A year ago this month, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, appointed by President Donald Trump, visited the USS Lead Superfund site outside Chicago. It’s still hazardous. The EPA’s Superfund program was established 38 years ago to clean up…
A year ago this winter, President Trump at the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast repeated his campaign promise to dismantle the Johnson Amendment, the federal law prohibiting nonprofits, including churches from getting involved in partisan electoral politics. “I will get rid…
February marks Black History Month, when Americans remember the heroic Crispus Attucks and George Washington Carver, daring women such as Harriett Tubman and Rosa Parks, and stalwart figures ranging from Frederick Douglass to Peoria’s own Dr. Romeo B. Garrett. Less…
The 2016 harvest ended months ago, with truckloads of grain shipped to elevators, and now – weeks before spring work is expected to start – farmers are busy fixing fences, researching effective systems and taking soil samples, meeting with seed…
As Americans get excited or annoyed by the latest Oval Office tweets or other outrages from President Trump, a dozen troublesome issues bubble through Capitol Hill like an attack of irritable bowel syndrome. Maybe we need a “National Narrator” to…
There are always trade-offs, it seems. In “Inherit the Wind,” the Henry Drummond character (Spencer Tracy in the film version) sums it up: “Progress has never been a bargain; you have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a…
Just before Christmas 1946, Dorothy Day permanently left Maryfarm in Pennsylvania, one of dozens of Houses of Hospitality her group, Catholic Worker, started setting up in the 1930s. This Christmastime, Day remains an impressive figure. Her granddaughter Kate Hennessy has…
The prospect of a right-wing media conglomerate expanding might cause some to think, “It can’t happen here,” but there’s a local connection between Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media. Plus, legitimate concerns are similar to worrying about a…
Greater Peoria has more than 630 nonprofit enterprises, according to Nonprofit Explorer data from the investigative journalism site ProPublica.org – from the Caterpillar Foundation and the Creve Coeur Club to Forest Park Foundation and the Tri-County Urban League. However, few…
Assumptions v. realities; common assumptions aren’t always common sense; or factual Even hard numbers aren’t always accurate or complete, whether it’s our hunches about crime or what many of us believe Americans actually think: real public opinion. Respected and nonpartisan…
