This is a true story but the names have been changed to protect the benevolent.

The missive ended up on my desk at the Better Government Association's Chicago office with the rest of the daily mail, and the halting...

I'm not a football coach. Far from it. I run the Better Government Association, an anti-corruption civic watchdog organization in Chicago. And I spent most of my professional life covering news, including 26 years as the political reporter at WLS, the ABC station in Chicago.

But I've been following...

Some Chicago truths are incontrovertible: Winters are too long and cold; most of the professional sports teams will invariably break our hearts; and Chicago aldermen instinctively reject good government suggestions from outsiders like they're aliens. So it's no surprise that Inspector General Joe Ferguson's recent budget-cutting suggestions were declared DOA...

Illinois is a legendary state in so many ways - from its architecture to its food; from its famed blues music to its political scene. One of the states more infamous residents happens to be the ex-Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who also holds the title of being the first...

The Olympic smackdown was a body blow that took our collective breath away. A shiv in the side of our civic consciousness, whether you wanted the games in Chicago. Or not. And now the experts are pointing their fingers at the likely culprits in an endless series of hand-wringing debriefings...

For more than 25 years, as the main political reporter at ABC 7 in Chicago, I asked politicians from Presidents to park supervisors the tough questions about how they managed their governments and spent your hard-earned tax dollars. I held their feet to the fire. And now, after a...