Wisconsin State Journal Local News

Just Read It is a regular feature in which the State Journal seeks recommendations from authors, literary enthusiasts and experts, focused on the contributor’s particular genre of expertise.

Since 1918, the Empty Stocking Club has provided Christmas toys to needy children in the greater Madison area. You can help again this year. Send your gift online at emptystockingclub.com or m…

The work of the Wisconsin State Journal Empty Stocking Club goes on the year round — but this coming week is something special.

Joel Paterson, who learned the guitar in Madison, comes home Saturday with a CD and Harmony Bar show accompanied by his friend and hero, Milwaukee harmonica legend Jim Liban. 

Economists still debate the impact of such laws, while unions stand to lose the most.

Local officials and the general public are largely in the dark about the nation’s freight railroads, which carry growing volumes of flammable crude oil, while state and federal governments hav…

Minority students say they have fewer role models in the school building.

WASHINGTON — It is probably too soon to declare a feminist reformation, but a few signs here and there give one hope.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, says he’d like to keep a panel of judges in charge of the state’s Government Accountability Board.

This State Journal editorial ran on

Eighteen-year-old Saira Blair recently made history as the youngest person elected to the West Virginia legislature. She may make history again as a lawmaker by securing passage of a right-to-…

It’s not like body-mounted police cameras are likely to lower a trust level that -- if we believe what we hear on the news -- can’t get much lower.

“A quilter for 15 years,” Kent Williams writes in his artist’s statement, “I was always on the lookout for patterns, and what I began to notice was that the really interesting patterns — to me…

Should you be able to stay home from work when you’re sick? How about taking time off during work to attend a child’s school conference or go on a family vacation?

“Who is going to take care of you?” a friend recently asked me when she learned that my husband Dave had a ruptured disc. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t faced challenges before. Primary progressive…

Vesper was counting his whiskers one day and noticed he was one short.

Coming in Wisconsin this week:

Tips for your flowers, trees and shrubs.

Anyone skeptical about entrusting ambitious tasks to the government was not stunned by the dismal rollout of the Affordable Care Act.