10-1-2026
This week:
News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go
Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists
Cheer Chat — The latest news about the beloved Songs of Good Cheer winter holiday tradition. New songs and a new cast member!
Good Sports/Bad Sports — Examples abound
Green Lights — I recommend a podcast episode that asked “Is Your Recipe Lying to You?”
Happy October!
The tangy sweater-weather days of October give us long walks in gorgeously transforming forests, the World Series, football games that matter and the cozy tranquility of hot cider. Were it not for the now-overdone observance of Halloween and the pall cast by the resumption of standard time, October might be my favorite month.
Instead, I ranked it fourth in a 2002 column (gift link) behind June, September and May. But readers ranked it first in an online poll, (gift link) offering such comments as:
“The hideous summer has passed, the sky is crystalline, the breezes are refreshing, the air is crisp, and the trees are showing their beautiful autumn colors.” (Barbara M., Chicago).
“October has character. Indian summer days, a fleeting first snowflake or two, leaves to kick on introspective walks.” (John W., Wheeling).
“The gorgeous colors that seem to change at every turn of the road make me gasp with amazement at how beautiful life can be.” (Fran K., Highland Park).
Have times changed? I’ve posted a drag-and-drop survey for you to place your months from most to least favorite, and there are no standards.
Results next week.
Last week’s winning quip
On Yom Kippur: To everyone I’ve wronged, been mean to or been rude to this year, please take some time to reflect on what you did to make me act that way. — @Tzioni2
Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.
News & Views
News: Sendhil Revuluri drops out of the race for Chicago school board president.
View: I would have voted for him. I attended one of the debates and watched another, and he struck me as the one candidate least likely to pander to any faction and the least beholden to ideology. He was the only one willing to point out that preserving vastly underenrolled schools diminishes the educational and extracurricular opportunities for the students rattling around in huge buildings.
It’s astonishing to me that so much time and money are going into this and other races for unpaid positions, offices where catching flak and tilting against windmills are the main experiences. Even small towns and villages usually provide at least a modest stipend to their part-time trustees.
News: A mariachi band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the Bears game Monday night, and the haters lost their shit.
View: They did a great job, playing a version of our national anthem far more respectful and traditional than the “look at me!” stylings of so many others who have performed this difficult song over the years. I’m not a fan of the anthem before games and the compulsory displays of patriotism it requires, and I’m really not a fan of singers who add so many vocal filigrees that it makes the song more about them than the country. But Mariachi Herencia de México’s version was not about their talent, but about the inclusion of Hispanic people in our multicultural nation. Hence the hateful comments online.
News: Lindsay Clancy’s attorneys are now arguing there isn’t sufficient proof that she killed her three children.
View: I’m not a lawyer, but it doesn’t seem like a wise tactic for Clancy’s defense team to make this argument now, after her lengthy trial ended in a hung jury not over the issue who killed the children — that was assumed — but whether Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths because of postpartum psychosis. This new argument seems as though it would insult the intelligence of the Massachusetts trial judge who may have to rule on whether prosecutors can retry Clancy.
News: Donald Trump wants us to stop saying AI — for artificial intelligence — and start saying SI — for super intelligence.
View: This doofus needs to stop trying to make “fetch” happen. From the Department of War to the Gulf of America to Lake America, he keeps trying put his stamp on our discourse. It’s not working.
Land of Linkin’
“Curing Concrete” (Bloomberg gift link) by Chicago journalist and author Ted C. Fishman is a fascinating look at something you likely have never thought much about: “Almost every building erected in the past 75 years in an industrialized country has, at the least, a concrete foundation and, very likely, concrete floors.
Concrete can seem the dead opposite of sexy. … Concrete can be dull, hard, inert.
Paradoxically these very qualities have made it one of the most transformative materials ever created. The world has been remade with it. Measured by mass, about half of the world’s more than 1 trillion tons of human-made stuff is concrete.” Fishman, who is finishing up a book on the subject, deals in this article with concrete’s associated environmental challenges.
The Nautilus article “A Blow‑by‑Blow Account of What Would Happen If the Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupted Now” reads like a disaster movie script. In case you are feeling as though you don’t have enough to worry about right now.
Moneywise: “McDonald’s is spending $8.5 billion to put an AI called Archy in drive-thrus — even after its first attempt failed.” Are you lovin’ it?
In 2024, Harris Meyer and Anthony Russo wrote in Chicago Magazine about medical aid in dying laws. In addressing the fears that such laws would result in people living with disabilities being coerced into ending their lives, they wrote, “There has been no evidence, though, of that happening. … The longtime executive director of Disability Rights Oregon said in 2019 that his agency had never received a complaint about coercion in the more than two decades since that state enacted its pioneering legislation.”
CWB Chicago reported Tuesday, “A Chicago Public Schools teacher was stabbed repeatedly in an apparently random attack while riding a CTA bus home from work,” and noted that this frightening incident had occurred 19 days earlier and was “an incident police never disclosed publicly.”
On his Substack, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes: “The Rahm Bomb: He’s the single worst Democratic hopeful now (almost) running for president. Democratic midterm candidates be warned: stay away from him.”
Emma Dibdin in The New York Times: “8 Podcasts to Help Make Sense of Post-Trump America” and “7 Podcasts for Bookworms,”
“It seems everyone with a horse in the mayoral race wants to lay culpability for Chicago’s fiscal woes at (Mayor Brandon) Johnson’s feet,” writes Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, in a Sun-Times op-ed. “It’s inaccurate because all the evidence shows the recurring budget gaps in the corporate fund are not attributable to poor management decisions made by the current or any of the immediately preceding, mayoral administrations. Instead, they’re the predictable consequence of the corporate fund’s structural deficit.”
The New York Times: “The 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century: More than 500 influential stars, showrunners and other notable names in the world of TV voted on the best series released since Jan. 1, 2000. See what they chose.”
On this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, Jon Hansen, Steve Bertrand and I joined host John Williams to discuss the news of the week. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720 or look for the YouTube version that will be posted later in the week. See our traffic-light recommendations below.
The documentary “Musk” is “an enrapturing evisceration” of the world’s richest megalomaniac, in one critic’s estimation. I can’t wait to see it after it opens in theaters this month, even though it’s nearly four hours long. Share this link:
From the Picayune Plus:
Squaring up the news
This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:
■ The Atlantic (gift link): Bereft of his Democratic fundraisers, Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s mining MAGA for money.
■ Nice work if you can get it. WTTW: The interim chief of the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority, Jamie Rhee, will collect an annual city taxpayer-funded pension of more than $213,000 while earning $350,000 to run the agency — bringing her total annual compensation to more than $563,000.
■ Ready for … anything? Columnist and former U.S. Rep. Marie Newman says Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate behavior means Democratic leaders need to get serious about plans to fight election theft.
■ Even Republicans … are criticizing Trump’s spending of nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer money for pro-Trump ads.
■ Columnist Heather Delaney Reese is most troubled by the ads’ use of the phrase “once and for all.”
■ Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten has composed an ode to “the many MAGAts who finally seem to be dumping Trump.”
■ Columnist Jeff Tiedrich says Trump “got to do one of his favorite things in the whole world at the Presidents Cup golf tournament outside Chicago: Stand next to a trophy that wasn’t his, and pretend he won something he didn’t.”
■ A deal that Trump and AI industry leaders have signed, pledging “self-policing” of their technology, contains the misspelling “Unites States.”
■ The AP: Trump’s revamped and AI-powered America.gov website gives some answers he probably won’t like — and Popular Information reports the site’s chatbot was censored hours after its launch.
■ SB Nation: In attempting to deliver a “gotcha” moment during Senate grilling of former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith, Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt confused a couple of basketball teams, prompting Jimmy Kimmel to dub him MAGA’s biggest “Schmitt-head.” Columnist Charlotte Clymer ranks it “the most embarrassing moment in a congressional hearing. Ever.”
■ Block Club: The Wieners Circle hot dog stand owner’s campaign for mayor means more scrutiny for the messages on the stand’s celebrated marquee—like this one.
■ The Daily Herald (free link): “A high-tech, battery-powered Metra train will leave the drawing board and enter reality next week.”
■ “I don’t carry a physical wallet anymore.” Tech columnist Kim Komando: “Every time you show your (actual) driver’s license, you hand over your home address. To a bouncer. To a hotel clerk. To the guy at the liquor store. The phone version changes the deal.”
■ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina: “Schedule your flu vaccine appointment this week.”
■ A Washington Post story out of Champaign-Urbana (gift link): “She waited for hours and left untreated. The ER billed her anyway.”
You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.
Media notes
Former Tribune investigative ace David Jackson is retiring from Injustice Watch. Media columnist Robert Feder wrote about his 2020 departure from the Tribune.
Tribune contributor Bob Goldsborough’s recent obituaries of local media figures include sendoff for Andrew Leckey and Garry Lee Wright.
CNN’s Daniel Dale: “I started fact-checking Trump 10 years ago. Here are 15 things I’ve learned.”
Rick Kogan: “‘Chicago Stories’ returns to WTTW-Ch 11 with new histories, familiar but refreshed.” The documentary series returns Friday at 8 p.m. Kogan writes, “Chicago’s history is a rich mine, and so, even while providing some familiar nuggets, these new programs also show us that there is always fresh material to find.”
Hat tip to the Sun-Times-WBEZ-Block Club Chicago-Chalkbeat Chicago collaboration that offers comprehensive coverage of Chicago’s school board races and to the Tribune Editorial Board for offering endorsements in all the races as well as the race for school board president. I still say an elected school board is a lousy idea, but aggressive and informative journalism makes it better.
The Chicago Defender beclowns itself by referring to “Dr. Willie Wilson.” Again, Wilson has earned no doctorates. His honorary “degrees” are related to his philanthropy.
A media note from Chicago Public Square
■ “The nation’s for-profit metro newspapers are going out of business in slow motion.” ProPublica co-founder Dick Tofel says you need look no further than the hedge fund-controlled McClatchy, which is cutting newsrooms right and left, including most of the reporters at its one Illinois paper.
Choosin’ condescension
A snotty Rolling Stone headline says, “What Some Folks Really Mean When They Claim to Have Never Heard ‘Choosin’ Texas’: Proclaiming you’re unfamiliar with Ella Langley’s record-setting song has a lot in common with saying ‘I listen to anything but country’” (link is paywalled). Nuts to that. I like country music — mostly the older, traditional stuff — but I don’t listen to music radio of any sort.
“Choosin’ Texas” has set the record for number of weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and I’m not proud to report that I don’t know any of the songs in that ranking.
NPR music critic Stephen Thompson writes:
It’s a good song! … A relatable lament about losing a guy to a pretty stranger, “Choosin’ Texas” feels surprisingly full-grown for the top of a chart so frequently dominated by youthful pop earworms. It references “Amarillo by Morning”! It’s lonesome, it’s twangy, it’s catchy as all get out, and it’s above all timeless; you could imagine it being sung by, say, Tammy Wynette.
Langley co-wrote the song with Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor. See if you concur with Thompson’s verdict. I do:
Quotables
A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately
The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board — Republicans currently evidence a philosophical and policy shallowness that is on full display for voters. Instead of principles and ideas, the party line has become “whatever he said,” referring, of course, to the whims of President Donald Trump. Instead of thinking for themselves, too many are happy to accept the cravenness, callousness and corruption of the charmless chief.
Unknown — If you had a dollar for every trans woman competing in intercollegiate college sports, you wouldn’t be able to buy a gallon of diesel.
Former special prosecutor Jack Smith — History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It's often weakened by attacks on the institutions and the public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort.
Donald Trump — (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is a friend of mine. He likes Trump. Doesn't like a lot of other people. I'm about the only person in the entire world that he likes. And I like him.
Donald Trump speaking about Chinese President Xi — He's a brilliant leader (and a) great man.
Donald Trump on Russian leader Vladimir Putin — A man so highly respected within his own country and beyond
Donald Trump — Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.
The Tweet of God — The people who want to believe they found Noah's Ark are effectively saying they want Me to have wiped out nearly the entire human race.
Bonus playlet by Peter Sagal:
SCENE: An office in DC. February 2024.
JACK SMITH: I’ve got to make a secret trip to Atlanta to co-ordinate with my co-conspirator in my campaign to bring down Trump. No one can even know I’m there.
AIDE: You’re the most well-known prosecutor in the world. Maybe send some underling?
SMITH [Scoffs.] No one else can be trusted.
AIDE: A phone call?
SMITH: [Leaning in] There are ears *everywhere.*
AIDE: So, in and out, no record, no footprint, off the schedule and off the books.
SMITH: I’ve taught you well.
AIDE: Yes sir.
SMITH: Also, I’d like to go to an NBA game.
AIDE: Sir?
SMITH: Golden State is in town. Gotta see my man Steph rain down some threes.
AIDE: But… sir… NBA games are televised.
[Pause]
SMITH: They are?
Quips
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest, the most evenly divided result in the long, glorious history of this feature:
Anyone can vote in the contest, but to have it delivered fresh to your email inbox each Tuesday morning along with the rest of the Picayune Plus, to participate in the comment forums and to ease your conscience, you can become a paid supporter:
The new nominees for Quip of the Week:
Hiring manager: Under special skills on your résumé, you put “self sabotage?” Me: That’s right, dumbass. — @kipconlon
If you find a toilet in your dreams, don’t use it. It’s a trick. — @GrandpaHarris65
Queen: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Mirror: The fairest of them all is Snow White. Queen: No that’s wrong. Mirror: You are absolutely right. My previous answer was incorrect. — @runnerlife_003 threads
Be nice to your old friends. They have pictures of your hair during the 1980s. — Unknown
“Uh oh,” is my safe word. — @WilliamAder
Men can be best friends and not know each other’s birthdays. It’s awesome. — @jackboot.bsky.social
The biggest lie I tell myself is “I don’t need to write that down, I’ll remember it.” — unknown
Probably the number one question people ask me is, “How did you find out where I live?” — @wheeltod.bsky.social
Big Bird’s mother, shortly after Big Bird hatched: I don’t know. “Big Bird,” I guess. — @davidbcooper (threads)
Can people please stop saying ‘I have some magic beans to sell you’ if they think someone’s being gullible? The beans worked. That’s how Jack got that huge beanstalk and the giant, the goose, the huge egg and whatnot. Someone offers you magic beans? Take them up on that shit. — @SirMustard
Vote here and check the current results in the poll.
Cheer chat
Updates on preparations for this year’s Songs of Good Cheer holiday singalong programs Dec. 10 to 13 at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Come sing with us! Mary Schmich and I host a talented band of local folk luminaries in leading the best holiday-themed singalong anyone has ever seen. Everybody is saying so.
Our cast is now in the process of considering nominations for songs to include in the program — there are hundreds of good holiday songs, and we keep trying to mix less familiar ones in with the classics to keep the shows fresh.
This year, we’ve decided to drop our 27-year resistance to "All I Want for Christmas is You.” Mariah Carey’s 1994 song that became the most popular holiday song of the 21st century. And, in a salute to Dolly Parton, we’re planning to lead “I’ll Be Home With Bells On,” a duet she recorded with Kenny Rogers.
Mary and I are planning to tweak the lyrics a bit and localize Lou Conte’s “Dominick the Donkey,” which we’re told is a hit with local radio listeners this time of year. And there’s strong sentiment on the planning committee to include for the first time the Andy Williams classic “Happy Holiday.” My fellow Cheerios were appalled that I was utterly unfamiliar with this song.
The set lists will be worked out in time for when in-person rehearsals begin in a little more than two weeks.
Meanwhile, we’re pleased to be welcoming multi-instrumentalist Airan Wright to the cast this year as we bid a sincerely fond farewell to jazz saxophonist Roy McGrath, who is retiring from SOGC to work on his other projects. And we’re welcoming back vocalist Jim Cunningham, who took last year off to devote to other musical projects.
Good Sports/Bad Sports
Good sport
Professional golfer Scottie Scheffler, who responded with uncommon grace Sunday after a heckler shouted “Go Scottie!” when his match-play opponent, Nico Echavarria, was about to strike the ball. Echavarria sliced the ball badly, and Scheffler called out the heckler, advancing on him and shouting, “There’s no place for that!”
Scheffler and Echavarria were pitted against one another in the Presidents Cup tournament at Medinah Country Club in the northwest suburbs, Scheffler on the United States team and Echavarria on the international team. Each pair on the course was engaged in match play, a somewhat unusual format in professional golf where each hole is its own contest, with one point awarded to the winner, if there is one.
Scheffler made a par on the hole, but from his resultant lousy lie in the rough, Echavarria struggled to reach the green and was faced with a very difficult putt of about 30 feet simply to tie Scheffler. So Scheffler, in one of the classiest moves I’ve seen in a long time, conceded the putt to Echavarria in light of the distraction he’d experienced. Concessions — allowing your opponent to pick up his ball and assume that the next putt would be good — typically happen when the ball is just a foot or two away from the hole, and the tap-in would be seen as a mere formality.
It would complicate the story if Scheffler had gone on to lose or even tie the overall match — he ended up winning anyway — and if his sporting gesture had perhaps cost the United States the overall victory — the team ended up winning anyway.
Bad sports
It was ugly when USC linebacker Desman Stephens II drove a shoulder pad into the helmet of sliding Oregon quarterback Dante Moore during the second quarter of the USC Trojans-Oregon Ducks on Saturday. A ball carrier going into a slide is giving himself up to avoid a potentially painful tackle, and defenders must do their best to honor the slide and mitigate the contact.
Stephens’ hit was a so-called targeting foul, a serious violation calling for ejection from the game. What was hideous about it was how Stephens pranced, preened and celebrated the hit while Moore was lying on the field evidently unconscious. He even mocked Oregon’s fans and players by imitating the flapping wings of duck.
USC suspended him for an additional game, almost certainly in light of his vile, post-penalty behavior. He deserved far worse — up to a seasonlong suspension — to send a loud, clear message that such behavior is intolerable. Moore suffered a concussion but no neck or spine injuries, but for several minutes, as he was loaded onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, it seemed possible that his injuries were for more grave.
Stephens’ subsequent statement, correct in all regards, reads like it was crafted with the help of a sports information director.
Seeing a player injured like that is incredibly serious, and my reaction in the moments afterward was completely inappropriate and inexcusable. Regardless of what was going through my mind at the time, there is no justification for smiling or celebrating while another player receives medical attention.
Oregon went on to win the game.
Less serious but still vile was how Texas defensive end Colin Simmons celebrated a second-quarter sack on Tennessee quarterback Faizon Brandon by miming pulling out his penis and urinating on the field. He was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for “simulating use of the restroom,” as the referee put it.
Tennessee was awarded a 15-yard penalty and automatic first down, but Simmons stayed in the game, and Texas ended up winning. If I ran the NCAA, I’d implement a second, higher level of unsportsmanlike conduct that called for, say, a 30-minute removal from the game for such sustained, premeditated acts of unbecoming behavior.
Karma bites, but not that hard!
Michigan. my alma mater and boyhood team, is now 3-1 on the season, which feels about right. Western Michigan beat them up and down the field in the opening game, only to have Michigan score the winning touchdown on the last play of the game, a play that many people feel should not have been allowed to happen because there was no time left. (My take on that controversy is here.)
Michigan then won its next two games and, last Saturday, beat Iowa up and down the field — more passing yards, more rushing yards, more first downs, more yards per play and longer time of possession — only to lose when Iowa scored a touchdown on the last play of the game. So the universe evened things out.
The reason I bring it up is to express dismay that that the Associated Press and the American Football Coaches Association poll moved Iowa from 17th to 14th after the game, while the AP dropped Michigan from 18th out of the top 25, and the coaches dropped them from 18th to 24th.
I always thought the poll rankings were to reflect the considered opinion of voters about the pecking order — the team voted No. 1 is likely to beat all the other teams head to head, the team voted No. 10 is likely to lose to teams 1 to 9 and to beat teams 11 and up, and so on.
Indeed, the College Football Power Index — “a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team's performance going forward for the rest of the season” — shows Michigan remaining two slots ahead of Iowa (23rd and 25th places). This seems to better reflect my belief that, despite that last-second loss, Michigan is still a slightly better team than Iowa.
I’m ready to start believin’
I was not a Sox fan in 2005 when they were on their successful World Series run and Journey’s 1981 hit “Don’t Stop Believin’” was their unofficial theme song.
I converted on Valentine’s Day seven years ago, nauseated by how most of the Ricketts family had embraced Donald Trump. And yeah, I’m a fair weather fan, for sure, but their sweep of the Astros in the wild-card round of the MLB playoffs has me leaping on the bandwagon.
Green Lights
First a correction — I gave the wrong URL last week for information about where to stream the 1980 movie “Babylon,” recommended by Austin Berg. It’s here. The link I provided was from a different movie by the same name. Regrets.
Green Lights features recommendations from readers and from me of songs, TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts, products and other diversions that, with only rare exceptions, can be enjoyed at home.
I’m giving a green light to “Is Your Recipe Lying To You?” a January 2025 episode of Dan Pashman’s podcast “The Sporkful.”
If you look at any list of best-selling cookbooks, certain words come up over and over again: quick, easy, fast, effortless. But is it actually possible to deliver deliciousness in no time? Or are these recipes too good to be true? This week, we talk with intrepid journalist Tom Scocca, who exposed the dirty secret about caramelized onions; recipe-writing legend Christopher Kimball; and food writer (and mom) Elizabeth Dunn, who’s sick of feeling bad when a recipe turns out to be harder than she expected. And we ask: Why do recipes that look simple on paper turn out to be very different once you get into the kitchen?
I was inspired to listen to this episode after enduring some confusion about the difference between “prep time” and “cook time” when Johanna and I made our first stab at “Marry Me Chicken,” a deservedly and virally popular main dish. Various recipes list prep time between 10 and 15 minutes and cook time between 20 minutes and an hour. Pashman and his guests explored the possibility that there is a conspiracy among recipe writers to make their dishes sound faster and easier than they are.
From the Mincing Rascals panel:
Jon Hansen — A green light for “Bureau,” a French spy thriller series. Where to stream.
John Williams — A yellow light for the new U.S. government chatbot at America.gov.
Eric Zorn — A green light for “Marry Me Chicken.,” an entree so delicious the person you serve it to will want to be with you for life.
Steve Bertrand — A red light for NBC’s Peacock streaming service.
If you would like to offer a traffic light for the Rascals podcast, email a voice memo to johnwilliams@wgnradio.com.
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I am a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. I began publishing the Picayune Sentinel on Sept. 9, 2021, roughly two and a half months after I took a buyout from the newspaper. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise. Browse and search back issues here.
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I saw the questioning from Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt, and when it was clear that his information was wrong he refused to apologize, and continued to demean Jack Smith. I read somewhere that Schmitt is the dumbest senator from his state—and that’s saying something, because Josh Hawley is also from MO.
You referenced an article by Harris Meyer about medical aid in dying. I just wanted to take a moment to say that he grew up one block over from me in Chicago, and his younger sister was my 6th grade crush. I found a brooch at a garage sale back then and gave it to her. When I reminded her of this at our 40th HS reunion she said she still had it. That made my day. (Sorry for the digression).