Waukegan News: Tot crushed in crash

What a terrible disaster. It's hearbreaking to read about stuff like this. You wonder was the child properly secured? Was anybody at fault, or was it really just an accident where nothing could have been done.

The child was was pronounced dead at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan. Booth said Friday that the collision remains under investigation.

Read more at the Waukegan News Sun.

Peoria News: Peoria County could see jump in number of lead poisonings

It's amazing that lead poisoning continues to be an issue. You'd have thought that after decades of knowing about this stuff it would have been eradicated by now, but it's still around, increasing even. Scary.

By CLARE HOWARD Peoria County cut its rate of childhood lead poisoning from nearly 15 percent of tested children in 2003 to just over 8 percent in 2006, .

Read more at the Peoria Journal Star.

Joe Biden - Plagiarism scandal

Joe Biden is a plagiarist. Is that surprise?

The only practical explanation for Biden's plagiarism is he guessed that being Kinnock on the stump would be more compelling for his audience than merely citing him. And he was probably right. Anecdotes about how a British politician made a success of himself thanks to Labor Party policies would hardly encourage an American voter to pull the lever for Joe Biden. Biden plagiarized because, like most plagiarists, he was unsatisfied with his own, honest material and decided that the payoff was worth the risk.

Another time-honored defense of plagiarists is that the incident was a one-off. But in Biden's case, we know that's not true. As E.J. Dionne Jr. reported in the previously mentioned Times article, he "plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school" at the Syracuse University College of Law. According to a Dec. 1, 1965, report by the law school, five pages of Biden's 15-page paper were copied without quotation or attribution.

Biden's defense? He told Dionne—and his professors at Syracuse at the time—that he misunderstood citation and footnoting rules. The Dionne piece is especially rich with other Bidenisms. The candidate accuses other presidential campaigns of digging up the Syracuse law school story, but he does not specify which campaigns engineered this smear.

If you give Biden the benefit of the doubt—and I don't—you'd expect that such a calamitous "mistake" from his youth would have seared into his mind the importance of keeping his mitts off of other people's words. That it didn't speaks terabytes about his character.

More from Slate magazine.

Aurora News: East Aurora School District overhauls Web site

It's really important that schools continue to invest in their websites, because school websites don't just save money for the school district they increase the amount of information that is available to parents, and makes it easier for parents to receive information that is critical to them for keeping tab on their children and so on, seeing what grades they have and more.

And during a virtual ribbon-cutting at East Aurora's Red and Black Pride Day last month, teachers were introduced to the interactive features that will ...

Read more at the Aurora Beacon News.

Aurora News: Oberweis sets three more energy forums

It's about time that Jim Oberweis starts campaigning for Congress because it really seems like he's not doing enough. He needs to get out there, say hello to voters and introduce himself and tell them about what he's going to do to improve their lives. Bill Foster is much more of a politician than Oberweis, meaning he knows how to pander and tell voters what they want to hear, while Oberweis says what he means and means what he says and is his own man. Unfortunately this is a campaign where the politician is likely to beat the real man.

Republican congressional candidate Jim Oberweis has scheduled three more town hall meetings on energy and gas prices -- and the first one is in Aurora.

More at the Aurora Beacon News.

Sarah Palin

Great stuff here. What an amazing vice president!

* Sarah Palin was to walk out to the singing of Angels, but convention organizers thought it might come off as showing off.
* Sarah Palin’s suit is made from 100% dead liberal skin.
* Sarah Palin prepped for this speech with a ritual sacrifice of Susan Estrich.
* Sarah Palin has actually travelled backwards in time from after the roll call to accept the nomination retroactively.
* Sarah Palin doesn’t actually have an accent, it’s distortion from her telepathic broadcast directly into your brain.
* In 2003, the US considered deploying Sarah Palin to Iraq as a 1-woman commando squad, but wanted to make it a fair fight.
* As head of Alaska’s Nat’l Guard, Sarah Palin taught troops in a training exercise to scare a grenade into not exploding.
* Sarah Palin drives herself to work everyday - in an M1A1 tank
* Sarah Palin believes in change, too. She takes it from your pockets after striking you dead.
* Sarah Palin wears three quarter length sleeves to keep from getting blood on her clothes when she kills liberals.


More about Sarah Palin.

Aurora News: Aurora blotter

Not so good news here. Read more about how a loud stereo lead to a felony conviction. Full coverage on the Aurora Beacon News:

Frank Ayala, 20, of the 2300 block of Candleberry Lane, Aurora, was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance and misdemeanor possession of ..