Chicago Daily Observer

Governor Blagojevich’s last-minute bailout spared CTA riders long-threatened doomsday hikes in fares and cuts in services—for the moment. Still, without a permanent tax hike to close the budget gap of $110 million a year the CTA is likely to slash bus routes and raise fares to as much as $3 a ride. At the same time, the local property tax machine is gearing up to send out property tax bills that will jump as much as 100 percent for some home owners. And what’s the city’s response to this pending crisis?

On first glance, the accusation that Notre Dame is not Catholic enough strikes most people as odd. I graduated from Notre Dame in 1986 and returned as a faculty member a decade ago out of sympathy with the university’s effort to at once work toward academic excellence and sustain a serious commitment to Catholic intellectual life. I’ve found the place even better than advertised. But apparently not everyone agrees, and beneath Miscamble’s manifesto lie two important issues.

If we can assign theoretical strategies to the top three Democratic contenders, we might say Hillary Clinton is aiming at the Big Bang—winning it all by the first week in March after picking up most of the marbles on Super Dooper Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Barack Obama is playing Smash-and-Grab—hoping to stop Clinton short in the early primaries and caucuses. Say he wins all Illinois and a goodly part of Iowa and California plus a good handful of delegates elsewhere—even gobbles up a chunk of New York. Then he knocks off a bunch of southern states on Super Tuesday where black voters tip the balance, ultimately building a majority by convention time.

This week’s subject, John Edwards, aims to light a fuse by concentrating his far more limited resources in Iowa, where his intensive efforts seem to be paying off. In Iowa he has sometimes led, but minimally stays bunched up ... Read More...

As I view the contradictory and relativist muddle that is the Ron Paul presidential campaign, I am grateful that I eschewed libertarianism as a political principle in favor of constitutional conservatism. Notwithstanding that, I confess finding much to admire about Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nominee.

He is a M. D. specializing in obstetrics, pro-life, who served his country as an Air Force flight surgeon.

He is adamant about abolishing much of the federal government based upon lack of constitutional foundation and ineptness and inefficiency. Here’s a list of things Paul wants to end because they have had failures in the past, or he sees them as useless:

the CIA,

the FBI,

the Department of Homeland Security,

the FDA,

the IRS,

Medicare,

DEA,

Our membership in the UN,

in NATO,

in NAFTA

in CAFTA.

That’s the short list.

This is ... Read More...

Only 12 of 32 teachers in the U. of Notre Dame history department are Catholics, and last year of three new hires only one was Catholic. In English, when Kevin Hart, editor of ND-based Religion and Literature, objected to a candidate as “incompatible” with Notre Dame’s “Catholic mission,” he was “roundly criticized” and later decamped for U. of Virginia.

Except for theology and the law school, things are so bad under the golden dome that history prof Fr, Wilson D. Miscamble, a member of the Holy Cross Fathers, who founded and run the place, wants a quota — two-thirds of all future appointments to be Catholics. It would be preferential hiring for fish-eaters. As things stand, you can be too Catholic for Notre Dame, says Miscamble in the latest America Magazine.

Miscamble has a history of emphasizing the C-word, having nailed the ND president, a Holy Cross priest like himself, ... Read More...