Chicago Daily Observer

After oddly blocking access to a fully processed and publicly listed archive of records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a $160 million school reform effort led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, from 1995 until the end of 2001, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has now agreed to once again allow public access to the records of the CAC.

But a careful review of the press release issued by UIC announcing the reversal of the shutdown leaves several important questions unanswered:

1) Were any of the materials tampered with or changed in any way after the University was contacted by Dr. Stanley Kurtz, a writer for the National Review, who was the individual whose request to review the CAC documents triggered the UIC shutdown?

I wonder whether Barack Obma’s vetters, Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder, knew what they were doing when they settled on Joe Biden. Journalists and McCain opposition researchers must be logging on to Nexis and searching 1987–1988 using the key words “Biden and plagiarism. “ There is a feast of material—I have culled examples from various print and electronic sources—that would make even the most partisan Obama backer question the wisdom of this choice.

Biden, then 44, was forced out of the 1988 presidential race-—he officially dropped out on September 23, 1987—just when his candidacy seemed to be taking off in Iowa, the all important first caucus, and just as he seemed to be gaining on Michael Dukakis, the eventual nominee.

(Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 from Delaware. He was only 29, and was one of the two youngest men ever elected to the Senate.)

A Dukakis ... Read More...

Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Sen. Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin.

He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.”

By 2012 he would “require” the economy’s huge energy sector to — here things become comic — supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America’s energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

While many employees in the private sector sock away part of their incomes into 401(k)s and IRAs for retirement, full-time government employees can bank on a pension that is guaranteed to support them for the rest of their lives.

But pensions for public workers are a sore spot for some homeowners, who have to foot part of the pension bill through their property taxes. Naperville city pensions – for police officers, firefighters, public works employees and other nonsafety personnel – account for about a combined 19 percent, or $9 million, of the city’s $47.4 million 2007 tax levy.

The Tribune updated its story on the death this summer of Curtis Cooper and the complicity of the property managers United Property Advisors (UPA)that is raking in millions of dollars from the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA).

Yesterday’s article deftly stepped around the ‘alleged’ crumb in the unhappy accident that caused Curtis Cooper’s death – Cullen Davis.

Cullen Davis, like William Ayers, is the wee lad of a well-connected Dad…