Memorial Day is an annual reminder that calls to our attention the great debt of gratitude we owe all those who have served in the nation’s armed forces. They have served in every time of pain, confusion, doubt and outright attack in the nation’s history.

If Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration wasn't motivated to get its arms around the state's chronic Medicaid payment backlog before -- despite chiding from the comptroller and from this page -- the pressure is really on now.

Americans have begun receiving their much-awaited stimulus checks from the federal government, though they may have spent them several times over in their heads while they waited.

If Illinois is serious about a mammoth plan for public construction and repair projects, it’s time we part with the notion that we can have something for nothing.

We'll cash those stimulus checks, but further action on the economy should be limited in cost and targeted toward families and sectors where a little additional stimulus will go a long way.

For most young people, a graduation is the first major turning point of their lives.

A tax holiday for drivers? A new way to bleed Big Oil? These may be music to motorists' ears. But short-term, neither will result in significant savings.

Recession? Contraction? Slowdown? Semantics matter little to pinched consumers.

Given the enormity of the problems this world faces from an environmental standpoint, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

Around 1970, pollution was rampant. When a river in Cleveland caught fire, the environmental catastrophe could be ignored no longer. The resulting protests turned into the annual tribute to environmental awareness we call Earth Day.

As Gen. David Petraeus was giving Congress his status report on Iraq recently, there came a telling moment. Cutting to the chase, Congressman Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) asked, "Please tell us, General, what is winning?"

Taxpayers could spend $14 billion on the next census -- and that sickening sum of money won’t even buy an army of census workers toting hand-held computers with global positioning devices. It will buy the old method of collecting information with pen and paper.

For Americans of a certain age, 1968 holds a special place in memory, a dark place. It was a year when one trauma after another rattled the nation, a year that changed all that followed.

Now that U.S. combat deaths in Iraq have hit another round number - 4,000, including four soldiers killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in Baghdad - maybe it will be easier for Americans to remember the death toll.

Last week was Sunshine Week, a time for reflecting on the importance of open government and the Freedom of Information Act. Illinois in recent years has had its share of open government successes. But for all these gains, there remains one aspect of Illinois state government still almost completely hidden from public view.