This, from Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, “Insurance startup’s slowdown discouraging“: The recent demise of several Obamacare-spawned health insurers across the country has raised concerns about the future of Land of Lincoln Health as it enters its third year of open enrollment Nov. 1. . . . Land of Lincoln was set up by the federal government to provide an alternative for individuals and small businesses in Illinois, one of the least competitive health insurance markets in the country, according to the... Read more

That’s, of course, what President Obama announced when the Republicans took the House in 2010:  rather than find common ground with the GOP, he would move his agenda forward by means of executive orders, and use his phone to rouse the grass roots (or something like that).  Accordingly, he upped the ante, and expanded his prior amnesty for those who came here illegally as children, into a wide amnesty for anyone who themselves brought a child here illegally or had... Read more

Within recent memory, the pews at my parish’s main Sunday morning mass, the one with the children’s liturgy, were reliably full, with latecomers standing at the back.  Attendance has fallen over the years, to be sure, whether due to the sexual abuse scandals or general societal/demographic changes, but we’ve plodded along.  Lately, though, it seems that attendance has had another, rather sudden and steep drop downwards — and it coincides with a new fundraising push, “To Teach Who Christ Is.”... Read more

Bottom line on top:  the majority of self-identified Catholics simply don’t believe there’s anything wrong with divorcing and remarrying, in about the same proportion as they think that cohabitating is just fine, as well and, presumably, were they asked by Pew researchers, would have said that consensual nonmarital sex is OK. Now, some of these folks are cultural Catholics who don’t really take the church’s moral teaching all too seriously in any case.  But others can’t be so easily dismissed.... Read more

The Tribune has a tendency, especially in the “Health & Family” section, to feature somewhat oldish syndicated articles, and today it was this piece, “Women are more likely to initiate divorce,” from the Washington Post. The key bits:  our expectations for marriage, or, more specifically, women’s expectations, have grown dramatically — men are no longer simply supposed to be good providers, but to provide emotional support, to be fun to be with, to meet a long wish list of traits.... Read more

It came last night. After years of refusing to take the company up on its “generous” offer to cancel Blackberry service in exchange for a modest monthly contribution towards the service charges for a personal smartphone on which one loads the company e-mail, they finally announced that they are discontinuing Blackberries at the end of the year.  The official e-mail stated that they’ll pay for an alternate device for employees who travel internationally, but I pushed back and got manager... Read more

Or, rather, as it’s now named, Adeline Jay Geo-Karis Illinois State Beach State Park Cullerton Complex. That’s a mouthful. The label “Cullerton Complex” refers to the fact that adjacent to this State Park, at the far northern end of Illinois along Lake Michigan, is North Point Marina, also owned and managed by the DNR, and “complex” is meant to refer to both these entities together, although, so far as I can tell, there is nothing connecting them but this shared... Read more