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.

Just a couple of months ago, more than 50,000 electronic witness-slips were filed in opposition to a proposed legislative change to the state’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

Natural Immunity Best Hope for Ending COVID Pandemic

The CDC was sued under FOIA for all its documentation regarding people who have been infected with COVID-19 and recovered who are unvaxxed, all documentation relative to natural immunity in the COVID-19 recovered, all documentation relative to COVID-19 recovered people becoming reinfected and then transmitting to others. (https://www.icandecide.org/cdc-concedes-never-conducted-vaccinated-v-unvaccinated-study/)

The CDC responded that it had no such documentation and that it was not collecting data relative to any of the requested parameters. This means that the CDC's Director Rochelle Walensky committed perjury in her November 4 testimony before Congress that the CDC had reviewed 96 papers as part of their review submission to Congress, and determined that all COVID-19-recovered people should be vaccinated. (https://www.c-span.org/video/?515699-1/senate-hearing-biden-administrations-covid-19-response)

Pages