OAK PARK, Illinois — You’re driving to a suburb that you don’t know well, and you whip out your iPhone to quickly punch an address into Google Maps. In this case, that address is 704 Highland Avenue, home of Sabina Ott and John Paulett, who run Terrain Exhibitions, a once-a-month-ish, home-turned-cozy gallery experience. Every artist who shows work here must wrap it around the concept of the artist-writer couple’s home.

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But it has stayed on top partly by using an underworld of labor brokers known as raiteros, who pick up workers from Chicago's street corners and shuttle them to Ty's warehouse on behalf of one of the nation's largest temp agencies.

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“At the end of the day,” Macy’s employee Krystal Maxie-Collins told Salon, “it feels like I’ve done all of this to help everyone else, to help the store, help the managers, help the customers, but it doesn’t feel like anyone is looking out for me.” Maxie-Collins, a mother of four who works part-time for the state minimum wage of $8.25 plus a commission, said she had initially been hesitant about the strike because of the risk of retaliation. But “what we are fighting for, the reason for doing it, kind of overrode the fear of doing it.” “Usually the things that are worth it,” she added, “you have to sacrifice for.”

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The sinkhole, located at 9600 South Houston Ave., started expanding at approximately 5 a.m. Thursday morning, quickly growing from 20 to 40 feet. Two cars fell into the hole before the fire department arrived at the scene at 5:30 a.m., and a third car fell in after responders had left.

According to witnesses, the injured man had attempted to swerve around the sinkhole as it was expanding, which led to his car falling into the hole. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital after sustaining minor head injuries, and is said to be in good condition.

A spokesman for the Water Department said the sinkhole was created by a water main break, due to heavy flooding in the area.

Via KTLA:

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Chicago isn’t technically along I-80, but I had to make the detour, since my trip west to San Francisco 28 years ago began there. I knew I could stay with my friend Jim Rinnert, who has an amazing house with his partner Brent. Long ago they gave me an invitation to stay with them that wouldn't expire.  Jim and Brent are dog people – they always have several adorable, eccentric rescues, and they were excited to meet Sadie. “You’ve always been a dog person – without a dog!” Jim tells me once he sees me and Sadie together. It's true -- I loved Jim's dog Bo when he used to take him to In These Times. The company of a dog compensated for the sometimes delay in paychecks. And Sadie utterly loved Jim and Brent.

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The first lady elevated the conversation Wednesday, during a rare return to her hometown of Chicago. In a city ravaged by violence, with more than 500 gun-related homicides last year alone, she spoke eloquently -- and apolitically -- transcending the partisan politics that seem to subvert her husband's efforts for reasonable gun control legislation.

But what was most unique was for whom, and to whom, Michelle spoke. Her words gave voice to an oft ignored (but disproportionately affected) victim of America's gun violence: the black mother.

The first lady spoke of Hadiya Pendleton, the slain 15-year-old student, gunned down just blocks from the Obama's Chicago home -- and only days after Pendleton had attended the president's second inauguration. With tears in her eyes, Michelle said, "Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her." The first lady went on to add that Pendleton's family is "just like" her own.

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The first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which was sent into space two years ago, show evidence of a new physics phenomena that could be the strange and unknown matter, an international team at the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva announced Wednesday.

Nobel-winning physicist Samuel Ting, who leads the team, said he expects a more conclusive answer within months.

The data is being collected and analyzed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, along the Swiss-French border.

The findings Wednesday are based on seeing an excess of positrons — positively charged subatomic particles. Since the 7-ton AMS magnetic detector began studying cosmic ray particles in space, it found about 400,000 positrons whose surging energies indicate they might have been created when particles of dark matter collided and destroyed each other.

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A significant number of elected officials who had been against allowing undocumented immigrants to become American citizens is now talking about “charting a path” for them; a bipartisan group of senators is expected to present a draft bill April 8.

Even a few who were staunch gun advocates are now sounding more reasonable about background checks.

It’s nice to think logic and reason are finally catching up with our elected representatives, but the real explanation for these changes of heart is more prosaic: public opinion.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds support for marriage equality at the highest in the ten years the question has been asked, with 58% of Americans in favor and 36 percent opposed.

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“The only thing that’s like it is Hurricane Katrina,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey of the potential devastation, “except this is being done on purpose.” The closures will affect 30,000 students and around 1,000 teachers. Labor Notes' Samantha Winslow explained that "the union opposes what leaders call a 'manufactured crisis': a series of intentional policy decisions to underfund public schools while boosting charter schools. Once public school enrollment drops, the board can close public schools and justify charters." Winslow reported on the mass rally planned for Wednesday afternoon:

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The laborer, assigned to the plant that afternoon in November 2011 by a temporary staffing agency, was showered with the solution after it erupted from the open hatch of a 500-gallon chemical tank he was cleaning. Factory bosses, federal investigators would later contend, refused to call an ambulance as he awaited help, shirtless and screaming. He arrived at Loyola only after first being driven to a clinic by a co-worker.

At admission Centeno had burns over 80 percent of his body and suffered a pain level of 10 on a scale of 10, medical records show. Clad in a T-shirt, he wore no protective gear other than rubber boots and latex gloves in the factory, which makes household and personal-care products.

Centeno, 50, died three weeks later, on Dec. 8, 2011. The Cook County medical examiner's report attributed his death to “scald and chemical burns due to an industrial accident.”

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The first lady says in an interview in the April issue of Vogue magazine that she and the president were straightforward when they said — before moving from Chicago to Washington in 2009 — that their family, including two young daughters, would be their priority.

She said "the stresses and the pressures" of the White House are so real that they prefer to spend free time with their daughters, now 14 and 11.

"Our job is, first and foremost, to make sure our family is whole. You know, we have small kids; they're growing every day. But I think we were both pretty straightforward when we said, 'Our No. 1 priority is making sure that our family is whole,'" Mrs. Obama said in the interview, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press before the magazine hits newsstands on March 26.

She noted that most of the couple's friends are parents, too, and that when she and the president go on vacation, usually with longtime friends or relatives, they are surrounded by children.

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Locals gather at a railing, fishing in the brown water. One angler, a retired limo driver originally from Michoacán, Mexico, chomps a cigar beneath his handlebar mustache and surveys the scene. I ask him if he ever eats fish from the river, and he just laughs. He’s a regular here, he tells me, but returned to the spot only a few days ago after having stayed away for weeks.

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In public policy circles, crises are called “focusing events” — bringing to light a particular failing in government policy.  They require government agencies to switch rapidly into crisis mode to implement solutions. Creating the crisis itself is more novel.

The right-wing, free market vision of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman informed the blueprint for the rapid privatization of municipal services throughout the world due in no small part to what author Naomi Klein calls “Disaster Capitalism.” Friedman wrote in his 1982 treatise Capitalism and Freedom, “When [a] crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around”

In Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine, she explains how immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Friedman used the decimation of New Orleans’ infrastructure to push for charter schools, a market-based policy preference of Friedman acolytes. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools at the time, and later described Hurricane Katrina as “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” Duncan is of the liberal wing of the free market project and a major supporter of charter schools.

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"I did not kill Kathleen!" Peterson shouted as he leaned into a courtroom microphone Thursday, emphasizing each of the five words.

Without missing a beat, his dead wife's sister, Susan Doman, shouted back, "Yes, you did! You liar!" before the judge ordered sheriff's deputies to remove her from the courtroom.

For years, Peterson casually dismissed and even joked about suggestions he killed his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004, or that he was behind the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

His sudden explosion of fury Thursday as he stepped up to address the judge who would sentence him for Savio's death left spectators gasping. Lead state prosecutor James Glasgow said it exposed the real Drew Peterson — the one more than capable of murder.

"We all got an opportunity to see a psychopath reveal himself in open court," Glasgow told reporters shortly after Thursday's hearing. "That shrill ... screech. ... That's the guy that killed Kathy."

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"These expenditures included high-end electronic items, collector's items, clothing, food and supplies for daily consumption, movie tickets, health club dues, personal travel, and personal dining expenses," said prosecutors.

The charges included: Michael Jackson's fedora, Eddie Van Halen's guitar, and a football with the signatures of U.S. presidents. Jackson spent $10,000 at Best Buy, $5,687 at Martha's Vineyard, over $60,000 at restaurants and clubs and $17,000 on cigars and other tobacco products.

He even used campaign funds to take two trips to the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

But perhaps the strangest purchase involved two mounted elk heads. From the Tribune:

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"Guilty, your honor. I misled the American people," Jackson said, Reuters reports.

Jackson was charged with using his campaign funds to redecorate his home in Washington, and to buy, among other things, a Rolex.

Though he won reelection in November, Jackson resigned his seat later that month. There is currently a special election underway to replace him.

Judge Robert Wilkins set Jackson's sentencing hearing for June 28.

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Janay Mcfarlane was shot once in the head around 11:30 p.m. Friday in North Chicago, Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd told the Chicago Sun-Times (). Mcfarlane, a mother of a 3-month-old boy, was in the Chicago suburb visiting friends and family.

North Chicago police said two people are being questioned in connection with Mcfarlane's death, but no charges have been filed.

"I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out," Angela Blakely, Mcfarlane's mother, said.

Blakely said the bullet that killed Mcfarlane was meant for a friend.

Hours earlier, Mcfarlane's 14-year-old sister was feet from Obama at Hyde Park Career Academy, where he spoke about gun violence and paid tribute to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old honor student fatally shot last month in a South Side park. Police have said it was a case of mistaken identity, and two people have been charged.

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But there is still time, and the publication of the audiobook edition of “Notes From No Man’s Land” is one opportunity to wave the flag again, and to say to readers: Pay attention. We live among a literary landscape that is so cluttered with passing next big things that it is possible to miss the truly important things that appear at first glance to be small, but which prove themselves over time to make a lasting home in the memory and moral conscience of their readers.

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The story initially gained traction about a month ago, when a conservative journalist, Mary Claire Kendall, wrote about it for the Washington Examiner. At the time, the story was picked up by a few bloggers, like Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press."To the beat of Joni Mitchell’s song, Big Yellow Taxi running in the background, we’re calling on Michael Reagan and NewsMax.com to come to the rescue of an American tragedy in the making," McLeod wrote.

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