We don't yet know the extent of the fallout from John Chadima's alleged sexual assault of a student employee during the football team's trip to the Rose Bowl. But I feel pretty confident a primary factor behind the incident and the university's response to it is clear enough: hubris.

The story was ostensibly about how federal guidelines allow for people to be cut off from their government housing subsidy if they or the relatives they live with get in trouble with the law. But it's also an all-too-easy opportunity to fall back on stereotypes.

Wow. One million signatures. Who could have guessed that one of the two entrenched American political parties — the one that claims the president of the most powerful nation on earth as one of its own and marshaled some $23.4 million in campaign spending for last year's wave of recall electi…

This all started with a man in the hospital contemplating bypass surgery and realizing he was not going to live forever. Happily, Dick Lichtfeld, 75, the former mayor of Monona, is still very much with us.

If it wasn't for Madison, one of the most famous and successful fashion companies in the world might never have existed. Or at least it couldn't have happened in the same way.

The first day, Jan. 9, was the worst. "It was terrible," Ann-Perry Witmer recalled. "I didn't know anybody. I didn't have anybody to talk to. I was isolated and felt completely cut off." It was the start of an extraordinary week in Lagos, Nigeria, in which Witmer would feel frightened, bored…