Free Republic

For decades, Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan dominated the state’s political system, corrupting it to his own ends. What should we make of his ouster? The Chicago machine turned out some of the most notorious names in American public corruption, including Anton Cermak, Richard J. Daley, and Ed Kelly. The machine also turned out Mike Madigan, who ruled over Illinois politics for 50 years, 36 of which he spent calling the shots as House speaker. Most people thought Madigan would only leave office in handcuffs or a casket. Most people were wrong. For the first time since 1970, “the Velvet...

CHICAGO (AP) — A fire department spokesman two people are dead and more than a dozen others injured after a tractor trailer crashed into a Chicago Transit Authority station during rush hour. Spokesman Larry Langford says the two women killed Friday apparently were walking near the Cermak-Chinatown Red Line elevated train station on the city's South Side when the collision occurred. Langford says seven people were critically injured and about a dozen others could be injured. Witnesses say the truck didn't appear to slow down before it plowed into the station. Chicago police say the accident happened about 5:20 p.m.

A tractor-trailer careened into a busy local train station here during the evening rush hour on Friday, killing two people and injuring nearly two dozen others just south of downtown in Chinatown. Witnesses described hearing a deafening screech then the tremendous roar of the truck slamming into the street-level waiting area of the elevated train station, a bustling stop on the Red Line which runs a north-south route through the downtown Loop. The truck crashed through the glass front of the station, Cermak-Chinatown, and caused the escalators to collapse. Eleven people, four of them children, were in critical condition...