Chicago Daily Observer

Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, or Evan Bayh?

Oh, you silly country rubes. There is not an audacious name in that bunch.

On Saturday, Barack Obama will return to the initial scene of his crimes against humanity with his vice presidential choice in tow.

That choice?

Does the phrase, “We’re putting the band back together,” mean anything to you, Chicago?

That’s right, Obama’s choice will be a friend to lobbyists big and small, the master of economic disaster, a man of few usually unintelligible words, and the man at whose ample teet Obama suckled for his seven vanilla years in the Illinois State Senate—I am of course talking about retiring State Senate President Emil Jones.

I was too tough on Illinois State Senator James Meeks.

Last week, I offered both a commentary and a rigorous interview of Rev. Meeks on the WLS airwaves as to Meeks’ controversial declaration that he will bus thousands of Chicago Public School (CPS) students up to New Trier High School on Chicago’s ritzy North Shore for the first day of school next month to protest state education funding inequities.

While I stand by the substance of what I said, I violated a cardinal rule of politics in making the perfect the enemy of the good.

On The Don & Roma Morning Show last week, in addition to discussing his PR stunt, Meeks also explained that he would be introducing legislation to effectively create statewide school choice whereby students could take state dollars and attend any public school they wish.

Meeks is on the right street but he’s at the ... Read More...

llinois should go to a military strongman form of government.

Instead of the pretense of representative democracy, we should submit to one of those charismatic, totalitarian dictators with the Captain Kangaroo get-up who makes people disappear.

After all, isn’t that what the “Chicago 9” are doing?

The Chicago 9 are the nine Chicago Democrats who live within about five squares miles of one another and who control more than $70 billion worth of government and more than 125,000 public sector jobs in Illinois.

[The 9: Daley, Blagojevich, (Lisa) Madigan, White, Hynes, Giannoulias, Jones, (Mike) Madigan, Stroger]

It was reported last week that the Chicago 9 had made more than 6,000 private sector jobs in Illinois disappear between May and June. Only four states in the nation lost more jobs during that period.

The Chicago 9 have Illinois’ unemployment rate at a robust 6.8%, nearly 25% higher than the national average ... Read More...

Exemplifying a reform opportunity that applies across the nation, Illinois legislators will be presented this year with yet another chance to reconfigure the political balance of power in their state and reestablish their electoral relevance.

Against the backdrop of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D) State of the State Address in February, House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) allowed Senate Bill 2288 to begin slithering its way through the General Assembly once again.

SB 2288 (formerly House Bill 750) has been the legislative Rasputin of Illinois politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, dating back to Gov. Jim Edgar® in the mid-1990s. The thrust of the bill is to increase the state income tax permanently from 3 percent to 5 percent in exchange for temporary property tax relief.

Where would the net increase in state revenue go? Say it with me: To fund education. Herein lies the political opportunity.

His autobiography was entitled, “In the Arena” and that is most certainly where Charlton Heston lived his life.

When fundamental principles of individual rights and human liberty were at stake, Heston wheeled his chariot into the arena to do intellectual battle. He was the rare iconic figure who did not let his status inhibit him from consistently acting in furtherance of what he knew to be just.

News accounts about his passing have detailed his record on civil rights and gun rights but it is on free speech rights that I am able to give eyewitness testimony.

In recent years, Americans have been forced to deal with a rash of senseless, inexplicable school shootings such as that which occurred at Northern Illinois University last week leaving five innocents dead.

Part of the unhappy search for explanations in the wake of these gruesome events has invariably included inane pronouncements from the media.

After Virginia Tech, Lisa Ling used her platform on the Oprah Winfrey Show to openly worry about a backlash against “anyone who looked Asian”. Of course, this did not happen. Ling, you see, was unable to wrap her mind around the concept that the rest of America did, which is that it was a single, deranged person who happened to be South Korean who was responsible for the carnage, not the Asian community.

Group responsibility is no responsibility. Thank goodness regular Americans have the common sense that seems to regularly evade so many of our media ... Read More...