Apparently, I have been very bad.
At least that’s according to ComEd.  Recently, I thought I was opening a bill from the electric company.  Instead, I was being chastised.
As part of a pilot program from ComEd,  I was issued a “Home Electricity Report.”   The crux of the matter is the “Last Month Neighbor Comparison.”   The first line, a green bar about ¾ of an inch long, noted that on average my “efficient” and presumably oh-so-good neighbors, had used 764 KWh (Kilowatt- hours) of electricity.  A blue bar under it, about an …

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx
When I was a baby teacher in Kankakee, IL in 1975 there was a blockbuster book out in paperback called The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. That book ignited a debate that was the equivalent to the recent Global Warming dire predictions.  In that book, Ehrlich stated that “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”  Who’s to say that Ehrlich was not maybe …

You might think a major metropolitan newspaper that boasts “The Midwest’s largest reporting team” on its front page would report on a suburban demonstration attracting thousands of people.  In the case of the Chicago Tribune, you’d be wrong.
Today’s Tribune print edition makes no mention of yesterday’s Tea Party Express protest in New Lenox, Illinois, located only 36 miles from Chicago’s Loop.  The Southtown Star did cover the event on its Web site, noting:
About 6,000 people packed the hillside venue at The Commons Performing Arts Pavilion for the protest, part of …

“There’s something happening here…”
It began with the tea parties.  People of all ages joined in huge protests against the massive spending approved in Washington.  They gathered by the thousands in cities and towns from coast to coast to speak out against the huge stimulus plan.  Yet, for months not much was covered by the mainstream media and President Barack Obama told the press that he didn’t know anything about the tea parties.
“What it is ain’t exactly clear…”
Forty years ago Buffalo Springfield sang about the protests against the Viet Nam war …

But it’s conservatives who engage in violence and hate speech, right?
The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that one of their own, reporter Jake Wagman, was one of six people arrested in connection with the beating of a conservative activist outside of a town hall forum held by Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan.
According to Dawn Majors, a Post-Dispatch photojournalist who witnessed everything unfold, an officer said that Wagman had been “interfering.”
From the article:
Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he …

Since everyone within reach of a keyboard has weighed in on Gatesgate I might as well join the parade with my own tale of a stupid cop who hassled a smartass white guy—namely me—and cost the city a bit of money. The stupid cop was white; his black partner was simply foolish.
First, let me assure everyone that some of my good friends are police officers who, like 96 percent of their fellows, are brave, honest, diligent and fair-minded in their enforcement of the law—black and white alike. Once I was …

If there’s ever an illustration of how “progressive” elites and organized labor are keeping the very people they supposedly care about locked up on the plantation, it’s their consuming opposition to a new Wal-Mart store on the South Side.
The impoverished, unemployed, blacks, seniors, teens—they’ve all getting a good frigging by the organized campaign by white liberals and powerful unions to block the construction of only the city’s second Wal-Mart, at 83rd Street and Stewart Avenue.
The rousing success of the city’s first Wal-Mart at 4650 W North Ave. providing jobs and …

Wal-Mart opened its first city store in Austin on the West Side in September 2006. The retailer has been trying to get another store built on the South Side for more than five years but has encountered a series of obstacles from the city.
The discount chain hit another roadblock last week when Ald. Richard Mell (33rd), chairman of the Rules Committee, threw cold water on Wal-Mart’s latest lobbying campaign to get the city to strike a clause in the property development agreement aimed at keeping the retailer out. Ald. Howard …

Patrick Fitzgerald may be the most feared prosecutor in the country, but even as he’s racked up headlines for big-name convictions (Scooter Libby) and indictments (Rod Blagojevich), the hard-charging U.S. attorney from Chicago has been waging a private crusade: trying to kill a book he believes maligns his reputation. In the past year and a half, Fitzgerald has written four letters to HarperCollins—owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.—demanding it “cease publication” and “withdraw” copies of Triple Cross, a 2006 book by ex–TV newsman Peter Lance that criticizes Fitzgerald’s handling of …

Politics is always the art of compromise.  Barack Obama is a politician. Ergo, Barack Obama is a compromiser.
The term politicians prefer is “pragmatist”—more macho, less namby-pamby.
The question at hand, however, is not what term we use, but what principles are compromised—and what level of compromise is acceptable. Therein lies my concern.
What I am seeing in the president I supported is a history—not quite a pattern—of compromise on civil liberties. This I find not only uncomfortable, but potentially dangerous. I dislike using that cliché about the slippery slope, but it applies.
The …