Chicago Daily Observer

The Trib reports that among those in attendance at the epic Plan Commission meeting Thursday were Children’s Museum “proponents” bused in by the Woodlawn Organization, which is led by plan commission member Leon Finney Jr.

You and I and every other taxpayer in the state helped finance the organizational efforts and transportation costs needed to get the Woodlawn cheerleaders downtown.

Here’s how: the Woodlawn Organization is a tax-exempt, 501c3 nonprofit organization, and according to its most recent filings with the IRS, the vast majority—more than 80 percent—of its annual revenues come from government grants, most of it federal money handed out by the state and city. That amounted to $4.6 million in taxpayer money in 2006, the most recent year available.

Occasionally, Maya Brachear actually writes about religion as the Chicago Tribune’s Religion Reporter. Many of her columns are tolerable enough as sort of statistical analysis and trendwatch for a secular newspaper.

However, in her blog post yesterday she veered into journalistic trick/rant more suited to her rival at the Sun-Times than someone who observes and analyzes religion, rather than practicing partisan politics. Maya tells us (accurately):

Then Brachear questions:

Billy Ayers, the Trust Funded, Insulated, Media Pampered Hyde Park Domestic Terrorist, who still, mercy sakes alive, has a job at University of Illinois Chicago Campus is the tack on the chair of Senator Obama’s Senate Seat.

Senator Obama is up and moving about the country weaving rhetorical flourishes to the people who think that Stanley Fish matters and that MSNBC provides information. While Senator Obama has been out of his seat, Illinois laughing-stock and Check Kiting Bob Creamer’s Bonnie Parker, Congressperson Jan Schakwosky is trolling for the chair – which would be Jan’s via appointment from Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Guv has problems. Jan Schakowsky, like most self-absorbed posers, is unaware of her problems. Her husband, Bob Creamer recently got out of the Federal Pen in Terra Haute, Indiana for check kiting and immediately wrote a boffo book on Progressive Politics and ran Camp Obama for the Obama ... Read More...

For this jaded politician-watcher who has been in the peanut galleries for more than 50 years—as journalist, speech-writer, state official, federal official, foreign service officer, corporate executive, university lecturer, radio host and now journalist again—John McCain’s Columbus, Ohio speech yesterday goes down as easily the finest in recent times, equaling the greatest Republican campaign speech made in the 20th century, Ronald Reagan’s 1976 address to the Republican convention in Kansas City that nominated Gerald Ford.

At Kansas City Reagan, though defeated, set the parameters for his 1980 speech by articulating a matchless vision that Ford and no other Republican could have matched, sending delegates home with buyers’ remorse, feeling they had just nominated the wrong man. In his speech, Reagan told the story that became almost immortally tied to him. He was ... Read More...

On May 13, John McCain supporter John Haggee issued an apology to the Catholic League for controversial anti-Catholic comments he’s made in the past. “Catholic League President William Donoghue [sic] accepted the apology,” noted Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear in the midst of his 8-paragraph story published the following day.

Shear closed by noting that ”[n]ot all Catholics were mollified” by Hagee’s letter of apology, citing “Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.” Shear failed to label Kelley nor the Alliance as liberal, although a visit to their Web site makes it pretty clear their political agenda skews in favor of liberal Democratic social welfare initiatives.

But more telling is this: Kelley used to work for the DNC during the Kerry campaign as Director of Religious Outreach. Catholic or no, it’s not all that surprising that the former liberal Democratic Party staffer would refuse ... Read More...

Back at Ms. Schakowsky’s town meeting a few months ago, when she was trolling for a few moderate votes to head off the Greenie challenge, I asked Ms. Schakowsky whether she was going to support the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. She said no, citing paramilitary actions against union members. (She said nothing about their actions against the FARC narco-terrorists.)

State Sen. James DeLeo (D-How You Dooin?) is one fascinating Illinois politician.

Who else would take a convicted felon to a business meeting with a suburban mayor to talk about all the money that could be made in the billboard business on the sides of the Illinois tollways?

And who would spend $62,000 on letter openers and other promotional gifts from that same felon, and drop more than $1,000 in gifts to the felon’s family, though the guy doesn’t live in DeLeo’s district?

But first, remember that DeLeo has fun. There’s too little of that in Illinois these days, what with the FBI poking around, putting Outfit bosses in prison, trying to figure out how Rush Street nightclubs got occupancy permits and who may have engineered that bottle service bill to help the nightclubs separate fools from their cash, and who gambles where and how and with whom, and ... Read More...

Morgenthaler’s site tells us,

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe Congress must do a better job overseeing how US money is spent. The war in Iraq is costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars. Big money non-compete defense contracts are being consummated behind closed doors for the benefit of wealthy friends of the Bush Administration with little regard to need or budget considerations. At a time of fiscal uncertainty, I will go to Congress committed to ensuring that all taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

Morgenthaler might want to start by explaining how deeply she was involved in Alsammarae and Frawley’s plans for Iraq Reconstruction funds.

Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq’s electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by ... Read More...

Why do so many in the party insist that millions of votes in two key states be counted only if they don’t matter — that is, if the result is a fait accompli — and not be counted if they do?

If they were counted now — even if some of them were counted now — things might be quite different. According to the Real Clear Politics total, when one includes estimated vote totals in caucus states (a factor which favors Obama) plus results from Florida (which favor Clinton), but nothing from Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, Obama’s lead in the national popular vote is 411,915. That figure is less than Obama’s margin of victory in his home of Cook County, Illinois, where, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, Obama won by 429,052 votes. By other counts, Obama’s lead is far less than his winning ... Read More...

First the good news: The city deferred action on its latest proposal for licensing concert promoters, originally set for tomorrow’s City Council meeting.

Some people have been naive enough to call it a victory, but don’t be fooled. The delay doesn’t protect all the small promoters and club owners and not-for-profits who want to throw fund-raising bashes. It’s merely what one alderman calls a “tactical retreat” on the part of the mayor.

Here’s the deal from several good City Hall sources, including an alderman or two.

The vendor’s licensing bill (commonly known as the promoter’s ordinance) has been resurrected because Mayor Daley wants it, and no one in City Hall has the guts to tell the mayor he can’t have what he wants.

A bit of pleasant news was buried in the Business Section of the Sun-Times yesterday. St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island was sold to an investor group who promise to keep the troubled hospital open and invest $30 Million in improvements to the facility.

Contrast this to the Front Page howls in the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times a month ago claiming that St. Francis could not be sold at any price. Apparently it could be sold, and even attract a sizable investor. Incidentally, this is the same investor who had been negotiating with St. Francis for over a year, apparently unknown to The Tribune and Sun-Times.

There still is a major hurdle to providing healthcare in Blue Island. The Illinois Healthcare Facilities Planning Board has yet to approve the sale of the hospital. Yes, this is the same Board once graced by Stuart Levine, brokered by Tony Rezko, and ... Read More...

Bill Ayers is a funny guy.

Well, maybe not so funny when he was saying things like: ’‘Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.”

But his memoir—Fugitive Days, an accounting of his life on the run in the 1960s and 1970s as a chieftain of the radical and violent Weather Underground—is funny. I know, we’re supposed to be taking Ayers seriously ever since he showed up as a contributor to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) But a read of his 295-page book suggests he is a bit more notorious than he deserves, and a lot more comical.

Considering the controversy that Ayers has stirred up, I thought that his book might provide needed insight. But getting through it was like a slog through a used clothing store crammed with bellbottoms, psychedelic ... Read More...

Hillary Rodham Clinton romped to victory Tuesday in the West Virginia primary, burying Barack Obama in a landslide that seemed unlikely to stop his steady march to the Democratic nomination.

Running in a state tailored to her strengths—with a large turnout of white, rural and working-class voters—Clinton posted one of her biggest winning margins. With nearly all of the vote counted, she was leading Obama 67% to 26%.

Pastor John Hagee sent a letter today [click here] to Catholic League president Bill Donohue that effectively ends the dispute the two men have had. Donohue comments as follows:

“After weeks of meeting with various Catholic leaders, and accessing scholarly literature on Catholic-Jewish relations, Pastor John Hagee has demonstrated an improved understanding of the Catholic Church and its history. In his letter to me, Hagee says, ‘I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.’ He specifically cites his emphasis of ‘the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews,’ and has pledged to provide a more complete and balanced portrayal going forward that will not reinforce mischaracterizations of the Catholic Church. And while he stresses that his invocation of terms like ‘apostate church’ and the ‘great whore’ were never meant by him to describe the Catholic Church, he ... Read More...

Money: Even though West Virginia was long expected to go big for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama still outspent his opponent by more than 2–1 on television advertising, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.