Of course he managed to make a somewhat family-friendly fucksaw joke. And a lot of other really good jokes. more ›

The U.S. Dept. of Education expects 1.7 million students to graduate with bachelor's degrees this year. The good news is surveys indicate hiring new graduates will increase. The bad news is surveys indicate two out of every five graduates are delinquent or short on loan payments. more ›

It’s commencement season. Every year at this time, there is fierce competition among universities to find prominent figures with the right sort of cache to send their graduates off right. University of Michigan made a splash this year with a speech from President Obama which was less controversial than his Notre Dame appearance last year. What about the local universities? more ›

• Controversy in Evergeen Park where parents of Evergreen Park Community High School students are alleging they were barred from entering the school's graduation ceremony.
• Gang member Steve Bryant was sentenced to 85 years for the 2006 murder of marine Ricardo Martinez.
• Cook County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham claims his office is out of money to defend death penalty cases.

It being graduation season, the Sun-Times has churned up a nice little human-interest piece about how graduation name readers must inevitably pronounce some very difficult last names. High school graduation name readers may have the luxury of practicing pronunciation beforehand, but we just attended our sister’s college graduation ceremony featuring thousands of students. The university seemed to have a pretty air-tight system though: student hands card to announcer with name spelled out phonetically, announcer reads out name, student marches across stage, clappaclappaclappa. more ›

The controversial Northwestern Law School alum Jerry Springer spoke to the graduating law school class last night. He gave a speech that lasted about 15 minutes, and quoted his mother, Winston Churchill, and Socrates. The 1968 graduate told the Class of 2008: more ›