Chicago Daily Observer

U.S. lawmakers questioned whether Google Inc.‘s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc. will give the Internet search company a “stranglehold’’ in the online advertising market.

“Once these two companies have joined forces and combined their gigantic information resources, will the barriers to entry for a new entrant into the marketplace simply be too high?’’ Democratic Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin said at a hearing today in Washington.

Does this generation possess the gravitas to lead the world?

Considering the hysteria that greeted the request of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, the answer is no.

What is it about this tiny man that induces such irrationality?

Answer: He is president of a nation that is a “state sponsor of terror,” that is seeking nuclear weapons, and is moving munitions to the Taliban and insurgents in Iraq.

But Libya was a “state sponsor of terror,” and Col. Gadhafi was responsible for Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie massacre of school kids coming home for Christmas. And President Bush secretly negotiated a renewal of relations in return for Gadhafi giving up his nuclear program and compensating the families of the victims of that atrocity. Has Ahmadinejad ever committed an act of terror like this?

Just as the Chicago Bears are on the verge of a quarterback “controversy,” Chicago Mayor Daley is in the throes of a police superintendent controversy. He wants to replace Dana Starks, the mercurial interim superintendent—but he can’t find the right replacement.

In choosing a police superintendent, rank matters. Family history matters. Political connections matter. And, most importantly, being an “insider” matters. The so-called “culture” of the department decrees that a non-Chicagoan, somebody from another city, cannot win or earn the trust of rank-and-file police officers.

But, in the ongoing, fruitless search to replace the departed Phil Cline, the selection criterion has changed as the political, bureaucratic and racial environment has deteriorated – both inside and outside of the department.

Cline resigned April 2, amid headlines of barroom brawls involving off-duty cops. One beat a female bartender, and six beat four businessmen. In the special operations section (SOS), a supposedly elite ... Read More...

The really marvelous thing about “The Dangerous Book for Boys” (HarperCollins 2007) isn’t that it is—in a word and as its British adherents might say of its British authors—“brilliant.”

It’s that in four months it has taken the American market by storm.

This in a market in which we seem routinely bent on turning our boys into. . . girls.

And let me be clear: Unlike what I suspect is my feminist sister’s predilection – I don’t think this is a good thing.

“Dangerous,” by British brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden (I long thought it impossible to improve on “The Brothers Grimm” when it comes to names, but I think they’ve done it) have written a book for boys and their cringing mothers everywhere.

(As a mother of 4 young kids, the oldest a 13-year-old boy, I’m convinced, by the way, that we mothers are generally supposed to cringe when ... Read More...