By James A. Lyons
By arming the rebels, we're aiding al Qaeda
Robert Peter George has to be one of the most civilized people laboring around these parts to make sense of the muddle we call modern life. The word "civilized" I use in its, shall we say, civilized sense — as marking ownership of, or attachment to, qualities formerly associated with the good life: judgment, propriety, dignity, reasonableness, not to mention old-fashioned common sense.
Imagine students learning their ABCs while dancing, or memorizing multiplication tables while doing jumping jacks.
Michelle Obama says people worried about youth gun violence have to do more than simply tell children they care about the problem and then wind up "going to these funerals and mourning with these kids when there's still work to do."
Win or lose, President Obama will spend election night in his hometown of Chicago and will speak at a smaller venue than the large park where he held his victory speech four years ago, a source told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.
The rock band Cheap Trick plans to open a museum and music venue on Chicago's South Side.
''Printer's ink raged in their veins throughout a century," writes Megan McKinney of Joseph Medill and his McCormick and Patterson heirs. Although "individually headstrong, quirky, and often thoroughly disagreeable, each was brilliantly creative, and together the achievement was immense."
Contrary to the news flow, it's been a rather quiet week for me. One that reminds me of crickets, not so much because of the noise crickets make but the absence of other noise that lets you hear the crickets. With some slack in the schedule, I thought a nice change of pace would be to open the ol' mailbag, or, in this case, the ol' e-mailbag, and answer some readers' questions.
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