Chicago Daily Observer

Republicans might as well bid former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat good-bye, and the nation finally will notice the utter dismal, if not dead, shape of the state GOP.

Even if the Republicans hold on to Hastert’s seat in a close call, it will be a clear sign that the state party is beyond resuscitation.

Hastert’s 14th congressional district, which runs from west suburban Chicago almost to the Iowa state line, long has been a GOP stronghold, but in a Saturday [March 8] special election it could go to the Democrats thanks to a series of dreadful Republican failures:

• An ugly primary battle that split the district’s GOP voters into bitter factions, certain to dampen party turnout.

• A comatose state Republican party, so inept that it has been unable to win a single statewide elective office—federal or state—for several years.

• The nomination of a ... Read More...

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, say the military fruit-salads in Obama’s camp in the latest Salon.com – redacting the Salon.com piece is Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman.

The Salon.com piece is a re-hash of the ‘McCain’s Rage’ straw-dog. Mean People Suck – is a Deadhead bumper sticker. This piece of second guessing on McCain’s leadership in support of the Iraq surge has all the snappy zest, spice and Howard Dean Yeeeowwweee as a mouthful of Hellman’s Mayo.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and call this Saturday’s special election in Illinois’ 14th district for Republican Jim Oberweis. He should prevail with 54% of the vote. It doesn’t match the gargantuan 60–70% victories Denny Hastert routinely racked up and is a shade less than the 55% President Bush pulled in the district in 2004. Still, it will be enough to send Oberweis to Congress for the next 10 months. It will also, paradoxically, provide bragging rights for almost everyone.
Democrats will crow that such a low margin of victory in what has seemed for many decades to be a safe citadel of Republican politics is a harbinger of a rising Democratic tide. Republicans can argue that, coming on the heels of a bitter primary fight from which there was little time to heal and bucking the near-messianic movement that has been the Obama presidential ... Read More...

If Jagdish Bhagwati’s purpose in writing his FT column on March 3, Obama’s free-trade credentials top Clinton’s, was to cheer up those who support multilateral free trade and had become dismayed at the avalanche of protectionist drivel from both the Obama and the Clinton camps, he failed.

Just when the public has finally begun to show signs of seeing through the fog that surrounds tax increment financing, the state has floated the idea of a rigging up a new kind of TIF. When Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company, vowing to break it up and sell off the pieces, one of the most valuable pieces was the Cubs, Wrigley Field included. In January former governor Jim Thompson, chair of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, revealed that Zell had come to him and Governor Blagojevich with a proposal to have the state buy Wrigley and use public money to pay for its makeover.