Free Republic

WESTERN SPRINGS, IL — Western Springs and Hinsdale appeared to have found agreement on the style of the new pedestrian bridge over Interstate 294. This week, the Western Springs Village Board received more detailed numbers on the village's cost of maintenance for the bridge, which would be next to 47th Street. Western Springs was told a couple of months ago that its costs would amount up to $250,000 in 25 years to repaint the entire bridge with a painted finish, plus $60,000 for picket-style fencing. But Illinois Tollway official Nicole Nutter told the Western Springs Village Board on Monday that...

HINSDALE — For the second time in just over a month, a tractor-trailer-type vehicle collided with a parked New York State Department of Transportation vehicle on Interstate 86. Both drivers involved in the two-vehicle accident were injured, said Hinsdale First Assistant Fire Chief Greg Church. The incident was reported at 11:11 a.m. Tuesday after a northbound box truck rear-ended a state DOT dump truck a few miles before Exit 27. “They were patching the road,” Church said of state DOT crew. “They had a truck with a lighted arrow and work zone signs up, but for some reason he didn’t...

In a stunning display of ignorance, the Illinois State Senate just voted 43-12 in favor of the resolution to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment. What makes this vote even more enraging is that Republicans Pam Althoff (R-Crystal Lake), Jason Barickman (R-Pontiac), Mike Connelly (R-Wheaton), Karen McConnaughay (R-West Dundee), Chris Nybo (R-Hinsdale), Sue Rezin (R-Morris), and Tom Rooney (R-Palatine) voted with Democrats on this partisan resolution.

The Illinois Tollway invited about 20 Hinsdale property owners to meetings Thursday, but at least 50 people showed up, including state Sen. Chris Nybo. The Elmhurst Republican asked tollway officials why they are not reconstructing Interstate 290/Interstate 88 interchange first, and then reassess whether the proposed widening farther south with two lanes in each direction is still needed to relieve congestion. "The tollway has not clearly explained why they need to expand this stretch to six lanes, instead of five, in each direction. That additional lane in each direction is a big deal for Hinsdale and Western Springs," Nybo said...

HINSDALE, Illinois, November 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A congregation of US Dominican nuns has publicly apologized for the scandal caused by one of its members acting as a volunteer escort at a Chicago area abortion facility, who now faces severe canonical penalties including excommunication and the possibility of dismissal.    LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) first broke the story about Sr. Donna Quinn, O.P., a Dominican nun who is outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, who had been identified by pro-life witnesses as an escort for the ACU Health Clinic.Sr. Quinn's religious community, the Wisconsin-based Sinsinawa Dominican Congregation, admitted in a press release posted...

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire. Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign. Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a...

The next pope will almost certainly be conservative like Pope John Paul II, but will have to be less authoritarian if he is to avoid a schism in the Roman Catholic Church, a group of Boston College experts said yesterday. What I’m hoping for is a weaker pope,” Sister Mary An Hinsdale, an expert on ecclesiology and women’s issues in the church, said during a panel discussion on next week’s historic papal election. Hinsdale cited the centralization of power that marked John Paul II’s 26-year papacy and that threatened to roll back some of Vatican II’s reforms. Many African bishops,...