Photo by Fielder Williams Strain

From the mayor’s blog:

Yesterday was a low point in the City’s hospitality. Badly supervised City employees callously destroyed the possessions of some homeless people who had chosen to camp illegally and for a extended period of…

Otto von Bismarck: Not socialist.

Forget all this nonsense about socialized health care. The first head of state to propose a national health system was at the other end of the political spectrum. His name: Otto von Bismarck.

The system established by…

U.S. Rep. Todd Akin

What is it about Canadian hips that so fascinates Missouri Republican Congressmen?

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country, took to the House floor to repeat a claim we first debunked more than two months ago about the…

Public testimony in April 2009 regarding Maine’s marriage equality legislation. (h/t Andrew Sullivan).

Laura Bischoff, a terrific reporter with whom I worked at the Dayton Daily News, produced this video about her sister, Amelia, who suffered a stroke earlier this year, and her use of tricycle that’s supported…

M. Peter Fischer (right) smiles as St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay (left) looks on during a ceremony honoring Fischer as the recipient of The St. Louis Award.

M. Peter Fischer received the St. Louis Award last week, a special laurel conferred…

"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges."

Here’s how much the Congressional Budget Office says a new health reform bill in the Senate would cost: $829 billion over 10 years.

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post , Associated…

-

Princeton University Prof. Sean Wilentz delivered the James Neal Primm lecture at the Mercantile Library at University of Missouri-St. Louis, last month.

I found it to be a terrific — and timely — talk, and I have edited…

So said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, in a statement he read after a human rights conference in which the Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse had been criticized, according to a report in The Guardian.

“As…

R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch

On Thursday, state Rep. T.D. El-Amin, D-St. Louis, pleaded guilty to a federal charge of soliciting and accepting $2,100 in bribes.

Bad. Very bad. As state Rep. Joe Smith, R-St. Charles, told the Post-Dispatch’s Jake Wagman, it causes people to ask,…

To Anna Kratky, a young assistant St. Louis circuit attorney, it was a case of a man who violently lost control on a cold January night.

The police had received a 911 call that a man was beating a woman outside…

Dave Sinclair in 2005 (P-D photo by Dawn Majors)

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I worked in the radio business. From time to time, an advertiser would ask that I be assigned to voice his commercials. One time…

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

The New York Times has reported that William Safire, former speechwriter to Richard Nixon and longtime political and language columnist, has died at 79.

The Pulitzer Prize winner could on occasions be mean and partisan in ways that…

Gone…and largely forgotten

Twenty years ago today , a bold — and ultimately foolish — experiment in journalism officially was launched when the St. Louis Sun published its first edition. As the Sun’s local columnist, I had a front-row seat.

I also had…

ACORN clearly is in a jam—maybe even in the fight for its life.

But the circumstances it faces couldn’t be much more difficult than what cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris went through at the height of the tobacco litigation siege, or what…

Elsewhere on this blog, you’ll find outraged comments from some readers objecting to R.J. Matson’s cartoon in today’s paper. I want to make two comments in response to them.

1. The cartoon’s premise, that the Internet provides a cloak of anonymity to…

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, strode onto a St. Louis stage Tuesday night wearing a conservative business suit and pedestrian black loafers. The cowboy boots and “Fox” belt buckle that were his trademarks while…

We put up a link to the HR 3200, the House health reform, in this space a few weeks ago. At the time, we were of the belief that the only way to know what was in the bill was…