Carol Marin is the latest to try to make us all feel sorry for poor little Forrest Claypool and his quixotic attempt to worm his way onto the ballot as an independent for Cook County assessor.

She likens Mike Madigan to Tony Soprano, supposing Madigan has called all over town...

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Anita Alvarez is a menace to your freedom.

That's why you should care about Alvarez's bid to force my Medill colleague David Protess to open his grade book to prosecutors as they attempt to -- well, I still haven't figured out what Alvarez and her cohort...

If you think things are bad now in Illinois, with Blagojevich and Burris and Jesse Jackson Jr. and who knows what else, it could be worse.

Here's a three-paragraph history lesson:

In the 1920s, the U.S. Senate refused to seat the man appointed by the governor -- for two...

Here is Clarence Page on Robert Novak, who died earlier this week:

We seldom agreed on political issues, but he always knew how to make a good case for his side. More important, at a time when just about everyone who has a keyboard seems to think they...

Abner Mikva thinks Patrick Fitzgerald shot his mouth off in talking to reporters the day that Rod Blagojevich was led from his home in shackles.

The former congressman, former federal judge, former White House counsel and former everything spoke recently at a panel on public corruption cases. He criticized the...

Was the deal that privatized Chicago's parking meters for 75 years a good one?

David Hoffman, the city's inspector general, an independent watchdog on government, says probably not. He's not even straight-up saying no, just that the process was fundamentally flawed.

He issued a report Tuesday that says the...

For the record, Mike Jacobs, a state senator from the Quad Cities, has been aware of me zero times in his life.

I say that to set the record straight, so that he -- or anybody else -- doesn't mistakenly think that I come to this debate with any...

I've just read the U.S. Attorney's filings Tuesday, asking to send along a recording of a telephone call the government says our junior senator had with the brother of our impeached former governor. It's a bit of information the Senate Ethics Committee might find interesting.

I've followed Roland Burris his...

Maureen Dowd's excuse for being caught plagiarizing is as lame as her plagiarism is inexcusable.

A friend fed her a line? And she used it? Not realizing the friend was quoting Marshall?

Oh. Well.

In that case, forget we brought it up.

I teach journalism at...