may house terrorism suspects now at Guantanamo will be inspected by a federal team today, a day after Gov. Quinn and Sen. Dick Durbin stumped for the plan -- calling it "a dream come true."
For years, Thomas Simmons was a high-ranking bureaucrat at City Hall. He also ran a successful "patronage army" of African Americans on the West Side.
In a fly-around the state Sunday, Gov. Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) accused GOP political rivals of spreading panic over efforts to house some Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees at the state’s little used Thomson Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois.
WASHINGTON -- House Democrats missed opportunities to improve the House-passed health care bill when they rejected Republican ideas to limit lawsuits and give states more flexibility to enact innovative changes, a GOP lawmaker said Saturday.
Rod Blagojevich and his brother, Rob, will go to trial without anyone else next year after the government agreed to try Downstate businessman William Cellini separately.
With Cook County commissioners expected to roll back the sales tax a half penny on the dollar -- and make it stick this time -- a simmering discussion may very well boil over about a proposed hospital tax, as one group calls it, to continue delivering health care to the poor and uninsured.
He was a longtime political insider, but former Chicago Ald. Ed Vrdolyak apparently forged some close ties to Bears players, too.
Byron Steele was axed from his Cook County job in September and made a stink about political payback.
A federal appellate court today revived a Jewish family’s lawsuit against a Chicago condominium association that repeatedly removed a mezuzah from the family’s doorpost.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan issued his first outright apology Thursday for wrongfully putting two men on Death Row instead of prosecuting the real killer of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico.
A conservative government watchdog group sued Mayor Daley Thursday, charging he’s not responding to public records requests for emails and other correspondence between his office and President Obama leading up to Chicago’s failed bid for the 2016 Olympics.
Chicago is re-examining a rule that prohibits private ambulance services from transporting dead bodies in hopes that competition for the grisly service could reduce the nation’s highest transport fees, a top mayoral aide said today.
The federal prosecutor chosen by Mayor Daley to serve a four-year term as Chicago’s corruption-fighting inspector general sailed through a Chicago City Council committee today with a promise to provide a bigger “bang for the buck.”
Illinois state Rep. Tom Cross, minority leader of the Illinois House of Representatives, today endorsed former state Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna for governor.
America’s health-care crisis would be worse than it is without non-profit groups providing the health care that government and the private sector do not, former President Bill Clinton said in Chicago today.
There is nothing new about limiting political debates to the top candidates in a race.
SPRINGFIELD -- Gov. Quinn Tuesday defended his plan to release up to 1,000 inmates, a step that begins this week and eventually could save the cash-strapped state $5 million a year.
Four members of a West Rogers Park family testified Monday that Ald. Bernard Stone's (50th) ward superintendent Anish Eapen coaxed them to vote absentee, collected their ballots and then mailed them during the heated 2007 aldermanic race.
A month after Mayor Daley's Olympic team washed out in the race for the 2016 Games, the tide has shifted as planners focus on Northerly Island's long-term place in the lakefront landscape.
The No. 2 man at Chicago's 911 emergency center has resigned his $149,832-a-year job to avoid being fired for alleged contract irregularities that cost taxpayers $2.25 million.
With a days-old law in place that has weakened Cook County President Todd Stroger’s veto power, county commissioners called a special board meeting for next Monday to vote on rolling back the county’s controversial sales tax by a half-penny.
In the never-ending battle over gubernatorial hair, Gov. Quinn is sending a video to supporters that aims to kill two birds with one stone.
Rep. Danny K. Davis conceded his game of chicken with Cook County Board President Todd Stroger Monday.
Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) will get the top spot on the Feb. 2 Democratic primary ballot for Cook County Board president.
Impeached ex-Gov. Blagojevich’s lone defender in the Illinois House may herself wind up being booted from office because of a potential glitch with her nominating petitions.
Gov. Quinn signed into law Saturday a measure that slices away some of Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's authority and sets the stage for county commissioners to slash a controversial sales tax increase as the 2010 elections loom.
Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is set to receive the endorsement today of Illinois’ highest-ranking Hispanic elected official, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, in the Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama summoned Democrats to "answer the call of history" Saturday as the House pushed toward a vote on a landmark health care bill holding out the promise of coverage for tens of millions who lack it.
WASHINGTON -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- on a book tour to promote her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life -- will headline the Gridiron Club winter dinner here, along with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).
It was June, 2008, when a Naperville businessman met with an influential city alderman to talk about winning lucrative airport concessions contracts.
A $100,000 no-bid Chicago Police Department contract with Charles Bowen -- the former Cook County commissioner who spent more than 15 years as Mayor Daley's chief liaison to black ministers -- is at the center of an unprecedented legal battle between City Hall and the inspector general's office.
President Obama's former colleagues in the Illinois state Senate used him as a punching bag Thursday in the first debate among all seven Republicans running for governor.
WASHINGTON -- Gov. Quinn raised campaign cash, huddled with members of the Illinois congressional delegation, pitched a plan to help military families and visited President Obama and Chicago pals at the White House on Wednesday.
For the third time since his arrest more than a year ago, there may be a delay in the trial of former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge, but his lawyer said Wednesday it was "nonsense" to suggest he's using an illness to postpone his case.
Two employees of Chicago's scandal-scarred Department of Buildings have been slapped with 10-day suspensions for refusing to explain why their names appeared on a list of city employees who allegedly accepted gift cards from a permit expediter-turned-government witness.
About 40 minutes before deadline on the last day to file Monday, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger filed 22,000 signatures to run for re-election -- about half as many as some of his main rivals.
The tit-for-tat continues between the main Democrats running for governor.
Sen. Roland Burris told a cheering crowd of medical students and others at Cook County Hospital today that he will not compromise on his demand that any health care plan have a public option.
Mayor Daley’s environment commissioner said today she would accept a one-day suspension for alleged hiring abuses involving contract employees.
For 21 years, Terrence J. O'Brien has been on the board of Cook County's sewage-treatment operation, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
Lorenzo Rivera may be only 11 years old, but he knows more about politics than many adults. The Chicago fifth-grader proves just how much in the new documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," where he is filmed making campaign calls on Obama's behalf in 2008. In the movie, filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams capture Lorenzo, only 9 at the time, handling a call to a confused voter with a calm and grace belying his young age.
James Dencek was 54 when he retired in 1994 from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
A top aide to Gov. Quinn has left her $119,158-a-year job amid a state government probe into whether she had done political work on state time.
SPRINGFIELD -- Senior citizens can continue riding Chicago area commuter trains and buses for free after Senate Democrats blocked efforts Friday to undo the freebie that impeached ex-Gov. Blagojevich gave older voters last year.
Chicago is so strapped for cash that it's cutting services and draining reserves. So why was a 50th Ward superintendent allowed to do nothing for nearly two years while awaiting trial for absentee-ballot fraud, all the while collecting his $83,940-a-year salary?
The Illinois Senate put the finishing touch on a major campaign-finance package by voting today to send the legislation that caps contributions to Gov. Quinn.
Many Chicago homeowners will see their property taxes rise sharply in the tax bills going out this week. But not President Obama. His taxes on his Kenwood mansion are up just 1 percent, records show.
State lawmakers Thursday moved to clip the powers of Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, tighten cemetery oversight and cap campaign contribution following Rod Blagojevich’s alleged fund-raising abuses.
U.S. Senate candidate David Hoffman sat down today at the White House with President Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod, but the city’s former Inspector General would reveal little of what the two men talked about.
Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a former independent alderman and state senator, is attempting a political comeback, gathering signatures to run for Cook County Board against Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno.
Chicago's police watchdog agency recommended a reprimand last year for the city's top cop, Supt. Jody Weis, for endorsing then-Sen. Barack Obama last year during the presidential campaign, according to records released today.
Mayor Daley was accused Wednesday of mortgaging Chicago's future by draining reserves that were supposed to carry the city for decades to solve two short-term political needs: freezing taxes and averting a property tax revolt.
Bensenville has proposed a settlement to allow Chicago to demolish more than 500 houses and businesses to expand O'Hare Airport.
The Chicago Police Board should give written reasons for firing, suspending or clearing officers accused of misconduct, a new report says.
Mayor Daley today called a halt to efforts by his lifelong rival, Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), to use city business as a lever to punish Bank of America for moving to foreclose on downtown’s Block 37.
An activist with one of Chicago's best-known Hispanic names, Rudy Lozano Jr. will test whether Southwest Side voters are ready to replace longtime incumbent State Rep. Dan Burke of the 23rd Legislative District.
A racially charged comment from former Cook County Board President Bobbie Steele had U.S. Senate hopeful Cheryle Jackson explaining the sentiments of her supporter Monday.
It’s no longer just comedians making fun of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s huge head of hair.
Chicago's Streets and Sanitation commissioner is cracking the whip to reduce absenteeism that sidelines nearly one-third of all laborers every day.
WASHINGTON -- White House presidential adviser David Axelrod says the demands of his job can sometimes be hard since he can't spend quality time with his daughter, who suffers from epilepsy.
Those running for Illinois governor have their share of differences, but religion is not really one of them.
In Chicago, Springfield and around the state, candidates lined up early Monday to try for top ballot spot in the Feb. 2 primary elections.
The Watchdogs: A secret hiring database kept by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration is shedding new light on a controversy over lucrative pressure-washing jobs that went to a Cicero company owned by a major Blagojevich campaign contributor.
The chairman of the state Senate Transportation Committee has met with representatives from both parties to discuss a solution to the CTA funding crisis that would convert $360 million in capital funding into operations funding over two years.
Gov. Quinn has secured the endorsements of some of the state's top unions in the Feb. 2 Democratic primary, but rival Dan Hynes has also been racking up a substantial number of union endorsements.
