When I was a child growing up in Chicago, a trip to the pediatrician was made tolerable by a cool machine, called a Fluoroscope, in the doc's examination room that allowed my brothers and me to stand in front of it, fully clothed, and get a look at each others'...

When David Gregory, in the wake of the death of NBC's Tim Russert, took over the helm of Meet the Press, expectations for Gregory were sky high. He was the fearless reporter who had made a name for himself taking on all of "W's" men.

Gregory waltzed into a...

To scrape together the 60 votes he needs for health care reform, the skinny, pale Harry Reid morphed into an unlikely Santa, giving away goodies to such colleagues as Joe Lieberman (okay, so Reid was Hanukkah Harry in Joe's case), Ben Nelson ("full and permanent federal funding for...

Some mornings when the Chicago Sun-Times has a dumb celebrity story on the front page, as if there were no news locally, nationally, or internationally, I wonder why I still pay to have the tabloid delivered to my doorstep.

I got my answer again today when...

I like Chris Matthews; I watch his show most days, and I appreciate his genuine love of politics and politicians. (He likes politicians so much that he wanted to be one; he lost the primary for a House seat in 1974 and flirted with running for the Senate from Pennsylvania...

I've been thinking about political operative Pat Caddell for years, but haven't written about him because I figured that anyone interested enough to care about the subject must know that Pat Caddell is quite conservative--and rarely disagrees with cable pundits such as Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck. I've watched Caddell,...

For a short time last January, it appeared that the Illinois legislature, the state's new governor, Pat Quinn, and the Democrats in the U.S. Senate might actually do the right thing and deny our local laughingstock, Roland Burris, the Senate seat formerly held by President Barack Obama. No such luck....

When I checked my BlackBerry this morning while stumbling to the kitchen to make coffee, I saw the headline "Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize." My first thought was, "This must be a hoax." When I saw the "News Alerts" from the Washington Post and the New York Times I knew...

So much strategizing and lobbying, in the wake of Ted Kennedy's death, to change the law in Massachusetts to make certain the 60th Democratic vote is there for the health care bill.

Why so little attention to West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, 91, who is more often than...

In their Sunday editions, the New York Times and other major dailies (my hometown Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, for example) gave Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Shawn Hannity huge hunks of red meat for their Monday shows.

Expect to hear repeatedly about how the New York Times in...

To my eye Oprah was looking good on Tuesday, taping her show's season's opener -- it will be aired on Thursday, Sept. 10 -- on an outdoor stage on Michigan Avenue. Dressed in a stretchy yellow top and stretchy black slacks -- both of which were undoubtedly uber-pricey but...

In February, 2002, my family traveled from Chicago to visit our daughter in London where she was studying abroad for the semester.

We were hurrying to the theater when our son, then 10, was hit by a motorcycle while crossing the street.

...

So the two Chicago dailies have one more thing in common, in addition to being in bankruptcy and cutting staffs and news holes.

Both papers now have right-of-center political cartoonists. Each paper employs only one staff cartoonist, so that's a mighty megaphone.

With Tuesday's hiring of Scott Stantis...

So sad today to read of the death of Don Hewitt, 86, the brains behind 60 Minutes.

I talked to him at length in September, 2006 -- and posted about it last year, not knowing at the time that Hewitt was ill -- when I was writing...

Add a federal investigation into adults clouting kids into Chicago's selective enrollment magnet schools to the city and state's pile of corruption -- a kind of local version of the University of Illinois admissions scandal.

Asked about Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd) calling the principal of the first and most celebrated...

Cheryle Jackson, the head of the Chicago Urban League, announced on Monday her intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama gave up when he was elected President.

I met Jackson, now 44, in the spring of 2003 when I was writing a profile for...

As is often the case with Bill Clinton, the details of his personal life can't help but push him and his good works a bit off center stage. Hours after his triumphant walk down the steps of the private plane that flew him and his entourage to North Korea to...

Besides the two young American journalists released by the North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-il, the biggest winner in Bill Clinton's mission to Pyongyang was the weird and reclusive dictator, who just days ago called Bill's wife, Hillary, "a pensioner going shopping" and "by no means intelligent."

The...

Ad man Donny Deutsch was co-hosting with Tamron Hall on MSNBC's afternoon show Friday, I caught the final few minutes, as I awaited Chris Matthews and Hardball. I know that Deutsch is an important name in the advertising business, and he's a favorite of Matthews--he recently introduced Deutsch...

Monday's Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by the new president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti. The bio that runs at the end of Micheletti's "The Path Forward for Honduras," describes him as such: