Sheltered care homes like the one Madison County has been operating for decades are relics of an earlier time. That doesn’t mean that some people with mental disabilities don’t need the service they provide, but it does mean that the…

Last week, Bonita White primped for the prom just like millions of other young women this party season. She had a bevy of fashion advisers, a glamorous gown and ever-present paparazzi clicking away.

Except that this Roosevelt High School senior…

Sunday’s Commentary page is devoted entirely to the issue of charter schools, particularly whether they have the potential to improve the education of children in the St. Louis Public Schools district. The material grew out of a recent meeting of the…

In a sharply worded letter Friday to Washington University Chancellor Mark Wrighton, 14 faculty members of the Washington University School of Law called on Wrighton to rescind the university’s offer of an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly at commencement ceremonies on…

The National Park Service (NPS) today announced the initiation of a General Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (GMP/EIS) process for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (commonly referred to as the Gateway Arch).

In the dry prose of a press release issued Friday comes…

Bob Kerrey — the former Nebraska governor and U.S. Senator, now president of The New School — paid us a visit Friday morning.

He is in town to give the Webster University commencement address, set for Saturday (tomorrow) at the Edward Jones Dome.…

Huffington Post’s Will Thomas has an interesting muse on Barack Obama’s VP candidates. Check it out here.
There’s nary a word of our own Claire McCaskill, a longtime Obamania girl.

Who should get the VP nod from Obama pick?

Who will…

Pop quiz: One of these two men is the governor of Missouri. The other is the new president of the Russian Federation. Which is which?

Not this guy, with four massive antennae on his truck — three 14 foot whips in the back and a fourth on the roof straight from NASA surplus (pictured here heading east on Enright waiting for the light at Grand).…

The Washington Post has a fascinating story this morning about the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts deciding that a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. planned for the King monument at Washington’s Tidal Basin is “too confrontational.”

The commission says the…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing significantly tighter air pollution standards for lead — the first update in 30 years. It’s long overdue.

But in announcing the new rule, the Bush administration ignored recommendations from independent scientific advisers who had called…

John P. Walters, director of the federal Office of Drug Control Policy, was in town this week, along with U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey. They came to attend an international conference called the National Methamphetamine Chemicals Initiative.

Missouri no doubt was…

I’m trying to get my arms around public education in the city of St. Louis, and one of my primary methods is to find out who is taking risks to accomplish hard things and go talk to them.

Alice Roach…