Last night, Republicans took the Democratic stronghold in Massachusetts in a special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Today, both the GOP and media are heralding Scott Brown’s victory as a symbol of a referendum on the “Obama agenda,” even though Martha Coakley didn’t exactly run an effective campaign. Now that the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and Republicans are riding the PR wave of an electoral victory, everything from health care legislation to the Illinois Senate seat seems a bit closer to landing in Republican hands. more ›

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has passed away at the age of 77 from brain cancer. Our mother site Gothamist has more on the passing of the legendary (and occasionally embattled) Senator and the Sun-Times has some great photos of Kennedy on visits to Chicago. more ›

href="http://londonist.com/2008/02/air_bound.php"> remove one man from Gatwick.

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 still in, he won't get the one-on-one race he so desperately wanted. more ›

While John McCain spent Super Bowl Sunday in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney made his pitch to the most reliably conservative county in Illinois. At a packed rally of several hundred people at the College of DuPage yesterday, he tried to convince voters here that he is the true conservative standard bearer. Romney vowed that as president he would "stand up for the principles of the Republican Party and to live in the house that Ronald Reagan built." more ›

With the race for the Democratic nomination showdown just days away, and polls showing Obama closing in on Clinton in key Super Duper Tuesday states, the Obama campaign made a huge ad buy during the Super Bowl in the Super Tuesday states, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Washington, (but, alas, not Illinois) more ›

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The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,... more ›

One of Chicagoist’s few lingering memories of grade school was dental hygiene films. Those things scared the bejeezus out of us. Rotten teeth loomed large in darkened rooms, while Vincent Price’s voice double warned us of the horrors of plaque. Keep that shit up long enough, we were taught, and you get zero teeth. Oddly enough, that’s what a local dental practice’s patrons ended up with, as well as mountains of debt. more ›

Yesterday, Northfield-based Kraft Foods announced it reached a deal to sell its Fruit2o bottled water and Veryfine juice brands to Sunny Delight Beverages Co. In announcing the sale, Kraft said the brands no longer fit with the company's long-term growth strategies, even though the brands generated $135 million in revenue. more ›

The Sun-Times reports today on the results of a recent study in this month's Journal of the American Dietetic Association. The study put ten popular weight-loss plans through their paces to determine which ones were the most heart-healthy. Using the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) to measure and compare factors in peoples' diets that are strongly linked to reducing risk for cardiovascular disease, researchers at the University of Massachusetts compared the dietary quality of the... more ›

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,... more ›

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts... more ›

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too – two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the... more ›

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires... more ›

One of our favorite writers, Dawn Powell, once wrote, "Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out." This explains why the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, some of which are screening at the Chicago International Documentary Festival starting this weekend, often feel so scathing. They show people as they are, not how we usually see them, and in doing so... more ›

In this day and age of the media destroying politicians, it's become par for the course for the press to dig up something embarrassing about a candidate to try and discredit them. In some cases, it's worked (like with Jack Ryan). In others, it hasn't been so effective (remember the breathless media reports that Dubya had a DUI? We didn't think so.) Barack Obama isn't immune to this either. First it was the erroneous and now discredited charges that he had studied in a foreign-sounding and America-hating radical Muslim madrassa in Indonesia. Even when they aren't making this shit up, nothing seems that damning: Tony Rezko owns a vacant lot next to the Obamas, and they make him build a fence between the two parcels of land. How about the intern that Obama's office hired for the summer that was connected to Rezko? And then yesterday, we get word that an investor helped Obama raise a bunch of money when he was running for the Senate. Even the right-wing media has tried to stir up discontent with op-ed pieces that stretch really hard to connect dots that are tenuous at best. To the right wing of this country, Barack Hussein Obama must seem like some kind of fantastical leftist wet-dream. No matter how you try to pick the guy apart, he remains popular, and nothing seems to stick to him. more ›

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... more ›

Yesterday we gave you a preview of who might be running for president in the Democratic camp. Today we turn our focus to the right, looking at the Republican side of the primaries. Since Dick Cheney isn't going to seek the presidency this time around, the field is wide open for any Republican to join the fray, hoping that his agenda is the one that will resonate most with conservative voters. And not unlike the... more ›

Wednesday night Martin Havlat will be the lone Blackhawk who wears one of the revised jerseys in the All-Star game. All 30 NHL franchises will don the new "uniform system" to begin the 2007/2008 season.
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Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for... more ›

Have you been wanting to ask the Chicago Fire about their inaugural season in the Bridgeview Stadium, about their pre-season success or what it will be like starting the season on a long road trip? Well, if you don't have Fire President and CEO John Guppy on speed dial, here is your chance to get answers to your questions straight from the top. Fans of the Chicago Fire have the opportunity to participate in an... more ›

Squeezed in between Adrianne Curry and the newest Miss America (mmmm…), Terry Armour's column offered a sneak peek into movies that will be filming in Chicago in 2006. Armour predicts 2006 is going to be a slim year for film and television productions. He notes that Barbershop producers Bob Teitel and George Tillman’s My Ride With Gus is “in limbo.” But this is likely due to new projects both have in the works: an untitled... more ›

On Sunday Attorney General Lisa Madigan gave birth to Rebecca Grace Byrnes, a 7 pounds, 3 ounces, 20 inch baby girl. Babies are a great thing, and Chicagoist is glad to see Illinois political women keep their jobs while they start families. Madigan's printed statement on Saturday refers to a "brief maternity leave." We can't imagine that any top elected official really gets to take vacation, but how long she takes off work will be an interesting precedent. more ›

On Monday the Illinois State Police confirmed that they were investigating a number of allegations of negligence and misconduct against the Governor's security detail made in an ABC7 report. ABC7 launched the investigation during last summer's Democratic National Convention. (For the whole report, including other examples, go here.) They wondered why the Guvna's bodyguards needed to drive state SUVs to Boston when Massachusetts was already providing all state governors with state troopers and vehicles. The... more ›

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich announced yesterday a plan to hike Illinois Toll Road car tolls from 40-cents per stop to 80-cents for drivers without an I-Pass starting January 1, 2005 -- but no change for I-Pass users. Trucks will go up from $1.50 to a whopping $4.00, I-Pass or not. more ›