Opinion Columns
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Winfrey's endorsement bound to give Obama a boost in Iowa caucusesDec 13, 2007 10:00 pm - DES MOINES, Iowa -- On Sunday, Mitch Stewart was a happy man. In a back room of the Barack Obama for President headquarters here, he was pawing through a mountain of car...
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Report Card results: Good, but familiar problems persistDec 12, 2007 10:00 pm - We continue to score a respectable B overall, but the areas in which we fare least well remain the same. It is a source of both encouragement and concern for us that th...
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Obama, Winfrey hear cheers that symbolize a magnificent changeDec 11, 2007 10:00 pm - DES MOINES, Iowa -- It is 1,134 miles and 53 years since Jerome Schlicter, a teacher, walked into my eighth-grade classroom and held up The New York Times. The headline ...
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Already facing one scandal, Bolingbrook takes another hitDec 09, 2007 10:00 pm - "I'm embarrassed for the city. It happened under my watch." Those were the words of Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar. But he wasn't referring to the presumed homicides of a...
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Another example of futile federal intrusion into educationDec 08, 2007 10:00 pm - No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized be...
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Farewell to the Pizza Cottage, one of those great get-together placesDec 08, 2007 10:00 pm - The Pizza Cottage in Roselle was one of those places where you went for a soft landing after a hard day. The pizzeria had been in the village for more than 50 years. It'...
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English-only laws are discriminatory, and create more divisivenessDec 08, 2007 10:00 pm - There was one priceless scene in an episode of the PBS television show "American Family" where the patriarch -- played by Edward James Olmos -- argues that there shouldn...
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Bad idea to insult parents' intelligence; talk reality, not policyDec 08, 2007 10:00 pm - There's one truth about parents. They tend to focus on their own kids to the exclusion of almost anything else. That's why I've always thought it unwise for schools to s...
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Scientists -- not Bush -- deserve credit for stem cell breakthroughDec 06, 2007 10:00 pm - I have a friend who dedicated her first book to her husband "without whom this would never have been possible." Years later, when the husband was gone, she used to fanta...
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How the Naperville grinches ruined Christmas. Or not.Dec 06, 2007 10:00 pm - OK, I was a bit disappointed when the note arrived from one of my editors. "Naperville didn't ruin Christmas, after all." We were in hot pursuit of this breathtaking sto...