Post-Dispatch reporter Nick Pistor broke a story about corrosion in the Gateway Arch. The gleaming stainless steel monument, at age 45, was rusting. Pistor had driven by the Arch in January and noticed gray streaks on the legs. It didn’t look good, but it was raining so he attributed the streaks to the weather. In…
Since the Gateway Arch was completed in 1965 tourists and area residents have grown accustomed to seeing the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, opposite the Arch, as a wasteland of sorts. The bareness is in stark contrast to the grandeur and beauty of the Arch and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial park on the…
The surreptitious recording of conversations by a reporter – a tricky legal and ethical issue – is the latest charge that prosecutors have raised about the tactics used by David Protess’ students at the Medill Innocence Project. State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez maintained in a written statement that the secret recording raised “serious legal and ethical questions about the methods that the professor and his students employed during their investigation.” The Innocence Project’s investigation concluded that Anthony McKinney was innocent of the 1978 murder of a security guard in Harvey, Ill. The Innocence Project has been influential in freeing 11 people from death row in Illinois.
If you were following the coverage of the 2010 congressional election, you probably got the idea that Republicans greatly outspent Democrats, that campaign money had a lot to do with the Republican landslide and that a January decision of the U.S. Supreme Court – Citizens United – opened the floodgate to the huge, secret corporate contributions. That was the refrain of innumerable press reports in the mainstream media, such as NPR. But parts of that picture are misleading, exaggerated or, at least, unprovable based on current campaign finance data.
To get a better grip on the Tea Party movement, we should take a look back to 2008. In a year when angry voters were expected to vote out Republicans, there was one voice in Red that was drawing crowds. No, it wasn’t Sarah Palin. It was Ron Paul.