We Need You to Care Local QC Hospital Health Official Vaccination Appeal Dec 2021

Critical thinking and journalistic curiosity were woefully missing in the most recent COVID-19 press briefing hosted by county health workers and local hospital medical directors. In the six weeks since the last presser, a lot of information has come out in the independent media on how unvaccinated are documented in health systems. The devil's in the details, and how our local hospitals and county health officials conduct themselves relative to our local media inquiries has a major impact on how the Quad Cities populace perceives our collective and individual health status.

Where There's Risk, There Must be Choice

Most of us have stopped really civically engaging, convincing ourselves that voting for representatives is doing our part in the bottom-up governance that makes America so unique. We further justify our civic sloth by picking a political side and assuring ourselves that we were choosing representation that reflects our values and ideologies for governance. What a load of hooey!

I’ve been fascinated by election petition-gathering season this year because of the adjusted primary schedule, the crazy omicron variant, and the prevailing fear of crime, not to mention the awful weather. Petition season was always during the fall. But because the primary was moved to June 28, petition-circulators now have to get out there in the dead of winter, during the omicron and crime surges.

Julian Assagnge Journalism is Not a Crime

Reporters Without Borders international campaigns director Rebecca Vincent reacted, “We welcome the High Court’s decision to allow Julian Assange the right to appeal his extradition case to the Supreme Court. This case will have enormous implications for journalism and press freedom around the world and could be hugely precedent-setting. It deserves consideration by the highest court in the land."

Richard Irvin is a Republican. Period. Irvin might not be enough of a Republican for the purists. And Democrats might want to weaken Irvin in the Republican primary for governor by pointing to some of the nice things he’s said about Democrats (including the governor) over the years. But Richard Irvin is still a Republican.

House Speaker Chris Welch marked his one-year anniversary as his chamber’s top leader with a series of news media interviews last week. One of the questions I asked was what his legislative district’s constituents were talking to him about the most. “The number-one issue in my district, and this is across the state, is crime,” Speaker Welch said.

The Illinois Senate’s COVID-mitigation protocols (testing, masks, and limited remote-voting) didn’t anticipate a partisan attempt to use a record-breaking virus-surge to shut the chamber down, but that’s what almost happened last week.

January 6, 2021 US Capitol photo by Corey Eib

First and foremost is that no one has explained the motive behind why Trump supporters would deliberately storm the castle to sabotage the Congressional Electoral College certification process when they considered it the last best hope to see their precious Trump restored to the office of the President. The third narrative hole is that there are 14,000 hours of video footage being withheld from the public.

January 6, 2021 US Capitol Up Close by Jason Bermas

Thank you to these five concerned citizens who provided their candid and first-person perspectives about a day that many would have live in infamy. Below are short bios on each participant, followed by each person's response to our 12 questions.

Matt Chapman, a self-described data nerd who runs a not-for-profit group called “Free Our Data,” recently filed Freedom of Information Act requests with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. He wanted everything received by the Chicago Tribune this year via their FOIA requests.

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