By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Northwestern University football players recently filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board that seeks certification of the College Athletes Players Association as a union.

Players in elite football programs do deserve a larger share of the megabucks being generated solely because of their superb athleticism.

Programs such as Alabama, Texas and Ohio State each generate $100-150 million a year and pay their coaches $3-5 million each.

Players receive free tuition, a bounteous training table, and the distant hope of playing professional ball. Yet scholarships leave athletes without money for necessities, and only a small fraction of the athletes ever play professional ball, and then only for an average of two or three years. Read More

by John Golden
NP Columnist

To me, there is nothing more exciting or more horrifying than a blank page. The absence of words looks like a vast white wasteland but also, at the same time, an empty document presents a plethora of literal potential and literary opportunity. Read More

By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Should Illinois prison parolees be granted legal counsel in cases where their parole officers have recommended they be sent back to prison?

That is the nub of a case filed recently in federal court by a justice center at Northwestern University School of Law titled Morales v. Monreal (the chairman of the state Prisoner Review Board) that seeks to require legal counsel for those charged with violation of parole.

The bigger issue is that of how can we reduce the high numbers of men and women who end up back in prison. Read More

by Dan Hagen
NP Columnist

I think the producer, director, author and actor John Houseman’s three volumes of memoirs, in recounting his half-happenstance career, manage to do as good a job as I’ve seen of evoking the adventure of theatrical production.

The meshing and conflicting personalities, the late-night bonding, the technical challenges, the economic uncertainties, the creative dead ends, the mysteries of inspiration, the unexpected triumphs, the passion, the romantic ephemerality of each production as the applause surges, echoes and then dies — fascinating and romantic stuff. Read More

by Tom Emery
Guest Columnist

Before his presidency, Abraham Lincoln traveled across Illinois practicing law and campaigning for office, earning countless acquaintances along the way. Some of that time was spent in Moultrie County, particularly in the county seat of Sullivan.

Lincoln passed near the current site of Sullivan as early as 1830 with his family while they were moving from Indiana to Macon County. Between March 12 and 14, the Lincolns crossed the Kaskaskia River at Willow Ford, four miles southeast of Sullivan. The trail then proceeded northwest, passing between Chipps and Lovington before finally settling southwest of Decatur.

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