By Deena Sherman – My parents were married right out of high school in the early 1960s. With a union job at a steel mill and a license to operate a beauty shop, they quickly saved enough to buy a house and enter the middle class. Fifty years later, two
A risk the people of Aurora should not have to to take: By Richard C. Irvin, mayor, Aurora, Ill. After a nearly a week of news reports that convicted-murderer Thomas Kokoraleis would reside in nearby Wheaton following his release from custody, Aurora was blindsided over the weekend, March 30-31, when
The U.S. government, in its pursuit of so-called monsters, has itself become a monster. It is not a new development, nor is it a revelation. It is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world, including its own citizenry, in the name of global conquest,
By Priscilla Gruber – April Fool’s Day the Kendall County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) will hold the only public hearing at 7 p.m. Monday, April 1 scheduled on the County’s revised proposal 17-28 regulating commercial gun ranges. It is not about non-commercial backyard shooting which the County’s Law Justice
By Dan Hites – I am not a politician, this being my first time running for elected office. I am a candidate for Aurora Sixth Ward alderman. For 35 years I have been an entrepreneur and real estate developer; opening and running businesses as assorted as nightclub, radio station, restaurants,
The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences
First of two parts Rita Hatthaway published the following article for Home & Garden magazine: “Mary Johnson, 42, was at her wit’s end. She loved her three sons more than life itself. They were all bright boys, ranging from freshmen to seniors in high school. But she had violent thoughts
By Angela Clay Thomas – February 15, State representative Linda Chapa LaVia accepted an appointment to lead Illinois’ Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Chapa LaVia’s departure from the 83rd House District, which includes most of the West Side of Aurora and portions of the East Side of Aurora and North Aurora,
Aurora Sixth Ward alderman Mike Saville, center, presents a check to the Fox Valley Park District (FVPD) at the Monday, March 11 Board meeting in the amount of $20,744, from the 6th Ward fund. Board president Chuck Anderson, left, and executive director, Jim Pilmer, accept the check for the purchase
Uncle Sam wants you. Correction: Big Brother wants you. To be technically accurate, Big Brother, aided and abetted by his corporate partners in crime, wants your data. That’s what we have been reduced to in the eyes of the government and corporate America: Data bits and economic units to be
From the vault, June 6, 1984 (revised): Americans, rise up! The barbarians are at the gate! Millions and millions of scruffy-looking, drug-addicted, sex-crazed criminals want our land, our resources, our money, and our women, and they will stop at nothing to pry it out of our cold, dead, hands. But,
By Hesham Shehab – Recently-fired CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill will be keynote speaker for a Chicago-based group the Israel government recently declared “terrorists in suits.” Hill, who was fired as a contributor for CNN following a speech at the United Nations where he used the anti-Israel eliminationist rhetoric “from the
Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL) Monday held a moment of silence on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. to honor the victims of the shooting at Henry Pratt plant in Aurora February 15. Five employees lost their lives, and six police officers suffered injuries. “Today, we
By Evelyn Essling – The shooting at Henry Pratt company in Aurora brought me to tears. I prayed for all of them immediately! But now, the anti-gun individuals will be at it again to try and remove guns from the general public. I do not own a gun, but if
Is there a humanitarian crisis in these United States? Indeed there is. On our southern border, tens of thousands of human beings exist in a man-made limbo with little food, water, shelter, and hope for a better future. Across the country, hundreds of thousands more human beings exist without payment
Between 2014 and 2019, the Santori Public Library of Aurora’s budget rose three times faster than the overall budget. A comparison of the Aurora Library Budget from 2014, the last year of the Old Main Library, and 2019, with the new Santori Library, shows that the costs of the Santori
Listen: I know it’s been a hard, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning, kind of year. It’s been a year of hotheads and blowhards and killing sprees and bloodshed and takedowns. It’s been a year in which tyranny took a few more steps forward and freedom got knocked down a few more notches. It’s
Thanksgiving Day should remind us that our glass is half-full and not half-empty. We should express and feel an attitude of gratitude. We should think thanksgiving every day. Problems arise for some of us whose level of expectations are so high that their concept either is they are certain they
Joel Frieders, Yorkville alderman and founder of NSPAMP (National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month Proclamation Project), presents a talk on suicide prevention sponsored by the Oswego Lions Club in a free community event at the Montgomery Campus of the Oswego Public Library Friday, Nov. 2. He relentlessly has been an advocate
By Anthony Stanford – It’s not just members of the White House press corps who are appalled by the treatment of their colleagues by the president of the United States. More often it concerns every-day Americans that the vitriol and personal attacks referring to the media, as “enemies of the
