In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.
Read More...Too soft to withstand a Republican assault. Too vague to know how he’d govern. Those two big raps on Barack Obama can now be shelved. The Illinois senator this week provided his first, highly illuminating, example of how he’d operate in the Oval Office. It’s clear he’s as crafty as Hillary Clinton.
This case study has to do with that great love of good-government types, campaign finance. Last year, Mr. Obama sparked his campaign by pressuring Republicans to join him in a pledge to use only public money in a general election. Last week, when rival and fellow pledge-taker John McCain reminded him of that promise, Mr. Obama refused to go “locking” himself into an agreement.
This “No, We Can’t” moment
Read More...Recently the Illinois Attorney General determined that the DuPage County Election Commission has been in non-compliance with the Illinois Local Records Act for
decades. Specifically, the election commission destroyed records without the required transparency to state officials. Election commission officials will
not disclose what records were destroyed and when they were destroyed. DuPage election commission officials continue to maintain that record destruction transparency is “unnecessary paperwork.”
Since the Illinois Attorney General issued an official
opinion about the election record destruction and published the opinion at the Attorney General website, there really would not be anything else to say, except
for the fact that the DuPage States Attorney, who requested the opinion, has declined to prosecute the election commission.
State law says that non-compliance with the Illinois Local Records Act is a felony. Enforcement of the law would include an audit of remaining records and an attempt ... Read More...
Feds say governor’s adviser sought jobs for friends, family
In the weeks and months after Gov. Rod Blagojevich took office, close adviser and fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko gave the administration the names of people he wanted to see get state jobs.
And in the grand tradition of Illinois politics, those names ended up on a list. Call it a clout list, or a favors list.
But federal prosecutors call such lists evidence, and they are starting their own tradition of using them in political corruption cases.
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