Perhaps it is an understandable focus on the World cup (and the ref from Mali who robbed the U.S. squad) that has otherwise focused the Trib’s ed board, but it has been a weird week in their on-again, off-again engagement with the oil disaster in the Gulf. As the country’s outrage over the BP spill seemed to be flowing stronger than the massive underwater plumes of oil, there has been a strange stream of oddly complacent pieces on the paper’s Opinion pages. more ›

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the death of Harold Washington. The Chicago of 1983 was very different from the Chicago of 2007: factories were shutting down, and white middle-class homeowners were leaving the city in droves, taking their property taxes and urban stability with them. An alarming upswing in crime and drugs, coupled with escalating racial tensions left many Chicagoans nervous about the future. Richard J. Daley had been dead for seven years, and... more ›