The American media is absolutely turgid with emotion over White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s ambitious plan to become mayor of Chicago once Mayor Richard Daley leaves office.

Just imagine, Emanuel on the fifth floor of City Hall, lording over his lands as King Shortshanks II, though I would be tempted to call him The Rahmfather.But not everyone is thrilled.
“What are you, some kind of chumbolone? You actually believe what Rahm’s saying?” asked the eminent political theorist, Louie the Barber. “Rahm’s just a boogeyman to help Daley get re-elected, get …

Michael Scott made his living in Chicago politics as one of Mayor Richard Daley’s guys out front.
The mayor put him on a series of public boards, from the Park District to the Chicago Board of Education. He made a decent living in real estate, and for 30 years he did what all front guys do:
Talk to reporters, sit in front of news cameras and lend his face to the mayor’s policies and enterprise.
What’s strange is that this very public man found an extremely private place to die.
The place where Scott …

“You could say it was more than a good day, it was a great day,” said state Sen. Kirk Dillard, the Hinsdale Republican campaigning for governor of Illinois.
We met Monday night at the bar at Gene & Georgetti, the best steakhouse in town. Gene’s is old-school, full of history and politics, a place of dark wood and information, big drinks and red meat. Dillard had reason to celebrate.
He’d just been endorsed by his old boss, former Gov. Jim Edgar, who in some Republican circles is seen as the man on …

Adam Andrzejewski (pronounced An-jee-ef-ski) is running for governor in the Republican primary on a platform of reform, offering specific spending cuts and holding the line on taxes.
Sound radical?
Only in Illinois, where government is big business and the parties’ trading jobs for support makes them almost indistinguishable.
“The Republican patronage model is broken, we can’t win statewide elections,” said Andrzejewski, a young, self-made businessman raised in Herscher, in Kankakee County, and now living in Hinsdale.
“My candidacy is a paradigm shift for this party. My party needs to move away from Republican patronage …

The last thing I’d ever want to talk about with Mayor Richard Daley is the hit song “Birthday Sex.”
You just don’t discuss songs of sex with the absolute boss of Chicago. You might talk about the White Sox and politics, but you never, ever refer to melodies of human reproduction with Rich Daley.
“Birthday Sex” is apparently the new hot song by popular Chicago singer Jeremih, a graduate of the Chicago Public Schools who has been chosen as the mayor’s point man to help lure sex-crazed teenagers (they’re not thinking about …

When President Barack Obama signed his executive order to allow human embryos to be mined for their stem cells in order to help older, more powerful humans, there was much excited applause.
The applause came from so many, their eyes bright, lit as if from within. It came from those who believe in scientific progress as the answer to the problems of the modern world, believing as fervently as any monk on the slopes of Mt. Athos believes in the Resurrection of Christ.
In signing the order last week, the president said …

When it comes to Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Dead Meat), many national TV talking heads can’t resist playing amateur psychiatrist.
“He’s crazy,” said one talking head of our governor. “A sociopath!” said another. “He should have been put in a straitjacket, not handcuffs,” said a third, all of them diagnosing Blagojevich as cuckoo.
I can see how they arrived at their cockamamie theory. Anyone who read the federal complaint with all the f-bombs in there and watched Blagojevich drive to work on Wednesday morning, the TV crews following his black SUV in a …

Former Ald. William Singer (43rd) is the old lakefront-liberal reformer who helped knock the late Mayor Richard J. Daley out of Miami’s 1972 Democratic National Convention. Singer left politics years ago to make a better living in real estate.
Singer has been identified as a consultant in the Vrdolyak deal, but he has not been charged with any crime. The only consultant mentioned in the federal documents is “Individual A.” No one is formally saying that “A” = Singer.
Yet according to testimony in this year’s trial of convicted political fixer Tony …

As U.S. District Judge James Zagel accepted the not guilty plea, Cellini stood with his defense lawyer, Dan Webb.
“I had a glass of beer last night,” Cellini told Zagel, saying he had no problem following the court proceedings. The three talked as if they knew each other well. They do.
Cellini is accused of helping shake down a Hollywood producer and politically connected Chicago investor Thomas Rosenberg for $1.5 million in campaign cash for Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Cellini also is accused as a point man in a plot to remove U.S. …

As America prepares to embrace the change we can believe in, whatever happened to all of the fascinating political creatures that make Illinois such a shining model of reform?
A few have gone to ground, hiding until the November elections are done, which really isn’t necessary because the media are more concerned with ridiculing Sarah Palin’s wardrobe than wondering what convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko might say from the witness stand.
So where are they now? Let’s see.
Gov. Rod “The Unreformer” Blagojevich, firmly above ground, finally got some good news. A Chicago …