CHAMPAIGN – The wish list of what Champaign school board members would like to see the district pay for includes everything from expanded foreign language offerings to making buildings more energy-efficient to more library clerks.

Chief Financial Officer Gene Logas asked board members to give him their ideas of programs they'd like to see the district invest in, at Monday's school board meeting. By presenting their ideas early in the budget process, the initiatives they suggest stand a better chance of being included in the district's budget next year, he said.

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday 59-38 to approve the nomination of a prominent Mississippi judge to a seat on a federal appeals court. But the lengthy battle necessary to confirm Leslie Southwick shows again how dangerously politicized the judicial nomination process remains.

U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin led the opposition, contending that Southwick should be rejected because he is white and any judicial nominee from Mississippi to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must be black. Durbin has long opposed many of President Bush's judicial nominees. Unfortunately, Illinois' other U.S. senator, Barack Obama, not only opposed Southwick, but also supported an unsuccessful filibuster to block the Senate from voting.

Some students from Danville High School and University Laboratory High School in Urbana will be out trick-or-treating on Wednesday evening, but they won't be asking for the typical mini-candy bars, candied apples and wax vampire teeth.

Instead, they're hoping to score canned goods, boxes of macaroni and cheese and jars of peanut butter.

SPRINGFIELD – The state's prison system is going completely tobacco-free on Jan. 1, 2008, the same day the statewide smoking ban takes effect.

After that date, cigarettes, cigars and all forms of smokeless tobacco will be considered contraband. Inmates will not even be allowed to smoke in the outdoor areas of the prison grounds.