Chicago Daily Observer

If Idaho can boast of its world class potatoes, can Illinois pride itself
upon its crooked politicians and axle breaking potholes? Sadly, the upcoming
inaugural festivities will not dampen the impact of gross mismanagement and
higher taxes in Illinois.

I have been out of the loop recently. I mean this both figuratively and
literally. I was traveling throughout “the red states” during the past week. It
was a refreshing experience that I may write about in greater detail later.
While some readers may be saddened to learn that I have returned or, to
paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my death or exile have been greatly exaggerated,
I cannot deny that I share their disappointment to a degree. It is
disheartening for me to report to you that Mississippi currently has better paved
highways, better regulated casinos and a better class ... Read More...

Happy New Year 2009! Ten years ago on January 9th, 1999, Chicago Police Officers John Knight and James Butler investigated a suspiciously running parked car with two men slumped over in the front seat. The two men were Vice Lords Gang members armed with at least one 9mm Ruger Automatic pistol with a laser directed sight.

A gun battle ensued and Officer John Knight was murdered by James Scott of the Vice Lords and Knight’s partner James Butler was badly wounded. James Scott was allowed to plead guilty to another murder and is serving a life sentence. John Knight’s widow and three children are on their own.

Scott has been featured by the nimble fingered writers who get all warm and toasty about human beings when their subjects are soulless monsters like Scott. Left-wing lawyers and the University based 501c3 think tanks and Centers for Justice embrace the wicked and ... Read More...

The New York Times has been furiously penning policy briefs to the Obama administration. A recent editorial on black crime compresses within a few hundred words decades of failed thinking on public safety. If the president-elect follows its hoary prescriptions, he will be guaranteed to waste taxpayer money without having the slightest effect on crime.

The highest homicide rate for whites over the last three decades was 32 homicides committed per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24 (reached in 1991), whereas the highest homicide rate for blacks was approximately 320 homicides per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24 (reached in 1993).

Even this apparent ten-to-one disparity between black and white homicide rates doesn’t tell the full story.

HT Jim Bowman, Blithe Spirit

You’ve got to admire the chutzpah and pure political chessmanship of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointing Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s senate seat. He puts the entire United States Senate to a test of good citizenship.

First, full disclosure: Though we never had a close personal relationship, I have been a friend and frequent ally of Burris since the mid-1960s when we first worked together on civil rights and independent political campaigns.

Nevertheless, he would not be on my short list for the seat. My first choice was Jesse Jackson Jr.—whom I have known since he was in utero.

I condemned Blago for being the only member of the Illinois Democratic delegation to vote for Bush’s war in Iraq, but voted for him for governor in 2002 against a far-right Republican who helped railroad the innocent Rolando Cruz halfway to the execution chamber. (I was recently reminded that as attorney general ... Read More...

It was fun to host Lynn Sweet on the phone from Washington, D. C, on my WLS radio show last night…even though she tried to filibuster until she was called on it…even though she angrily threatened to hang up early…even though she thought my questions about Roland Burris’ rejection by Harry Reid were race-motivated…when she refused to give a clue as to how the Reid-Burris imbroglio will be settled even though she said she knew (maintaining outrageously that people will have to pay 50 cents for her paper this morning to find out: brilliant chutzpah)…and even though she high-hatted the Chicago audience by saying she was talking on a cell phone while in an elevator on the way to CNN I (so much for us little people). We’re old friendly adversaries and what I said in her introduction was true: of any national reporter-columnist-commentator she is in the ... Read More...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opened the door Sunday for Roland Burris to be sworn in as a senator from Illinois. “There’s always room to negotiate,” Reid told David Gregory on NBC‘s “Meet the Press.”

From the soundings I took Sunday, I have a well-informed hunch that if Burris wants to get a deal done quickly, he needs to say he won’t run for the seat in 2010.

If legal scholars are right that the fight over Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate will be long, possibly ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court, I’ve got a question:

Who pays?

Rafts of lawyers filing briefs, arguing cases and scouring law books in a constitutional showdown don’t come cheaply. So, who will come up with the millions to defend Blagojevich’s harebrained appointment if it runs into one of the many roadblocks it faces?

Blagojevich himself? Not likely. He’s up to his eyeballs in legal bills already and if it comes to choosing between keeping himself out of jail and standing up for Burris, what do you think he’ll do?

Will Burris raise the dough? Maybe from a few pay-to-play dreamers who think they can derive some benefit from a seated Burris. But even if they could, whatever benefits Burris could bestow ... Read More...

"The report suggested that Mr. Obama had been more involved in thinking about his Senate successor than his public statements about the topic had indicated," the New York Times reports.

*

That's been clearly established. The question is: Why? Why the phony feints, Barack? My hunch is that Obama did not want to appear to be acting like a political boss - even though that's just what he was doing and it wouldn't have been inappropriate in this case. But also, if Obama actually did choose his successor in the U.S. Senate, he couldn't have helped but peeve off some of those who wouldn't have gotten the job. Barack Obama is a political animal of the first kind, and he tried to navigate a potential minefield - helping to turn it into a real one.

In the Biblical gospels, Matthew opines that “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

In Illinois politics, the opposite is true. The parable would read: “Not blessed are lieutenant governors, for they are too meek to inherit, retain or gain the governorship.”

The good news for Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is that he will be governor sooner rather than later. Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich will be impeached and removed sometime in 2009.

The bad news is that the sooner Quinn succeeds Blagojevich, the quicker he gets the blame for the looming 2009 budgetary crisis.

The worst news is that, historically, the post of lieutenant governor has been a ticket to oblivion. Of the office’s 42 occupants since 1830, not a single sitting lieutenant governor, nor any of the seven who succeeded to governor, has been elected governor.

Quinn hopes to delay his succession until summer, so ... Read More...

“Very, very low key,” said Don Rose, a former Democratic political consultant in Chicago, describing Mr. Burris, 71, who was named on Tuesday by the state’s embattled governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. “He’s just not a terribly exciting figure. But there’s never been a breath of scandal about him.”

A big notice for CDOBs editorial board member Dennis Byrne today, leading off the Wall Street Journal Best of the Web with his piece on Blagojevich, Burris and Bobby Rush from the Chicago Tribune.

Here’s Dennis:

Blagojevich and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who showed up at the announcement press conference, praised Burris’ “fine record of public service,” although my own view is that just getting through a political career here without the usual political taint qualifies as the finest of records. Burris accepted the accolades without seeming to understand the irony.

But Rush aptly demonstrated the cynicism of Blagojevich’s action by brandishing the blunt weapon of racism. Rush, an African American, warned that a senate that refused to seat Burris, an African American, would be engaging in a “hanging” and “lynching.” Even by Chicago political standards, the deployment of those inflammatory words was an extraordinarily ... Read More...

Icasualties has the casualty count at 14 total and 7 by hostile fire in Iraq for the month of December.

There were 19 homicides in the city of Chicago so far in December, with 9 days of reporting remaining. Garfield Park is currently the leading neighborhood for Murder in Chicago.

Wow, that was close. On Thursday, Dec. 11, the New Madrid fault shifted, sleeping volcanoes rumbled, and a Texas-size asteroid veered from its orbit, heading straight to Chicago.

Four days later, the fault line settled with a quiet wheeze, the volcanoes yawned, and the asteroid mysteriously vanished. What luck!

What had changed? Attorney General Lisa Madigan signed a document which she had refused to sign four days before.

Madigan apparently was the sole official who heard apocalypse threatening early this month when the governor’s office routinely prepared an OS (offering statement) for $1.4 billion in short-term borrowing. The state treasurer, Alexi Giannoulias, and comptroller, Dan Hynes, routinely approved the OS.

Then, Gov. Blagojevich was arrested on Dec. 9. His budget director, Ginger Ostro, quickly put out word to investors: hey, we’re cool, the charges have no impact on state finances, don’t worry, buy the bonds.

The state was in a ... Read More...

Nothing grabs headlines like dire warnings about homicide trends. The New York Times writes: “Homicides by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend.”

The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period.

According to U.S. Census data, the number of blacks aged 15 to 19 rose by about 15 percent between 2000 and 2007.

So even if any individual black teen’s propensity for crime was unchanged over this time period, the aggregate amount of black-teen crime would have risen by 15 percent. In other words, in that New York Times graphic on perpetrators, just based on changes in population, the number of perpetrators would have been expected to rise from a little over 800 to nearly 1,000. Knowing that, the actual rise to roughly 1,150 doesn’t seem ... Read More...

resident-elect Barack Obama spent yesterday afternoon in Honolulu, going to the zoo with his daughters and visiting his high school campus. And yet, he couldn’t escape the political melodrama unfolding more than 4,000 miles away.

While Obama vacationed, some of the main characters from his political past took turns starring in a bizarre Chicago news conference. First to the lectern was embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested this month on federal corruption charges, and from whom Obama has worked to distance himself. Blagojevich then introduced Roland Burris, his appointment to fill Obama’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Burris once held a fundraiser at his house for Obama and calls the president-elect “somebody whose career I really helped launch.”

Then, near the end of the news conference, Rep. Bobby L. Rush was beckoned to the front of the room, where he asked the public not to “lynch” Burris because ... Read More...