Illinois had the first aquarium built in Chicago. The very first skyscraper in the entire world was built in Chicago in 1885. The tallest building in North America, formerly the Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, is in Chicago. Evanston, home to Northwestern, is also home to the ice cream sundae. Illinois has a lot to be proud of.
I'm among the first girls ever to play Little League baseball, and to my knowledge, the very first in western Illinois. It was 1976, and I was a nine-year-old tomboy whose older brothers had played.
One of the positives of the Illinois delegation is the congressmen and women work together on issues of local concern in a lot of different ways.
We all make mistakes. But I'm lucky. Being from Illinois and from the Midwest, we believe in pretty basic fairness. Once you've made a mistake, get up, dust yourself off, and go to work.
We all know Illinois has big challenges. And under Gov. Rauner, things have only gotten worse.
Families in Illinois don't want lies and political mudslinging.
Unfortunately, Bruce Rauner is more committed to playing politics than fighting for Illinois women and families.
Illinois is becoming more diverse, more tolerant, and even more green.
I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition.
Political leaders in Illinois kicked the can down the road, raised taxes, and ignored fiscal realities. Now, they're realizing the consequences of their actions: credit downgrades and negative outlooks.
The Barack who was so successful in Illinois in a Republican-controlled legislative situation for most of his time and who was a very outspoken progressive voice, that's not the man who we ended up having as president.
Small ideas won't help Illinois' future.
I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A.
People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.
Before I was elected to Congress, I helped to create the public corruption unit in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Unfortunately, business was good. Among the usual suspects were government contracts steered to insiders - leaving Illinois taxpayers holding the bag.
I never even thought about playing professionally. I didn't think that was a possibility for a little kid from Illinois.
I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, and scores of other places.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash.
The people of Illinois sent me to Springfield to end the era of unbalanced budgets and runaway debt.
In Illinois, where legislators are paid $45,000, plus as much as $10,000 for leadership work, about half are full-time politicians.
Rauner needs to tell Illinoisans what essential health benefits he intends to keep covering in Illinois.
St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet - as broad as Philadelphia, but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud.
The thing about Chicago is that it really isn't like any other place. The architecture and the layout of the city are the best. I'm from the Midwest, and consider myself a Midwesterner. I feel most at home there. I love California. I have great friends in California. I just have always considered Illinois to be home.
Illinois has every reason to succeed. We have the hardest-working people in America, the best infrastructure in America, and the best location of any state.
I grew up in Illinois.
