David Rutter

The Radisson sign on the south side of the hotel complex can be seen from U.S. 30 and Interstate 65 in Merrillville.

Rutter: White’s hotel empire says goodbye to a dump

June 10, 2018 at 2:11 p.m.

On the day local billionaire hotelier Dean White finished his Merrillville hotel in 1969, the doomsday clock started ticking backward. Like a dinosaur awaiting the asteroid extinction event. When son...

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appears via video from a Colorado prison during his resentencing in a federal courtroom in Chicago.

Rutter: ‘I made mistakes’ will never free Blago

June 12, 2018 at 1:46 a.m.

When a heartsick child strikes out verbally against a cruel world and the adults who make it mean, you absorb the body blow of those emotions and don't take it...

Indiana Lieutenant Governor Eric Holcomb speaks last month on the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.

Rutter: Once more into Thunderdome for Holcomb, Gregg

June 10, 2018 at 2:59 p.m.

Humanness is both biography and geography, and to understand who the next governor of Indiana will be, you must understand "The Bloody Eighth." Knowing about Knox County's cultural lineage would...

Illinois State Capitol building in Springfield.

Rutter: Illinois students get new journalism rights — sort of

June 10, 2018 at 3:04 p.m.

The Supreme Court essentially denuded students of their First Amendment press rights in 1988, and well-meaning states have been trying to return them state-by-state ever since. Last week, the Illinois...

Hammond Fire Department officials investigate the house at 644 Sibley Street in Hammond on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014 where three children died in a fire.

Rutter: Punishing the Youngs will be unsatisfying justice

June 10, 2018 at 2:14 p.m.

The law came for Andre and Michele Young last month as you knew it would, sooner or later. Criminal justice must be served when your children die from inattention, and...

Rutter: Your life might not be interesting enough for Facebook

June 12, 2018 at 2:21 a.m.

When you are an irretrievable Old White Guy – a state to which I have ascended - most of your Facebook friends look just like you. And worse, they think...

Signs put up by the EPA warn residents in the West Calumet Housing Development not to play in the dirt or mulch.

Rutter: Generations paid for East Chicago’s pollution, indifference

June 10, 2018 at 3:44 p.m.

An emergency usually arrives as a bad surprise that no one saw coming because the truth was unknowable. Based on that limited definition, little that's now happening to 1,200 East...

Rutter: Illinois Legislature short on working; long on getting paid

June 10, 2018 at 3:16 p.m.

Let us say for argument's sake that you are an intelligent, motivated, publicly conscious citizen who has served your neighbors in local elective jobs. But now it's time to move...

Leslie Jones, a cast member in the film "Ghostbusters," was relentlessly attacked on social media after a campaign organized by a conservative blogger.

Rutter: Leslie Jones battled hate, and hate lost

June 10, 2018 at 3:11 p.m.

Leslie Jones almost surrendered to hate. She saw no way out from the relentlessness and spite; so she turned off her Twitter feed and stopped talking to the world. Then...

Leslie "Mad Dog" Irvin is escorted by Indiana State troopers through Union Station in Chicago enroute to Michigan City, Indiana, and the electric chair, Feb. 17, 1956.

Rutter: How Joe and Mad Dog invented gag orders

June 10, 2018 at 3:58 p.m.

Old friend Joe took professional ribbing with dignity. But even he figured he had it coming. Aside from cardio-vascular frailties that eventually killed him, that ribbing was the bane of...

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