Results tagged “attorneygeneral”

Even before Gov. Pat Quinn releases details on his proposed income tax hike which he calls "the least bad option," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has already taken a jab at a tax increase, which folks are saying is the "opening shot" in her bid for the governor's office next year:

Make your own Obama logo. This isn't an endorsement. Think of this more as a challenge. Get creative.

.] Now Jesse Jackson's candidate Larry Suffredin is under renewed scrutiny for his work as a corporate lobbyist.

A few weeks ago we wondered where our Obey/Obama posters were. Behold this poster, from Shepard Fairey, he of the Obey Giant creation:

Everyone knows Bratz dolls cause cancer of the AIDS. But Jammin' Jenna dolls, a slightly softer-seeming knock-off from Ty, are also poisonous. Her vinyl shoes contain an amount of lead that's illegal in Illinois, but Ty refuses to recall the toys, saying they'll stop selling new dolls to Illinois distributors but won't pull the dolls already on shelves.

In what what was quite possibly the most anti-climactic letter ever, Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office announced yesterday that it would stay out of the legal dispute between her dad, House Speaker Mike Madigan, and the Illinois Property Tax Appeals Board. In July, the Board, headed by Blagojevich ally Ron Messina, asked her office to rule on the possibility that the Speaker's second job as a property-tax appeals lawyer might disqualify him from taking a...

Kramer and Newman couldn't make it work, but crooks in Ohio and Michigan can. Michigan police officers have busted a crime ring that transports and sells out-of-state, non-redeemable cans and turns them in for that sweet, sweet 10 cent payoff. The 13 crooks were arrested with $500,000 in cash. That's...a lot of cans. The 67-count warrant was a part of Operation Can Scam that busted two smuggling rings based in Ohio and Michigan. Investigators allege...

In a report published Monday, the Chicago Reporter found that Chicago is the the nation's capital for "high-cost" home loans. The study, looking at three years' worth of federal home-loan data, showed that in 2006, "the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metropolitan statistical area, which includes Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, McHenry and Will counties" led the nation, with 88,315 “high-cost” mortgages. "High-cost" mortgages are defined as first-lien home loans that are at least three percentage points above...

Chicagoist has a saying among friends, "no good night ever started with Sparks." While we are totally in favor of beer (obviously), we aren't totally on board with beer that tastes like orange candy and changes the color of your teeth and tongue. Apparently, neither is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Attorneys General from 28 other states.

No surprises this weekend, as a special session in the legislature called by the governor to work out a one-month budget yielded only about a quarter of the Senate and half the House, falling short of a quorum. With legislators working privately on a budget, the only question is what Blagojevich is going to do when they don't show up at the sessions he is calling, and what he will do when they all gang...

Immigration protest image via Time Out Chicago.

It's been another spring week of wacky weather here in in the Windy City. And just like the sunshine, our elected leaders have been coming out to shine. Let's take a look back at some of the more notable events thus far: Black Business Group Doesn't Like Blago's Tax Plan. The Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE), a group representing African-American businesses has reviewed the governor's proposed budget plan, and they've given it what...

Well, another week has descended upon the city by the lake, and the politicians, like the rest of us, are frolicking in this wonderful spring weather like cowboys at the beach. Let's take all the newsy tidbits that came across our desk this week and rustle them up, like the spring cattle they want to be. Who knows? Maybe one of these stories will fatten up into a vitriol-filled post we can use as a...

Mohammed Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar were acquitted of racketeering charges in the feds case against them, claiming they helped lead the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.

Plans for the Olympic stadium and village have been unveiled. Illinois is one of a bunch of states that have reached an $8 million settlement with Bayer, who they say didn't properly warn people about the risks of taking the drug. Local tech company Itellext is teaming up with AOL to make a free customized version of their search tool Watson available for K-12 students. The CTA is putting a new northbound platform and...

It seems that another battle is brewing with Rod Blagojevich. In a last-minute press release Friday evening, G-Rod announced he was suspending a program designed to stop predatory lending in the Chicago area, claiming that it hurt development in those areas. The five-month-old Illinois Predatory Lending Database Pilot Program set up rules for people that wanted to buy a home in 10 ZIP codes on Chicago's west and southwest sides. These rules required residents who...

Remember back in September when we warned you about the impending rate increase from ComEd, and everyone talked about TV shows instead? That was awesome. But you might want to think about switching off the telly every now and then; ComEd's 24 percent rate hike goes into effect this week, meaning that the "Ugly Betty" marathon you watched this weekend just cost you approximately $485.

Everyone in Wheaton can rest easy now, Wheaton North High School Principal Jill Bullo told parents in a letter sent home last week. The spooge-spiked ranch dressing poses no health risk to students, so eat up kids!

Besides appointing Tammy Duckworth to the state Department of Veteran's Affairs, Rod Blagojevich has made the news again recently for some other, not-so-sexy reasons lately, too. Blago gave the boot to two East Coast law firms that had made large donations to the Governor. A third firm had been removed from the state's list of preferred law firms in May. The Sun-Times is reporting that the preferred list kept by the state (which is a...

Oprah urges each and every one of her viewers to “live your best life.” And whether she’s making like an angel or giving out free cars, she often helps to facilitate that in any way she can. But we’re pretty sure she’s not happy about people using her Oprahness to scam people out of money via e-mail phishing schemes. Illinois’ own angel Attorney General Lisa Madigan says not to fall for it. In other less...

Fans of Mandarin Mint, Kauai Kolada, and Warm Winter Toffee cigarettes should start stocking up now, as these cigarettes are in their last days. Yesterday, in a news conference from Chicago’s West Side, Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced that R. J. Reynolds had agreed to a settlement that would prohibit them from selling cigarettes with candy, fruit, or alcoholic beverage names. Under the terms of the agreement, Camel, Kool and Salem can still produce flavored cigarettes; they just can’t be sold with the delicious sounding names.

Mike Madigan's daughter and Attorney General Lisa Madigan is accusing Gov. Blagojevich of impeding a federal investigation into questionable hiring. Late last week AFSCME Council 31 publicly alleged that the Governor was intimidating state employees by running a parallel investigation to the hiring probe being conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald. Already sniffing around about favors lists and sketchy connections to vendors leasing Tollway space, Fitzgerald's office has said that there is credible evidence of "endemic hiring...

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned....

The price tag on the Dan Ryan construction project wasn't the only thumping big number in the news this past weekend. True to the predictions that we wrote about a couple weeks ago, ComEd announced the results of their first energy auction late Friday afternoon, translating into a whopping 25 percent increase in monthly electricity bills come January.

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system. It's going to take more than server problems to get Torontoist into hot pants -- and if the short short post wasn't enough to cause us some server problems of our own, how about those eye gazing parties? It's enough to make them contemplate joining the EU. Our friends at Phillyist are having server problems in places where the sun don't shine, caused perhaps by the great Thai food they ate last week. Well, when you're having server problems of the stinky kind, perhaps it's for the best that you stick to phone sex. We thought about asking Gothamist if this building collapse had our server inside it (thus explaining the server problems, you see) , but then we found out the collapse was part of marriage gone wrong. New York's new lacrosse team needs a name, might we recommend "The Server Problems"? Screw lacrosse, we're playing bocce. Or maybe we'll forgo the sports all together and hit Movable Hype 9.0. But how will we get there when server, we mean, traffic problems go unchecked? Over at Miamist, they debate the benefits of server problem-free Starbucks, over local joints. They also look into crashes of a nonserver problem nature, and a court TV show shot on their beaches. It's no server problem when Austinist's local boys The Mercers get love from Esquire. MySpace is also no stranger to server problems but that's not what has Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott pissed at them. Greg, have a crack cookie. Seattlest found a great way around the server problems, as they took it live with their inaugural trivia night. Perhaps author and radio personality John Moe will be an answer at next week's competition? But if you drive there, better not piss off Keith Gormezano, or server problems like you never imagined might rain down on your poor little car. Bostonist would like to send some some server problems toward rejoicing gay marriage opponents. Sigh. Bostonist seems pretty good at bartering, so maybe they can trade some of those anti-marriage busybodies for some problem-free servers. How we regret the server problems in the language section of our brain that keep us from learning Portuguese! We'd love to read Sampaist, but will have to settle for the visual. This week we see "an advertisement from 1974 talking about the inauguration of the subway in São Paulo (also know as SP). The funny thing about this video is that it is totally nonsense. They mixed the subway with a carnival parade and a party inside the subway car." Our pals down south also posted this music
video released by the band Cansei de Ser Sexy. Scroll down for the English portion of this post. Houstonist refuses to butter up nemesis Ken Lay, who had his official send off to that server problem down below last week. (Jesus wept.) Shanghaiist causes us the enviable server problem of "too many awesome social options", as they rock our world with , and encourage us to fag hag it up. Then there's DJ Jazzy Jeff to see. Whatever we do in Shanghaii, we're bringing this guy. But not her.

Upon reading the blurb about Galina Safir, a suburban woman who is suing her dating service, Soulmates, Inc. because they didn't hook her up with a mate, we were wondering the following things:

Coming of age is important in every culture from quincenaras to bar mitzvahs to the now uber-popular Sweet Sixteen bash (Thanks, MTV). Parents now flaunt the love and affection for their children with hugely expensive parties that honor the special achievement of turning sixteen.

So far this week Chicagoist had an argument with our siblings over baseball, endured a date with a guy who isn't even registered to vote, forgot to set our alarm clock, thus making us late for a big meeting at work, fell down some stairs, and accidentally threw our favorite cashmere sweater into the dryer. And it's only Wednesday! Sigh. Even with all of that, our week is still not going as poorly as Governor...

A favorite theory of many JFK assassination buffs is that the mob, led by Chicago boss Sam Giancana (pictured right), ordered a hit on the president as payback for double-crossing them after they helped him win the 1960 presidential election. When Kennedy won Illinois, many Richard Nixon supporters claimed that then-Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine in Chicago had fixed the city election, thus helping Kennedy carry the state. But others, most notably investigative reporter...