Events

The President was busy this morning: President Trump has commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, the Democrat who was convicted of trying to essentially sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain, as well as the financier, Michael R. Milken and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, the president announced on Tuesday. The president’s decision came the same day that he pardoned Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., a former...

Note: Kings & Convicts closed their Highwood taproom on 1 April 2024. Welcome to stop #6 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Kings & Convicts Brewing Co., 523 Banks Ln., Highwood, Ill.Train line: Metra Union Pacific North, Highwood station.Time from Chicago (Ogilvie): 52 minutes, zone EDistance from station: 300 m A Brit and an Aussie walked into a bar and decided to open a brewery. Then a couple of years later they acquired a distressed but well-respected brand, which they will soon add to their...

Bill Barr's beliefs about executive power have engendered a bit of pushback. Former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer says Barr should resign: [P]erhaps the most outrageous and alarming ideas that Barr advances come in his attacks on the judiciary, which occupy fully a third of his speech. In his mind, it seems, the courts are the principal culprit in constraining the extraordinarily broad powers that the president is constitutionally entitled to exercise. His discussion ignores a pillar of our legal...

Punzun Ltd.™, an Illinois corporation doing business as Inner Drive Technology™, turned 20 years old today. I actually dreamed up the name in my high-school algebra class on 20 March 1985, so the concept is almost (gulp!) 35 years old. It's kind of cool having a corporation that could be in its second year of college if it were human. (If you don't understand the name, say it out loud. Note that "Ltd." is an abbreviation for "Limited.")

Welcome to stop #5 on the Brews and Choos project. Distillery: 28 Mile Vodka, 454 Sheridan Rd., Highwood, Ill.Train line: Metra Union Pacific North, Highwood station.Time from Chicago (Ogilvie): 52 minutes, zone EDistance from station: 300 m Chicago has far more breweries than distilleries, even though the foundation of all spirits is beer. Also, Chicago's distilleries often congregate in far-out industrial parks away from train lines. Fortunately, 28 Mile Vodka is exactly what it says on the sign, and...

Yesterday in Chicago the temperature bottomed out at -19°C after dumping 50 mm of snow on us. Today the temperature just went above freezing, where it's expected to hover for a while. So, mild winter indeed, with more ridiculousness to come.

While I do get to sign off a bit earlier today, I might not read all of these articles until tomorrow: Block Club Chicago lists 21 neighborhood spots that are great for working from home. (Do you think any will let me set up four monitors?) Seymour Island, Antarctica, recorded a temperature of 20.75°C last week, breaking the 18°C Antarctic heat record set three days earlier. From November, Christian Thrailkill speculates on "what happens to Trumpworld once Trump is gone." Ostia Nwanevu, writing for New...

Welcome to stop #4 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Lake Bluff Brewing Co., 16 E. Scranton St., Lake Bluff, Ill.Train line: Metra Union Pacific North, Lake Bluff station.Time from Chicago (Ogilvie): 61 minutes, zone GDistance from station: 100 m I liked this taproom a lot. I only had 35 minutes between trains, but that was enough time to enjoy the chill atmosphere and to try a beer. The pint of Inspiration IPA (6.2%, 66 IBU) went down cleanly and easily. It's a straightforward IPA that doesn't...

Veteran crime and justice reporter Rodney Balko outlines the pernicious effects of reducing Roger Stone's sentence while continuing to throw the book at ordinary people: So we get righteous fury over the FBI’s mistakes in obtaining wiretaps for former foreign policy adviser Carter Page, even as Republicans vote to reauthorize the law that allowed those taps and reject proposed reforms. We get President Trump bashing the federal law enforcement apparatus even as he praises countries whose governments...

Some headlines this morning: My preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), came in 4th in yesterday's New Hampshire primary. John Judis is already reading her campaign its last rites. Jonathan Chait, for his part, says former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign "was a disaster for liberalism and his party." Also from TPM, remember all the hand-wringing we did about whether the president would try to influence the Mueller probe? Such innocent times those were. The...