But it's only a start.

It's now up to the Chicago Board of Education's six members -- who vote Wednesday on the remaining 50 closures -- to keep whittling down that list.

Late Tuesday, a source told the Sun-Times that Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett is dropping four elementary schools from her closure list: Garvey in Washington Heights, Manierre in Old Town, Ericson in East Garfield Park and M. Jackson in Auburn Gresham. She also decided to delay for one year the closure of Canter Middle School in Kenwood and against subjecting Barton School in Auburn Gresham to a reform measure called a turnaround.

The Sun-Times editorial page had highlighted all four of the spared schools, including lengthy editorials on Manierre and Garvey. Those reprieves are well-deserved and encouraging.

But more schools are worth saving.

Could there be a version of the concealed carry bill so bad Gov. Pat Quinn just won't sign it?

Quinn ducked that question Monday in a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board, saying, "I would much rather see both houses [of the Legislature] debate the issue."

But the question won't go away, now that an effort led by state Sen. Kwame Raoul came up short of the needed 30 votes Friday (it wasn't even called). The House speaker's staff is drawing up an alternative said to be much closer to the NRA's position, which would allow concealed carry around the state with no provision for limits set by local governments.

Back in the 1970s, then-Illinois Attorney General William J. Scott kept vowing he would not let Illinois become the "nuclear dumping ground of the nation."

But a proposal in the U.S. Senate that would create "centralized interim storage" sites for nuclear waste has some environmentalists worried that Illinois could become home to much more radioactive waste and also vulnerable to spilled waste if freights carrying it through the state derail. A discussion draft is open until May 24.

Critics have said the plan would make Illinois the "bulls-eye" for nuclear waste.

UPDATE 11:15 AM MAY 21, 2013: The Illinois House Executive Committee unanimously passed the Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation Act (Senate Bill 1715).

After a year of negotiations over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Illinois, a compromise that could be a model for the nation is snagged over a simple question.

What exactly is fracking, anyway?

Former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge departs the federal building in Chicago on May 24, 2010, (Charles Rex Arbogast~AP)

No one wanted to handle the alleged Jon Burge torture cases. Not Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Not the state appellate prosecutor. Not the state's attorneys of 12 counties.

So on Tuesday, Cook County Criminal Courts Chief Judge Paul Biebel Jr., back to Square One, appointed retired Judge Stuart A. Nudelman as special prosecutor to handle the state's side of the cases. If there is a sense of deja vu here, it's because Biebel previously - back in 2009 - also had appointed Nudelman as a special prosecutor in different Burge-related torture cases. (A number of those cases have been disposed of since then.)

But more than 100 men still claim they've been languishing in prison because of statements extracted through torture by former Chicago Police Cmdr. Burge and his Midnight Crew in the 1970s and 1980s. The process of investigating these men's claims, though, had ground to a halt.

Tuesday's ruling will get things moving forward again in two ways.

The Morton Arboretum had messages for Chicagoans fluttering from downtown trees Friday. The tags are put up volunteers and staff from the arboretum and BMO Harris Bank.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@CST_Editorials.

A proposal to add some oversight to city privatization deals was still being kept pretty much out of sight this week.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) introduced the Privatization Transparency and Accountability Ordinance last November, but it has languished in Ald. Dick Mell's (33rd) Rules Committee since then.

The ordinance, for which a majority of the City Council members have signed on as co-sponsors, would require a hearing on privatization proposals involving an asset valued at $250,000 or more. It also would require a cost-effectiveness study, competitive bidding and other reforms. The city's disastrous parking meter privatization has provided impetus for such a reform.

But the ordinance wasn't on the Rules Committee agenda Wednesday, and Mell didn't say when it will be placed on the agenda, if ever.

"My belief is there is a desire for it not to go any further," Ald. Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview with WTTW.

Watch the WTTW video here.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@CST_Editorials

RYT isn't endorsing CPS' other school proposed actions (total of 71), just haven't looked closely at all of them yet.

The proposed actions include 54 closures, 11 co-locations (separate schools sharing a building) and six turnarounds (staff and programming replaced but children remain). A board of education vote is set for May 22.

Take a look at their analysis here.

Workers from fast food and retail chains along State Street walk off their jobs Wednesday in a protest for higher wages. | John H. White~Sun-Times

Starting at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday, workers walked off the job at about 30 downtown establishments, seeking higher wages. Affected locations included Subway, McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, Macy's, Sears and Victoria's Secret.

The labor action was conducted by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, which was formed Nov. 15. It uses the slogan, "Fight for 15," meaning wages of $15 an hour. Right now, the workers average under $10.

It's a new labor tactic because the workers are not employed by the same company. They don't even work in the same industry.

Whether they can succeed, building up their numbers, remains to be seen.

Illinois' minimum wage now stands at $8.25, a dollar higher than the federal minimum. Some business leaders say raising wages would force businesses to lay off workers or cut their hours.

Barricades block flooded Main Street in Grafton, Ill., Monday, near its intersection with Illinois Route 3 along the flooding Mississippi River. (AP Photo/The Telegraph, John Badman)

The erosion of the MIssissippi River delta in Louisiana might not seem like Chicago's problem, but a group of environmentalists was in town last week for The Big River Works leadership forum to argue it is.

Chicago has substantial commercial barge traffic that connects to the Mississippi, and much of the rest of the state uses the river to ship its grain, they said. But rapid erosion of the delta - the largest loss of land on the planet - is threatening New Orleans' port, and if that goes, Illinois will lose significant access to world markets, they said.

Unhappy how the Clean Water Act has taken it on the chin over the years? For Earth Day, maybe it's time to drown your sorrows.

At least, that's the idea of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has teamed up with 21 craft breweries to get out the word about clean water. Six of the 21 breweries in "Brewers for Clean Water" are in the Chicago area.

The idea is the brainchild of Karen Hobbs, who used to be a Chicago deputy environment commissioner and now does a lot of water policy work for the NRDC. Beermakers rely on clean water (beer is 90 percent water), and something she saw on a craft beer social media site got the beer keg rolling, so to speak. So people will be gathering Monday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Galleria Marchetti, 825 W. Erie Street, Chicago, for an NRDC fund-raiser, tasting beer from Finch's, Flossmoor Station, Goose Island, Half Acre, Revolution, and Wild Onion. Tickets are $50. The Gemini Club will perform.

A City Council bid to slow down any privatization deals seems to be getting a slowdown of its own.

Introduced last November by Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), the Privatization Transparency and Accountability Ordinance has been bottled up in Ald. Dick Mell's (33rd) Rules Committee, even though a majority of the City Council members have signed on as co-sponsors.

The ordinance would require a hearing on privatization proposals involving an asset valued at $250,000 or more. It also would require a cost-effectiveness study, competitive bidding and other reforms.

Until now, plans to privatize services or assets have tended to stay under the radar until the last moment, keeping public scrutiny to a minimum.

That's what psychologists call the depressing refusal of many people to absorb and accept indisputable facts that run counter to what they prefer to believe. You can throw all the proof in the world at them and they'll never buy the theory of evolution. You can pile up the evidence and they'll never accept the reality of global warming.

Case in point from the news Wednesday is Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas, who says he doubts the reality of climate change because it doesn't sit quite right with the Great Flood in the bible. Other religious people have found ways to reconcile the two -- the Catholic Church long ago urged the flock to view much of the bible as allegorical -- but not folks like Texas Joe.

A brand new study, reported Wednesday by Gary Marcus in the New Yorker online, shows how science doubters tend to be all of a piece.

So says Fran Spielman's story in the Sun-Times.

What's that tell us?

The folks at the University of Illinois at Chicago who did the study think it says one thing -- scary Emanuel is really good at pushing people around.

A lot of other people, including of course Emanuel, think it says something entirely different -- the mayor is better at building a respectful consensus.

It's probably both, but more a function of Emanuel being willing to talk to and work with the Council. The aldermen may be rolling over, but no more so than when Daley ran the show.

The deal on fracking, touted by Gov. Pat Quinn and others as providing the best environmental protections in the country, has run into trouble in the Illinois Legislature.

The snag is a proposed addition of worker certification provisions, which as currently outlined are not acceptable to the industry. As a result, the fracking bill is mired in committee.

The argument in favor of worker certification is if you are going to be punching a hole through an aquifer, you should be someone who knows what you are doing. There's also an interest in giving Illinois workers first crack at any new jobs.

But business sees the move as labor unions trying to get guaranteed jobs by saying every drilling site needs to have an accredited worker, and business worries it could take a couple of years to get new workers certified.