Today in dumb criminals: Moline's Jason Slagel, who took five hostages in a motel Iowa...and then sent two on a beer run. Slagel apparently got in an argument in a Fort Madison motel room and pulled a knife. "Police say Slagel eventually got thirsty and sent two hostages out for beer," and they called the police. [AP]......

Illinois native Sean McGuire was arrested yesterday in Iowa for assaulting a police officer. With M&Ms. The 20-year-old, originally from Glenview, is a student at Drake University. From the Des Moines Register: [Arresting officer Theodore Lister] Stroope was conducting an investigation with an intoxicated hit-and-run suspect at the convenience store when the incident allegedly occurred. The report said Drake security guards on the scene noticed multiple M&Ms falling to the ground near Stroope. Stroope then......

Patty Solis Doyle, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager and sister of 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis, stepped down Sunday after a string of primary losses to Barack Obama. She will be replaced by Maggie Williams, who had been working in an informal top role on the campaign since Obama won Iowa. Solis Doyle cited the extraordinary length of the campaign, and the toll that it was taking on her and her family. Shortly after Solis Doyle......

John McCain won big in last night's Republican primaries, winning nine states and pushing his delegate count up to 559--not enough to win the nomination, but big enough to secure his standing as the front runner. Mike Huckabee got a boost last night as well, winning a string of upsets in the Southern states, enough to justify his continued candidacy. Mitt Romney, however, has bigger problems, winning only a handful of states, and with Huckabee......

The United States isn't the only country that is having federal elections this year. In March a by-election will be held in Toronto's Toronto Centre Riding. And our sister site, Torontoist has been posting a semi-regular column by their Environment Editor, Chris Tindal, who is running for parliament as the Green Party candidate. With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama racing headlong into Super Tuesday, it seems that Canadians have already made up their mind. On......

We always imagined it'd be pretty hard to get into too much trouble in a place like Boise. The Bulls' second-round draft pick JamesOn Curry, currently playing for the Iowa Energy in the NBA's developmental league, however, managed to find enough to be arrested in the Idaho town early Thursday morning and to be charged with urinating in public and resisting arrest. While the team's draft picks have tended to be high-character players from top......

For Michigan Democrats, the choices in today's primary are pretty stark. Late last year, Michigan Senator Carl Levin supported moving Michigan's primary up to January 15 in an attempt to make the state more relevant in this year's race. That move backfired, however, when the Democratic National Committee punished the state party by stripping it of all its delegates at the convention. Party rules mandate that Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina hold the......

In what could quite possibly be the nail biter of the season, Hillary Clinton pulled it out last night, winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary by a two to three point lead over Iowa front-runner Barack Obama. While most of the media was writing Hillary's political obituary, she was winning New Hampshire. With the Nevada caucuses next, and the black vote potentially split between the Clintons and Barack Obama, South Carolina may be back in......

Thanks in part to huge voter turnout partially driven by bonafide grassroots excitement, Barack Obama cruised to victory in Iowa, and is expected to do well again today in New Hampshire. Yet the Siskel Film Center has quietly cancelled screenings of the new documentary Senator Obama Goes To Africa, which were scheduled for later this month. Why? We just told you why. Marty Rubin, one of the programmers at the Siskel, declined to comment, saying......

Mayor Daley might not do irony well, but Mitt Romney knows how to do momentum. While most of us were paying attention to the upcoming New Hampshire vote, and the news that the hometown kid won big in Iowa, Mitt Romney was quietly winning the first actual delegates to the Republican National Convention. With 91 percent of precincts reporting, Romney has won eight of Wyoming's 12 delegates. Duncan Hunter has won one, and Fred Thompson,......

We had a nice spit take while drinking our morning coffee and reading the front-page headline of the Sun-Times. The headline accompanying Fran Spielman's story about His Elective Majesty's advice to Senator Barack Obama in the wake of his win in the Iowa Caucuses was to "always be the underdog." "He's the underdog. He has to be always the underdog. ... Even though he won this, he still is the underdog. That's a great position......

Last night marked the official beginning of the 2008 presidential season. The close of the Iowa Democratic caucuses saw Barack Obama with 37 percent, John Edwards with 30 percent, and Hillary Clinton in third place with 29 percent of the votes, with 99 percent of Iowa precincts reporting. On the Republican side Mike Huckabee was the big winner. In fact, last night was a night of few surprises. The big shockers coming out of the......

After running around the state for months (and in some cases, years) the big day for presidential wannabes has finally come: The Iowa Caucuses. This presidential ritual comes around every four years, and while most of the nation watches, a Midwestern state makes the first pick for the presidential nomination. So what's so special about Iowa that they get to go first? In the late 1960s, the Iowa Democratic Party ruled that at least 30......

Although recent polling in Iowa and New Hampshire shows her slipping against Obama and Edwards, she's not backing down. Erstwhile local gal and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be taking a spin through Chicago tonight, hosting Hillary's Holiday Cheer at the Hyatt Regency Ballroom. Because who wants to shake hands in a cold Iowa parking lot when you can kick it at the Hyatt in Chicago? Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign announced three......

Oprah is everywhere this week. She took her first campaign trip with Obama to Iowa where over 18,000 people came to hear Oprama speak. Oprah said, “Despite all the talk and speculation and the hype. I understand the difference between a book club and a free refrigerator -- that was a nice refrigerator." Okay good, we’re really happy Oprah explained herself because we weren’t sure if that was a nice refrigerator or not. Now we......

What's the Speed Limit?...

Oprah has been doing everything in her colossal and terrifyingly formidable power to see that Obama is elected, but now she's taking it up a notch by going on the campaign trail with him. While she won't be offering everyone in Iowa a new car, she will be stopping there in the first week of December, as well as in South Carolina and New Hampshire. Tickets for each of the four stops (two in Iowa,......

One day after Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson stopped by Chicago for a fundraiser, Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani visited Chicago for a fundraiser. Conventional wisdom holds that Giuliani is the man to beat for the GOP nomination, but Fred Thompson has his supporters too. "I think he has a homespun quality that is appealing.... [H]e comes across as a guy that is very comfortable in his own skin and I think he has a......

It’s been a big weekend for Barack Obama. In a press release, his campaign reported more than 500,000 donations from over 350,000 people, and the actual financial totals should be available in the next few days. The Obama campaign continues to report more and more contributors — contrasting his grass-roots support with Hillary Clinton’s big-ticket donors. But his press release didn’t mention that they have been counting tickets to speeches and sales of tchotchkies as......

Even though Illinois won't be inundated with presidential candidates like Iowa or New Hampshire, we will be able to boast one thing that residents of those states will not — the Green Party's national convention. The Green Party will hold its convention July 10-13 next year at the Chicago Theatre. The recently renovated (and finally re-opened) Blackstone Hotel will serve as home base for 1,500 or more participants — though we doubt there will be......

Northern Illinois traveled to Soldier Field this weekend for the "Geico Soldier Field Showdown" where a sell-out crowd saw them fall to the Iowa Hawkeyes 16-3. Former Huskie standout running back Garret Wolfe signed with the Bears for the 2007 season, but unfortunately for Northern Illinois he was not in pads on Saturday for the Huskies. The Northern Illinois offense only netted 21 rushing yards compared to the Hawkeyes, who had two 100-yard rushers and......

Throughout our time writing for Chicagoist, we have been lucky enough to go to many a special event. From food expos to chocolate and wine tastings, we have had the opportunity to see a side of food commerce that many never do. We think it's a pretty good and interesting side. Its main purpose, as we see it, is to get the word about a new product out to the masses. The best way......

About a month ago, Chicagoist spoke with Kumail Nanjiani about his then-new one-man show. In Unpronounceable, Nanjiani breaks from his usual stand-up routine and talks about his religious Muslim upbringing in Pakistan, his move to Iowa when he was 18, and his subsequent loss of faith and turn toward atheism. When he started doing stand-up, Nanjiani told us, he made the decision to not speak about his past onstage, to avoid being labeled as a......

About 17,000 union members, along with their friends and their families, filled the south end of Soldier Field for a debate, hosted by the AFL-CIO, among the Democratic contenders. A sweaty sea of union members in colored T-shirts, representing everyone from the Service Employees International Union to the United Steelworkers, from the AFSCME to the IUPAT, drank cold bottles of water and listened to Democrats talk about how their administration would work for working families,......

Is that a goat we hear bleating? Because no sooner do the Cubs climb into a tie with the Brewers for the NL Central lead, they lose one of their top sluggers to injury. Alfonso Soriano landed on the disabled list on Monday, after tearing his right quadriceps in Sunday night's game against the New York Mets. Attempting to run from first to third on a Ryan Theriot single in the third inning, he came......

Yesterday, we focused on the presidential candidates that made their way to the YearlyKos Convention at McCormick Place. But the event wasn't just Democratic hopefuls trying to connect with bloggers and grassroots activists from around the nation. The annual event was also an opportunity for progressives around the country to get out from behind their laptops for a few days and talk to each other, sharing tactics, experiences, pitfalls, strategies and ideas, networking with other......

In the ludicrous horse race that the 2008 presidential campaign has devolved into, much of the charisma and ideas that pushed Barack Obama to become a candidate in the first place have been lost in the "reporting" of the money and power-grabbing of this most early of seasons. At this early juncture, handicapping and speculation are a fool's game, although that hasn't stopped many from trying. Along the way, we've been treated to such spectacles......

So just what, exactly, is Ryan Dempster's role on the Cubs' pitching staff? Not even Ryan himself seems to know. On Sunday, Dempster told the media that while having lost his closers' job he was moving into the starting rotation. However, Cubs manager Lou Piniella immediately told him that plan was on hold. Joking about the flip-flop, Dempster told reporters, "I've got a headline for you. Dempster taken out of rotation after one non-start." While......

The Chicago Wolves hosted the Iowa Stars on Saturday night in Game 6 of the West Division Finals. The Wolves fell behind early, 1-0, just two minutes and eight seconds into the game. That goal would be Iowa's only score of the night while the Wolves scored five to win the series 4-2. The Wolves and their fans will need to wait to until Monday or possibly as late as Wednesday to find out who......

The Chicago Wolves have a chance to advance to the 2007 Calder Cup semi-finals with a win tonight over the Iowa Stars. The winner of the series will face off against the North Division finalist, either the Manitoba Moose or the Hamilton Bulldogs, the Bulldogs lead that series 2-1. The Wolves looked like they would be needing brooms to sweep away the Iowa Stars after the Wolves won game one 7-0. The Wolves then suffered......