Posted on May 18th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Via WMBD:
Three victims went to the hospital after a Sunday morning shooting in Peoria. It happened at the Southern Valley 66 on Western Avenue. Authorities say soon after a victim went to the hospital with a gun shot wound to the stomach, two more people showed up with bullet wounds. Police won’t say if the […]
7 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 18th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Twenty years ago, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper without reading something about AIDS and HIV. I wrote my share of them. These days, almost nothing. We assume that the disease has been beaten. There are people who walk around with an HIV infection who may never get full-blown AIDS, and there are people with […]
22 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
UPDATE: Before taking this too seriously, consider the source:
From a press release:
(CHICAGO)(May 16, 2008) Illinois Republican reformer Andy Martin will hold a Chicago news conference Friday, May 16th to announce he has filed a lawsuit to stop corruption at the Illinois Republican Party’s 2008 state convention. ‘The behavior of most Republican Party leaders is disgraceful,’ […]
8 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
From the Journal Star:
You know, if I had a bullet wound in the gut, I’d be a tad uncooperative, too.
Ken Hinton is in rare form. Bull-headed, condescending … come to think of it, that’s not rare for him at all.
Here’s my big dream: A new board and administrators at District 150. Visualize, visualize, Visualize …
The […]
2 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
From Peoria City Hall:
Rockwood from Farrelly to Eugenie will be closed starting immediately and continuing at least through the day tomorrow. Traffic will be detoured to Julia St to allow for an emergency utility repair.
No Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
The following showed up in my email:
Dear St. Mark’s Families,
Today at approximately 9:00 AM there was an incident reported that a threatening message was left on a bathroom stall. We followed the Diocese of Peoria and the St. Mark School response protocol. We immediately evacuated the school moving everyone to the church as well as […]
9 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
What’s with the “sweetie?”
The chicks really hate to be called “sweetie,” especially when they are the masculine type who don’t want to stay home and cook and clean for her man.
End sarcasm.
2 Comments »
Filed under: Local, The Wire
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Caterpillar Inc. is fixing up its parking deck. Good for them. For them. It’s their deck, they are responsible for it. In a totally pure free-market, free-enterprise system they ought to be responsible for those costs. One of those costs, one assumes, would be to find a place for its workers to park.
After all, there […]
17 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 13th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Well, I was wrong. Tonight’s Peoria City Council meeting didn’t end sometime after 10 p.m. as I predicted. It ended shortly after 8 p.m.
The meeting started at about 6:15 p.m., but the real city business didn’t start until about 6:45 p.m. after all the proclamations were over. Which was about when I arrived. cagey veteran […]
No Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 13th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
I found this article on AlterNet, a news service that promotes a left-of-center point of view:
Obama likes to paint himself as an opponent of the war. He reminds voters of his one — and only one — speech opposing it. But he swiftly changed his mind. Obama told the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004, […]
7 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 13th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
I couldn’t go to last night’s meeting of the group of parents upset at District 50 for slashing a month of instructional time from primary school students (in daily 45-minute increments). I had to work.
In the days since the school board voted to slash the school day, there has been something of an uprising underway. […]
1 Comment »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
When I first heard about the parental uprising over the drastically shortened instructional time at District 150 primary schools, I was outraged. Imagine the outrage if you are parent of primary-age kids:
Seriously, what do the parents, city leaders and property owners in Peoria plan to do about the fact that our school district seems perfectly […]
12 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
The Peoria Journal Star couldn’t find a way to mention Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis’ name even once when it devoted four stories Sunday to how the murder rate has dropped (details avaialable here).
But when they ran a story today casting doubt on the success of a committee that’s just getting off the ground, this is the […]
5 Comments »
Filed under: Local, Watchdog
Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Today’s Word on the Street mentions that parents who are upset at D150’s decision to cut a month’s work of instructional time out of their primary schools are taking their concerns to members of the Peoria City Council. I’ll paraphrase the positions taken by two of the council members quoted in the article. Mayor Ardis: […]
2 Comments »
Filed under: Local
Posted on May 11th, 2008 by Billy Dennis
Two thoughts about this article about a man who was found inside a car with a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head:
This had to happen right after the Journal Star finally acknowledged Peoria’s murder rate is down dramatically from last year.
I think that any crime that happens within four block of Club Apollo will now […]
8 Comments »
Filed under: Local