Chicago Daily Observer

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...

Will Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?

It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.

Broadway Baby was not mentioned during the Democratic infighting in Pennsylvania.

But Broadway Baby—once a chic children’s boutique in Manhattan’s Upper West Side—is the future, if Barack Obama is the presidential candidate in the fall.

This story involves two Chicagoans, former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, William Ayers, both Obama supporters who blessed his initial foray into politics. Last week, the unrepentant Ayers became a flash point in Obama’s debate with Hillary Clinton.