Chicago Sun-Times

Tom Jacobs: Good fiction can cure rigid thinking

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:27:38 -0500

BY TOM JACOBS. New research suggests a simple cure for this affliction of being uncomfortable with ambiguity. Read more literary fiction.

Mona Charen: Affirmative Action upends academia

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:27:29 -0500

BY MONA CHAREN. In the two generations since affirmative action began, evidence of its unintended consequences has accumulated — even as a society-wide taboo has forbidden honest discussion of that evidence.

Voting for liars, drawn to sleaze

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 02:12:18 -0500

BY STEVE HOCHSTADT. Celebrity liars appear to have great difficulty accepting that they might have to suffer some consequences.

Finally understanding what it means to be a dad

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:37:47 -0500

BY DAVID MCGRATH. Since childhood disappears almost as quickly as the mayfly, it’s those precious moments of sharing that make all the difference, and which make being a father the most crucial job in the world.

Pope Francis’ ‘gay lobby’ remark is latest jolt to Vatican applecart

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:22:56 -0500

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS. Pope Francis is a guy who’s been tweeting about “the unemployed, often as a result of a self-centered mindset bent on profit at any cost,” a guy who’s having a good time shaking things up and making splitting headaches for the big shots around him. A guy who remembers that Jesus was a loudmouth and a troublemaker.

Edward Snowden: The slacker who came in from the cold

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:23:16 -0500

BY ROGER SIMON.

Reaction to biracial Cheerios ad says a lot about us

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:13:05 -0500

It’s a commercial hawking breakfast cereal. That’s all. And yet with a simple flourish, the presence of an interracial family, the latest Cheerios ad has incited both remarkable hatred and inspiring support. General Mills had to disable comments on the YouTube site showing the ad after virulently racist posters took over. And there has been a wave of wonderful commentary about the commercial. My reaction to all of it, as an African-American man who has been married for 20 years to the daughter of Dutch immigrants? Ugh. I’m baffled by the dynamics that inspire anyone to get super excited about …

Like Sox’s Adam Dunn, state GOP won’t hit to the left

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 02:33:55 -0500

BY PHIL KADNER. Call it the Adam Dunn approach to politics. Dunn refuses to take advantage of the opportunities afforded him by defenses that shift to the right. The Republican Party seems to be taking a similar approach with its political philosophy in Illinois.

Mona Charen: Transplant system overhaul needed

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:27:50 -0500

BY MONA CHAREN.

Norman Parish: Nonstop nun is guiding light at 89

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:22:40 -0500

Sister Antona Ebo never says no. You can call her almost anytime, day or night, and she will take your call. Need a prayer, you’ve got it. And at age 89, the civil rights pioneer who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. still travels long distances and speaks to groups, especially if they are made up of young people. On May 19, Ebo received an honorary doctoral degree in law at the University of Notre Dame before about 22,500 people at the school’s commencement ceremony. The day before, she spoke at the college to a group of black …

Roger Simon: Dr. Politics says Holder is staying

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:22:16 -0500

BY ROGER SIMON.

Did Chicago Way doom Obama presidency?

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 02:39:26 -0500

The scandals swirling around the Obama administration have many journalists scratching their heads as to how “hope and change” seem to have been supplanted by “arrogance and fear.” Perhaps it’s time they revisit one of their original premises about Barack Obama: that he wasn’t influenced by the Chicago Daley machine. You know: the machine that boosted his career and whose protégés — including Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and his wife, Michelle — he brought to Washington with him. The liberal take on the president was best summed up by Slate magazine’s Jacob Weisberg, who wrote last year that …

A false liberal line on single moms

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:30:43 -0500

BY MONA CHAREN. The profile of single mothers has changed dramatically since 1960, when only 4 percent were “never married.” In previous decades, women became single mothers through divorce, desertion or death. In 2011, 44 percent of single moms were never married.

Plastic guns will reveal real NRA

Fri, 31 May 2013 02:23:09 -0500

BY JOSHUA SAGER. New 3-D technology will let people make their own plastic guns. Will the NRA support that — because more people can have guns — or oppose it because its top funders, gun manfucturers, will face new competition?

UNO can’t whitewash this scandal

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:48:00 -0500

BY SYLVIA PUENTE AND REY LOPEZ-CALDERON. Chicagoans can’t afford for UNO to simply whitewash its scandal away. The organization’s work can and must continue without Juan Rangel at the helm.

Republicans drone on and on

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:48:41 -0500

BY ROGER SIMON. The Republican Party is in such a state of confusion that it is mystified over what it is supposed to be baffled about.

Obama’s new war on terror just like the old one

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:54:00 -0500

BY DALE MCFEATTERS. President Barack Obama’s first major speech of his second term on counterterrorism sounded good, like all his speeches, but in the end promised little real change.

Reform immigration

Sat, 25 May 2013 09:50:00 -0500

BY JOHN L. ANDERSON AND MARK HARRIS. If Illinois is to maintain its leadership position in today’s global economy, then we, as educators and business leaders, need to increase our talent pipeline, particularly in the fields of Science, technology, engineering and math.