Editorials

Get this: men and women are different. Italian researchers made this “groundbreaking” discovery in a recent study.

The U.S. needs all the jobs it can get, and we’re all for employers bringing factory work back here from China and other foreign locales. We support American manufacturing — period.

(MCT) — Last weekend I met some friends in Washington, D.C., and, like any proper tourist in the capital, couldn’t resist posing for a photo in front of the White House.

To the extent that he ever believed much, if any, of his own soaring rhetoric about a transformative, post-partisan presidency during the 2008 campaign, President Obama would have to be judged a failure. Even after the election, his inaugural address called for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

It’s been more exciting than a zip-line over crocodile-infested streams watching the Republican reality TV show currently playing across the nation. Specifically talking about their grueling marathon gladiator contest where the last person voted off the island becomes Red American Idol and wins the opportunity to oppose Barack Obama in the grudge match this fall, not to mention grab all the money they can from the Koch Brothers’ secret PAC account money machine. Let’s Make a Deal.

I am somewhat mystified — and dismayed — by the spectacle of a lot of so-called conservatives who weren’t around in the 1980s dropping Ronald Reagan’s name to promote themselves while they go about slandering Newt Gingrich who, like my dad, was there in the ‘80s and ‘90s and also helped him elect more Republicans than anyone else in recent memory.

Most Super Bowl feasts are nothing but hate crimes against your taste buds. Those bland Buffalo wings, that bleh cheese dip, the boring little sliders. Do you really want a Betty Crocker empanada?

MDH SAYS: Gov. Pat Quinn wants to spend big, but he doesn’t say how we’ll pay for it.

Anytime you can save $7 million a year in a deadbeat state like Illinois, you should jump at the chance, right?

Newt Gingrich is behaving as though he read the direst warnings about his temperament and set out to prove them all true.

For months, a large retailer emailed me twice a day, begging me to switch from paper billing to online billing. If only I would go paperless, my hair would grow back rich and thick, my sciatica would go away, my plantar fasciitis would heal itself, my cats would stop shedding, and my chance of heavenly reward would rise. OK, fine. I’ll sign up, just please stop sending me your stupid emails.

The economy is in the tank. Americans are hurting, out of work and underemployed. The housing market hasn’t recovered. And a weakened President Barack Obama hopes for good news.

There’s been a reversal of fortunes between Canada and America, and I’m not happy about it.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s decision to allow cameras and recorders in state trial-level courts is an overdue change that will provide better public access to and understanding of the judicial system.

Look, nobody’s third wife is going to be first lady. In the privacy of the voting booth, American women won’t stand for it. Regardless of how flawlessly the bejeweled Callista enacts the role of pious matron, she remains the embodiment of the Trophy Wife — younger, more adoring, unencumbered by children, a climber on the make. In effect, a successful Monica Lewinsky, although unlike Bill Clinton’s paramour, Callista was no kid.

As rare and mythical as the unicorn, it too cavorts amongst the clouds with double rainbows birthing from its unfathomable depths. But instead of worshipful 12-year-old girls, it is conservative politicians who tack drawings of this inamorata on walls above their beds. We’re talking about the legendary ... Mainstream.

President Barack Obama knows the federal government has a big spending problem, and he is not reluctant to point it out. “The American people deserve to have their leaders come together to make the tough choices necessary to live within our means, just as American families do every day in these tough economic times,” the White House said in November.

Edwards got a pass because he’s a Democrat; Gingrich hasn’t been that lucky

Perry’s new era is nothing compared to the new era facing the Republican party

While the vast majority of should-be role models work hard to live up to expectations, there have been far too many examples in recent weeks – both locally and on a national level – of role models who are failing to live up to the high expectations to which they should be held.

Navy Pier abruptly closed its popular “royal white tigers” — featuring Gita and her cubs — after I showed up Tuesday asking about an interesting fact:

State Rep. Bill Mitchell has the right idea about selling or grounding the state’s air fleet.

When money managers are asked why they deserve tens of millions of dollars for pushing around other people’s money, the answer is always, “the risk.” They took the risk; they made the bet and won. To the victor go the spoils.

As our country goes to pot, I find myself more focused on personal matters, such as this item from ABC News: Scientists may soon find a cure for baldness.

Who would have guessed we’d have a national conversation about urinating on corpses? And worse yet to have people with a media megaphone attempting to defend it. The video of four marines desecrating the remains of a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan surfaced on YouTube last week.

The Obama administration last week denied an oil company’s application to expand an existing pipeline network between the United States and Canada.

Time was when newspaper journalists prided themselves on being working stiffs: skeptical, cynical and worldly-wise. “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” went the mantra, though I’ve always preferred the unofficial motto of my native New Jersey: “Oh yeah, who says?”

Here comes the snow shoveler, looking for work, a wide blue shovel slung over his left shoulder. He buzzes at a house across the street from mine, then backs away from the door, as if he knows that standing too close would make him the bogeyman.

So Romney didn’t win the Iowa caucuses ... The Republican presidential primary road started with a car lot full of candidates. After three diverse tests, voters tossed some models aside and narrowed it to two choices. Newt Gingrich’s surge to win South Carolina puts him in the driver’s seat as the only candidate with a realistic shot at stalling Mitt Romney’s cruise to the nomination.

Much like one of his predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama has all but declared war on the United States Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court had a chance last week to address a serious defect in criminal cases, improve the quality of American justice and strengthen people’s faith in the court system.

The Morris Daily Herald, as a media outlet that relies upon transparency in order to report and share legitimate news and that has a watchdog’s duty to ensure that openness is preserved and expanded, supports this and any legislation that will preserve the public’s right to know.

You learn something new every day. In driving around the country, I’ve learned that oil companies reserve large numbers of motel rooms in this city and others so oil rig workers have places to stay. In some cities it’s almost impossible to get a hotel room. You have to carefully plan in advance.

Two weeks ago, a Missouri transportation group made a decision that could positively impact the Sauk Valley.

As comic relief in the classic Bruce Willis movie “Die Hard,” a beleaguered Bruce, fighting off terrorists in a high-rise building, finds an ancient but still edible Twinkie. He reaches out by radio to Twinkie-addicted police Sgt. Al Powell (portrayed by Reginald Vel Johnson) and asks what’s in a Twinkie.

As the Republican presidential candidates and their mouthpieces prattle on the TV from sunny South Carolina, I look up from the screen and out the window and sigh, a conservative heretic at rest, staring at all that cold Midwestern snow.

The name is Spade. Sam Spade.

This is the perfect time to end the scandal-plagued legislative scholarship program that allows lawmakers to hand out tuition waivers with few restrictions.

Surely you’re longing to hear some scathingly humorous remarks concerning the New Hampshire primary. And it would be our honor to relate a few pithily amusing jibes about 2012’s primary Primary. Only, sorry. Not going to happen. Can’t be done. N.H. is so ... over and done with. Day before yesterday.

Hey sailor, just how strange a political bedfellow have you got in mind?

Remember when Illinois instituted the Lottery and it was sold as a solution to improve school funding — a way to make state-sponsored gambling more palatable to its opponents by arguing that the ends justified the means?

Mr. President: Do you really think you are riding high with the rate of unemployment standing at a whopping 8.5 percent?

America was born in protest — remember the Boston Tea Party? — and the framers of the Constitution took special care to assure citizens the right to assemble to voice their opinions on all manner of issues.

MDH SAYS: Local police deserve credit for the work they've done in 2012.

Once upon a time in a land known as Chicago, before the madness of the year 2012, the people lived in fear of a great beast. This beast shaped the people’s behavior and their moods and their belief that, having survived the beast’s attacks for so many eons, they were the strongest people anywhere.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed a necessary and politically easy pension reform bill last week.

There’s nothing like a visit to the optometrist to make you feel old.

Republicans have a wide variety of conservative white males now vying to be their nominee. No, really. Bear with me.

The U.S. Postal Service has to streamline its operations to function effectively, efficiently and economically in a changing communications environment.

Just think of it as a moral victory for long-suffering motorists who are beleaguered by back-seat drivers.