Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes is not generally known for his sense of humor.

Privately, in one-on-one situations, Hynes can be engaging, and even funny. Put him in front of a microphone, however, and he's usually stiff as a board.

So, it was a great surprise last week when Comptroller Hynes regaled a Springfield audience with a "fable" that had attendees laughing with glee.

The slate of candidates for Davenport's 2008-9 city council has been decided.

Davenport residents were fairly deceived, during the last campaign, by several of the elected officials currently serving, so this time it is "voter beware."

It is important to know the professional backgrounds of those running, as well as the inspiration, incentive, or both, to vie for a council seat.

Protectionists claim that free trade is bad for America - that increasing imports of goods means increasing exports of jobs, thereby gutting our economy. This notion could only be valid in a zero-sum world with a fixed number of jobs, where one country's gain would be another's loss; in fact, though, the number of jobs, both at home and abroad, is locked into a clear uptrend. New businesses and industries continually emerge in the never-ending attempt to satisfy humankind's insatiable wants. We can never run out of jobs.

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-Day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel, feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."

- Ray Bradbury