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By Lynn Sweet on April 29, 2011 8:38 AM WASHINGTON — A factor in President Obama’s decision to address the “birther” question — and release his “long form” birth certificate — came when ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asked him about it in an April 14 interview where Obama wanted …

First, MS-13 kingpins made their way into major U.S. cities. Today, Newsweek reports that 20,000 illegal alien drug dealers operate in 44 states. They engage thousands of American teens as sellers on our streets. Many turn to a life of crime because they can make $1,000.00 a week selling drugs …

Bill Conroy Narcosphere April 27, 2011 A high-level player with one of the most notorious narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, the Sinaloa “cartel,” claims that he has been working with the U.S. government for years, according to pleadings filed recently in federal court in Chicago. That player, Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, …

House Minority Leader Tom Cross announced last week that he would support legalization, after speaking with a number of people who use medical marijuana — including a disabled veteran, FOX Chicago reports. State Representative Lou Lang, the sponsor of HB 30, was excited by the news. “The best prospects for …

Casey Chan The Adler Planetarium just renovated the Grainger Sky Theater with a big honking screen. The display will mimic being in space with a 8,000 by 8,000 pixel screen that’s supposed to deliver “the largest single seamless digital image in the world”. For reference, typical movie screens ‘only’ spit …

Mayor of Country Club Hills doesn’t like the new threat level system by Sam Hudzik Apr. 26, 2011 A south suburb of Chicago plans to take down signs that alert residents to the current terrorism threat level. That’s after the feds announced they were scrapping the color-coded system. It may …

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel was urged Tuesday to rein in police spying after the city agreed to pay and publicly absolve an international peace and justice organization investigated in the run-up to a 2002 business conference in Chicago. The Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee …

Heroin abuse in Chicago’s suburbs is reaching epidemic proportions, and the area’s Eisenhower Expressway has become known as the “Heroin Highway” for all the smack that flows through it.

Guantanamo Bay detention facility President Obama pledged in January 2009 to close the prison within a year Files released by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives. The files, published in US and European …

Monitor readings of lead pollution prompt investigation by federal, state environmental regulators By Michael Hawthorne, Tribune reporter 12:15 AM CDT, April 1, 2011 Residents in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood complained for years about metallic-tasting smoke rolling down their narrow streets but had little evidence it was harmful. Now they have proof. …

Analysis by ZIP code shows mostly slipping values By Mary Ellen Podmolik, Tribune reporter April 24, 2011 At best, Chicago-area home prices are bouncing along the bottom or getting less bad as the depreciation rate slows. At worst, they continue in a free fall. A year of home price changes …

Shortly after leaving jail, teen bound, beat and stabbed father, police say Nellessen had been in and out of Fecarotta’s courtroom since 2009, when he appeared on a residential burglary charge. He could have been sentenced to 4 to 15 years for the class 1 felony, but Fecarotta chose Cook …

Chicago Tenant Rights – Renters Rights in Chicago  

By Brian Slodysko TribLocal reporter Today at 6:44 a.m. Downers Grove Park Board officials Thursday asked commissioner-elect Mark Roman to pay $330 for allegedly tampering with a portable toilet near his home. Roman, whose alleged conduct involving a portable park district toilet generated both a police report and extra work …