130 Years of Authentic Compassion
Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission has been serving the poor since 1877. At its new location it will be able to provide men’s and women’s services under one roof while accommodating about 25% more people (up to 900) per night. It receives no public support of any kind, operating entirely on private donations.
Read More...The recent revelation that the FBI has received information about “possible holiday terror attacks on Chicago and Los Angeles shopping malls” has caused some alarm, even though, as the Chicago Sun-Times points out, ”[t]he FBI downplayed” the warning, while an FBI spokesman told the L.A. Times that “There is no information to state this is a credible threat.” According to the L.A. Times, “a declassified version of an intelligence report” detailing possible threats was “distributed to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country” and—surprise, surprise—was quickly leaked to the media, which slipped into panic mode. (TV stations need to keep their ratings up during the writers’ strike, after all.)
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko explained that, “Out of an abundance of caution, and for any number of other reasons, raw intelligence is regularly shared within the intelligence and law enforcement communities—even when the value of the ... Read More...
A year ago John McCain was the certain GOP nominee and almost a shoo-in for election—the one guy who could cross party lines and lure Democrats in a Reagan rerun.
That was then. This is now.
The Arizona senator slid down the slippery slope of immigration reform faster than an Olympic bobsled.
Yes, he was and probably still is the strongest supporter of and apologist for Bush’s war—though Giuliani runs a close second—but he also supported Bush’s “amnesty” immigration plan along with Ted Kennedy. This, the one seriously acceptable social program the administration ever proposed, remains a live third rail among Republican voters and poor McCain electrocuted himself.
A couple of months ago his funds were drying up, his staff disassembling and the punditocracy said it was all over for the Viet war hero. Likely it is—he’s just an asterisk below the Guiliani-Romney-Thompson-Huckabee leadership tier—but there is ... Read More...
Every once in a while, one really gets what one pays for. And then some. Seriously.
There I was with my Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, and I was drawn to a column about “choice in education” initiative recently defeated in Utah. While rightly lamenting its demise, writer Adam Schaeffer of the CATO Institute in Washington pointed out that there is another effective and saleable way to go about advancing the cause of choice in education. Tax credits. Personal use tax credits for families means one receives a dollar for dollar reduction in one’s state taxes (as opposed to just a tax deduction) for some portion of private K-12 education expenses.
Donation tax credits allow businesses to fund scholarship accounts in low-income areas.
Before my eyes glazed over I noticed that once of those states is Illinois. Who knew? I didn’t.
Sure enough, I called my accountant ... Read More...
“Looking for Bobby Jindal.” That’s not a recent movie, or a sequel to “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
Instead, it’s a quest, perhaps utterly forlorn, by Illinois Republicans to find somebody to run for governor in 2010 like Jindal, Louisiana’s new Republican governor. Stressing the issues of competence and honesty in a state where corruption and cronyism are the norm, Jindal won a solid 54 percent victory in October, in a field with 11 other candidates.
Like Louisiana in the past, Illinois is a cesspool of corruption. A former Louisiana Democratic governor, Edwin Edwards, is vegetating in a federal prison, as is a former Illinois Republican governor, George Ryan. The current Louisiana governor, Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, is roundly reviled as inept and incompetent, due to her handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. The current Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, is roundly reviled for his arrogance, ineptitude and mendacity. Blanco ... Read More...
