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…
Due to an error, the West Peoria News column was inadvertently duplicated under Heights News by Roger Larson in the October issue. Please go to our online edition at www.thecommunityword.com or go directly to https://thecommunityword.com/blog/2015/09/30/heights-news/ to read the October Heights…
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…
Taxpayers who feel they already underwrite hotels, retailers or private development through publicly funded incentives or financing may lump in hospitals as businesses at the trough. Although hospitals are appreciated and respected institutions that provide communities with health care and…
Hospitals soothe pain and save lives, which is advertised by Peoria’s well-known medical centers. A less familiar facility is Kindred Hospital on Romeo B. Garrett Avenue, the community’s only for-profit hospital, which some may mistakenly think is where seriously ill…
Alaina Teplitz, a career Foreign Service officer and daughter of long-time Peoria residents Marcella and Jack Teplitz, is the new U.S. ambassador to Nepal. Teplitz has served at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and had previous postings in Bangladesh,…
Imagine sitting in your bathroom. Now imagine staying there. For more than a year. That’s how long some 30 percent of Illinois inmates are in solitary confinement, concedes the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Another 10 percent suffers such isolation…
Interim Illinois Central College president Dr. William Tammone has announced the termination of the school’s contract with Jeremy Styninger who owns the license for radio station WAZU-FM. That means all programming originating from ICC will end Wednesday, Sept. 30. And…
It’s no surprise that big food, farming and agrichemical corporations want to defeat mandatory labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). What is surprising and depressing is how many Democrats approved a bill in the House of Representatives that…
