Events

Britons' revulsion of President Trump knows few bounds. Fortunately they seem to have drawn a distinction between him and the country he represents: But despite the sense of (bad) business as usual, two things are already becoming clear that both highlight the particularly disturbed nature of current British politics, and the U.S.’s general loss of global standing under Trump. Firstly, the president’s popularity in Britain is so low that attacking him has become an easy way for local officials to build...

Writing for the conservative National Review, Jim Geraghty correctly diagnoses a fundamental problem with Movement Conservatism as a governing philosophy, forgetting that Movement Conservatism is actually a wealth-generating philosophy: Back in 2014, Politico researched 33 political action committees that claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party and courted small donors with email and direct-mail appeals and found that they “raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs...

I mentioned earlier that President Trump had insulted the Mayor of London. Here's what Khan wrote to make Trump so angry: Praising the “very fine people on both sides” when torch-wielding white supremacists and antisemites marched through the streets clashing with anti-racist campaigners. Threatening to veto a ban on the use of rape as a weapon of war. Setting an immigration policy that forcefully separates young children from their parents at the border. The deliberate use of xenophobia, racism and...

The president, only slightly less popular than Nigel Farage, called London's mayor a "stone cold loser" and berated accurate news sources before HM The Queen hosted him at a state dinner this evening. Huzzah: However, by the time the president’s helicopter, Marine One, landed at Buckingham Palace for his long-desired ceremonial visit, he was wreathed in smiles, with his arrival marked by two 41-gun salutes, a guard of honour and a white-tie-and-tiara banquet. More than 100 protesters demonstrated...

After four years with a do-nothing governor—seriously, he did absolutely nothing—this weekend almost made up for it. The Illinois legislature passed a ton of bills that we've needed (or wanted) for a long time: Gov. J.B. Pritzker and those who believe state government needs to play a bigger, more expansive role than it has got just about everything they wanted in the session that ran only a couple of days over, from new policies on hot-button social issues such as abortion, marijuana and gambling to...

If you haven't discovered Randy Rainbow, here you go: He was in Chicago last night, at Thalia Hall in Pilsen, and I got a chance to hear him live. And today, he's on the cover of the Washington Post Magazine: In a topsy-turvy era, is it surprising that a political commentator should dress in sequins, feather boas and pink cat-eye glasses? Because that’s Randy Rainbow (yes, it’s his given name). In real life, the 37-year-old leads a solitary existence in an orderly apartment adorned with oversize...

It's the first day of summer, and I had to wait for an air-conditioner repair guy, so I started updating the Inner Drive Technology website. Version 4 of the Inner Drive Framework is what we call a "breaking change." It's totally incompatible, in other words. So this should be fun.

The Illinois legislature has passed a bill legalizing small amounts of recreational marijuana and directing the governor to pardon thousands of low-level drug offenders: Illinois is poised to be the 11th state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana beginning Jan. 1, 2020. The state House of Representatives approved its legalization bill 66-47 on Friday. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who campaigned on legalizing cannabis, quickly released a statement saying he’ll sign the legislation. “It is...

The Tribune reports that today ends Chicago's second-wettest spring ever, the wettest May ever, and the only second month in recorded history (out of 1,770 months) to have 21 days of precipitation. This might become the new normal: 9 of the last 10 Mays have had above-average precipitation. Lake Michigan, the inland sea ten blocks from where I'm sitting, has near-record water levels: Lake Ontario, downstream, has swelled by almost a meter in the last two months to all-time record levels: So not only has...

As Chicago finishes the wettest May in history, Bloomberg points out that all the rain has caused serious problems with Illinois agriculture: Rabobank is predicting an unprecedented number of unplanted acres of corn, the most widely grown American crop. A Bloomberg survey of 10 traders and analysts indicates growers could file insurance claims for about 6 million corn acres they haven’t been able to sow, almost double the record in 2013. Corn futures surged more than 20% to a three-year high over the...