Free Republic

In 1976, a Chicago newspaper columnist wrote that Jerry Brown would get "the moonbeam vote."The writer was Mike Royko, who then started referring to the then-38-year-old Brown as "Gov. Moonbeam." Royko was suggesting that Brown was attracting California's New Age crowd. Brown was a strong supporter of space exploration and many of the earliest statewide green initiatives. Yet he also gained a reputation as a fiscal conservative, refusing many perks that came with the governorship.Royko eventually retracted his statement, and in 1991 in the Chicago Tribune, he called the moniker "null, void and deceased."

A federal magistrate judge Monday released Robert Royko to a drug treatment center, saying she viewed his struggles with addiction as an illness. Royko, 49, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko, has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since his arrest in April for allegedly attempting to hold up an Associated Bank branch at 6355 N. Central Ave. Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan denied a prosecutor's request to keep Royko behind bars until trial and released him on his own recognizance to the custody of the drug treatment center.

CHICAGO (AP) Robert Royko, a son of the late newspaper columnist Mike Royko, was arrested Friday at a Chicago bank and charged with attempting to rob it after authorities say he walked in with a device rigged to look like a pipe bomb and demanded a bag of cash. Royko, 41, of Johnsburg, appeared briefly before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan and was ordered held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center pending a hearing Tuesday. A defense attorney and family friend of Royko's said he would plead innocent. According to FBI agents, Royko entered the Associated Bank on Chicago's north side,...

From the Chicago TribuneIt was a joke. Really.June 16 2002Readers of one of Beijing's biggest tabloid newspapers recently were led to believe that the U.S. Congress was threatening to dump Washington, D.C. and move to Charlotte or Memphis unless it got a "new, state-of-the-art" Capitol building.The Beijing Evening News quoted House Speaker Dennis Hastert dissing the Capitol Building as "no longer suitable for a world-class legislative branch." Bad bathrooms, miserable parking, you get the picture.House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said, "If we want to stay competitive, we need to upgrade. Look at British Parliament. Look at the Vatican . ....