While the House narrowly passed health care reform over the weekend, both the president and Senate Democrats were looking ahead to the next round. And while it appears that there will be at least a cursory fight over abortion funding in the Senate version of the bill, there seems to be a real concern over the ability of lining up 60 votes to pass the bill. more ›

Is Illinois heading towards legalized medical marijuana? State Senator John Cullerton (pretty website!) hopes so. He's sponsoring a bill that the Senate Public Health Committee approved 6-4 yesterday. A similar measure failed in the Senate last year, but try, try again. more ›

Daley has suddenly become the great scholar, spouting wisdom in public about public-school reform, not just in Chicago, but also in Illinois. Over the weekend, he fired another salvo in his crusade to save the children. Opening a community center in Avondale, Hizzoner used the opportunity to call on the governor to institute mandatory full-day kindergarten, which would have the added effect of lowering the mandatory age of enrollment to 5 (it's currently 7, but about 95% of Illinois 5- and 6-year-olds are enrolled in school). Education is always a hot topic, especially in an election year, and this isn't the first time that Daley has pushed for this kind of change. more ›

Running a successful school, let alone an entire school system, is a complicated thing. For centuries the best and brightest have wrestled with the issue. Over the years we've been told that the Chicago public school system is in worse shape than we thought (in February the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research reported that in 2004 only 54 percent of students at Chicago's public high schools graduated). more ›