Illinois in the News (0 comments)
I've been reading about my home state in the national news as of late, and we haven't been looking good. Most embarrassingly (besides Blagojevich, of course), our state legislature has voted to reinstate Pluto's status as a planet. After all the news of other states trying to use legislation to ignore evolutionary research over the past decade, I'd expected politicians might have learned that laws can't change science. Sorry, Neil deGrass Tyson.
Along the same lines of fighting progress, the Mormon Church is reportedly gearing up their Proposition 8 resources to oppose a bill recognizing civil unions in Illinois.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department is suing Craigslist alleging that its "Erotic Services" section facilitates prostitution. There's certainly an argument for that being the case, but I'm not sure what we expect to change that wasn't covered in the changes that were made to satisfy 40 other states' Attorneys General last year.
Locally, this is day two of the "Unofficial" St. Patrick's Day celebration on campus. The big story this year is a partygoer who fell three stories trying to climb from a third-floor balcony to the balcony directly above. It remains to be seen if the injuried party will sue the apartment complex for installing railings that can break when pulled from the outside.