Is Cleve Heidelberg INNOCENT? BY CLARE HOWARD On a cold, gray Friday afternoon in mid-January, Marcella Teplitz and Andrew Hale drove east on Harmon Highway from the site of the old Bellevue Drive-In movie theater. Outside the theater ticket booth…
Distance and income leave some neighborhoods hungry for good food BY BILL KNIGHT The need is chicken-or-egg. And meat and fruit . . . . Neighborhoods need full-service groceries for consumers to shop for healthy food, but businesses need customer…
Biotechnology in agriculture is upending traditional notions of justice and liability; public policy is failing to keep up with the problem. Both chemical and organic farmers are venting frustration over harm. Lawsuit over Viptera GMO corn American farmers suffered billions…
BY TERRA BROCKMAN The Illinois Department of Agriculture has named a fifth generation central Illinois farmer, Harold Wilken, the winner of the annual R.J. Vollmer Award for Sustainable Agriculture. Wilken, together with his wife Sandy and son Ross, are the…
When State Rep. David Leitch, former Journal Star reporter, Commercial National Bank vice president and strongly pro-business Republican, announced recently he would not run again, expressions of admiration came from Democrats. Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth, D-Peoria, and Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria,…
The presidential debates confirmed that reducing America’s burgeoning incarceration rate is a bipartisan goal. “Three-strikes-and-you’re-out,” tougher drug sentencing even for non-violent drug crimes and mandatory sentencing guidelines have all added to the problem. Today, as presidential candidates from both parties…
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and professor at University of California, Berkeley, has tackled “The 4 Big Lies about Immigrants – and the Truth” in a recent piece on his blog. Debunking these myths gives an important…
Steve Shearer is well-known by folks who follow politics. He’s been a part of Aaron Schock’s political life almost from day one. At one time he was Schock’s chief of staff. Like Schock, Shearer has been questioned by the F.B.I.…
Hundreds of Central Illinoisans for years watched Father Terry Cassidy mimic a fish that’s unaware it’s surrounded by water. It’s been his light-hearted effort to show how people often don’t realize they’re surrounded – by grace. But Cassidy, 64, now…
DANFORTH, ILL. – On a warm September day on the cusp of harvest season, about 70 farmers from throughout the Midwest drove to a cavernous metal equipment barn on Harold Wilken’s organic grain farm in Iroquois County. They came to…
