A Chicago Blog

Whatever you happen to think about Newt, he has a good point and a good idea:

Eric Zorn is reporting that Christine Radogno sent a letter to Obama encouraging him to endorse ethics legislation being held up in Springfield. But Obama, to no surprise, is staying mum.
This should come as no surprise. Obama exposed the weakness of his support for clean an honest government earlier this year by endorsing Todd Stroger.

According to Citizens Against Government Waste Ted Stevens, the Senator from Alaska, is personally responsible for $3,057,614,028 worth of federal pork spending.
Today it is being reported that FBI and IRS agents are searching his home in Alaska for “records related to his relationship with an oil field services contractor jailed in a public corruption investigation.” [...]

From the Trib:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were proper, according to a government report.
In a selection of 181 cases from 1999 to 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that officials [...]

This is classic. The version below is from Jimmy Kimmel, but if you want to see the whole thing (and it’s pretty remarkable) then go to YouTube.

So here’s a study:
Keysar and his colleagues arranged two blocks on a table so participants could see both. However, a piece of cardboard obstructed the view of one block so a “director,” sitting across from the participant, could only see one block.
When the director asked 20 American participants (none of Asian descent) to move a [...]

If you didn’t catch the Tribune’s “Perspectives” section on Sunday. There was a great article on Reason and our emotions by Jack Fuller. Fuller takes on Al Gore’s hope that the internet will usher in a new age of reasoned discourse. Along the way, he makes note of the tension between Gore’s argument against fear [...]

We griped when John Edwards spent $400 on a haircut … well, try $600 on a make-up job.

Beachwood Reporter takes a moment today to bash Reagan:
“People continue to be fascinated by Reagan,” the Trib’s Julia Keller writes. “There’s no explaining it - except, perhaps, by Richard Reeves, who writes of Reagan: ‘He knew how to be president.’ Such a simple but profound sentence.”
Really? He knew how to trade arms for hostages and [...]

Barry Schwartz has written a fascinating commentary for The New York Times questioning whether or not the city should be offering its public school children cash rewards for good behavior.
To paraphrase Schwartz’s (accurately I hope), financial incentives undermine the intrinsic value of education. That is, entering self-interest into the education equation will diminish the more [...]