Chicago Daily Observer

I first started as a lobbyist…for Quaker Oats…in 1964 and continued until retirement in 1991. The beautiful thing about that job was the first day I started the CEO asked me to tell them what the company should be lobbying for or against. I drew up a list which, surprisingly, squared with my conservative values…and theirs. First, the company should lobby against high price supports in the farm bill which would cut the cost of the grain they bought but also coincided with consumer interest.

Second, it should oppose creation of ever-more regulatory agencies. Third it should oppose an industry plan to allow creation of a eunuch so-called Consumer Protection Agency, the 38th such body designed to protect the consumers-but a CPA that would have very little power to protect consumers and would be toothless, so as to be a sop to public relations and the public misconception ... Read More...

I heard Tony Peraica’s presentation at the City Club of Chicago earlier this week. Inured to campaign speeches since I first started covering them in 1953, fifty-five years ago, I thought I’d load up on good Italian food and meet some old friends while Tony would recite a list of campaign truisms.

But what I heard was jaw-droppingly good. After years of watching this county shrug off misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance and incompetence with widespread waste of taxpayers’ money, for the first time in many years I heard one who knows the ins and outs of county government, is articulate, forthright and energetic. He is far better than the most recent Republicans to run for state’s attorney. Ben Adamowski was determined to get even with Richard J. Daley for a feud they had when both were in the legislature. In fact if there was any vote-fraud of consequence in the 1960 ... Read More...

McCain’s Columbus, Ohio Speech Historic, Brilliant, Incisive: “Question Time” ala Parliament Outstanding. What More Adjectives Can I Use?

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...

At this writing…a little before midnight Tuesday…the hype about Hillary losing North Carolina and either carrying Indiana by an eyelash or losing by an eyelash is-eyewash.

It presumes the race for the nomination is suspenseful. It has not been for many weeks. Barack Obama has been slated to win the votes of a majority of the Super-delegates for many weeks now. Those mathematicians who are calculating the numbers don’t understand that at this point it is not a mathematical game but a strategic one. Literally a no-brainer since it involves the long range future of the Democratic party. Why?

Because the future of the Democratic party is tied up with its huge lock on the black vote. Super-delegates are all for the most part practical politicians. To snatch the nomination away from Obama when he is ahead in delegate count would irreparably destroy much black loyalty to the Democratic party. ... Read More...

When Barack Obama made his Philadelphia speech which many heralded, I was a dissenter because I saw the impossibility of his being able to mediate between the ranting racist raves of Jeremiah Wright and reason. Impossibly, Obama decided to do just that. He announced that he could no more repudiate Wright that he could the black community. That nonsense became a total disaster. For one thing, Obama was implying that the black community was joined at the hip with this demagogue!

I said that the prudent thing for Obama to have done is to blame himself for not becoming aware of Wright’s intransigent racism earlier but now that he has become aware, he was severing connection with Wright and the congregation. That is unconventional politics but for Obama it would have been the only prudent course to follow. He would not lose many votes doing this and the statement would ... Read More...

It was a typical political tease. A proven administrator with boundless energy leaps up to the rostrum and executes an enthusiastic stream-of-consciousness about his goals and objectives. He was greeted with a standing ovation and when he completed his breathless talk, the audience arose to its feet again. Midway in the talk he gave a gentle slip…which was not a slip really but was intended to be such…that if he talked too long he would “lose votes” in the future. Everyone applauded and nodded while he softly declaimed and said it was a slip of the lip. This was Paul Vallas, a friend of mine, at the City Club of Chicago of which I’m chairman. Jay Doherty, City Club president who has instilled energy and vision into the Club had been deeply involved in Vallas’ prior campaign in 2002 for the Democratic nomination—which he lost by inches.

Probably the most ... Read More...

In the last several days in the “Illinois Review,” Chris Robling, a friend of mine for many years, has given an invaluable insight into the historical background of the institution that John Kass has aptly named “the Combine.” I urge you to read its two-parts. I quarrel with nothing he has written but would supply this addendum.

The “Combine” had its start in baby steps with the Richard B. Ogilvie administrations both as Cook county president and as governor of Illinois. Prior to that time, young people particularly worked in politics for awhile, took state jobs and then drifted off to the private sector. Think back and see if you can identify any ex-staffers of Bill Stratton who played important roles in politics of government following the Stratton terms-or staffers of Otto Kerner (don’t mention Ted Isaacs: he went to jail with Kerner) or Sam Shapiro. It was a time ... Read More...

Barack Obama and his followers are still criticizing ABCs anchors George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson in the recent debate by peppering him with questions on Jeremiah Wright and Billy Ayres, saying that much more substantial issues needed to be raised. But there were such questions raised later in the program by Charlie Gibson and Obama didn’t really cover himself with glory in his answers.

Here are the economic questions Gibson asked-and Obama’s answers-the questions showing that unique among mainstream media reporters, Gibson is intimately familiar with taxation. Obama’s answers show that he is not as interested in a tax program that will serve as an incentive to collecting more revenue-but that he wishes to use the tax code to redistribute wealth and penalize the wealthy which is the classic Marxist formula. Here is the dialogue in its pertinent parts:

GIBSON: You have however said you would favor an increase ... Read More...

A top level authority on police attitudes told “The Chicago Daily Observer” yesterday that “there’s a good chance that murders are rising in Chicago because police are demoralized and intensely dissatisfied with conditions at the very top of the department. That doesn’t mean they’re lying down on the enforcement job, but what’s the point of pursuing a rigorous enforcement and deterrence when the department is in the hands of the civil libertarians—and punitive penalties are meted out against officers for doing their jobs effectively?”
He said that Jody Weis’ appointment…an FBI agent who never wore a uniform nor patrolled a beat…signaled a mayoral disapproval of the department that is ruining morale. He contrasted this with the record of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who stood by his department and beat off civil libertarians who tried to super-enforce infractions that hobbled the New York police.
“As a result ... Read More...

Will Gov. Blagojevich be indicted? Let’s say that a cursory study of grand jury corruption probes from all 50 states…including those when the U.S. consisted of 48…shows that there has never been an occasion when so many allegations and testimony before federal juries has failed to yield an indictment of a major figure whose name has been so prominently mentioned. That doesn’t mean this couldn’t be the first time—but knowledgeable people say not for attribution that if Blagojevich isn’t nailed, it will be an historic first.

One deciding factor seems to be testimony last week at the Rezko trial by Clyde Robinson, director of investor relations at JER Partners, a private equity, real estate investment management company headquartered in McLean, Virginia which manages private equity real estate funds with clients totaling more than 100 institutional investors including some of the world’s largest public and private pension funds, endowments and ... Read More...

If these remarks had been made in a debate toward the end of the 2008 campaign they would have constituted the “events, my dear boy, events” cited by Harold MacMillan that can derail all but certain electoral victories. Since they were delivered early in April, they will not be fatal. But at the very least they are a healthful blast of cold air that wipes away the public relations fog that has surrounded the base of the Obama pedestal…allowing us to imagine the lofty intellectual that stands thereupon.

Make no mistake, Columbia’s and Harvard’s Obama is a gifted man, a bright one and a rather suave prose stylist, having written his own two autobiographies. And an ivy league elitist. As one who went there to teach when I was nearly fifty, with philosophy formed, I was happily impervious even though I frequented the Harvard faculty lounge where the conversational lion ... Read More...

It was a sacrilege of ignorance that produced the invasion of Holy Name cathedral during Easter Sunday Mass when six members of the aptly named “Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War” interrupted Cardinal Francis George’s sermon and tossed vials of phony blood on people. Aptly named because it was indeed a immature insult to civility, more evocative of a bad baby tossing over a bowl of porridge than a legitimate protest.

It was also a sacrilege because as all Catholics should know, the celebrant at the altar is offering Mass in the name of all of Christ’s members, since he represents Christ, the Savior, head of the Church, the Mass offered in the fullness of Christ’s mystical membership which includes all who belong to the Mystical Body. By standing up, raising a ruckus, terrifying children and tossing vials of “blood,” the latter day hippies who carry the name Catholic failed to ... Read More...

The decision of conservative, pro-life constitutional scholar Doug Kmiec, a friend of mine, to switch from having co-headed the Romney presidential campaign’s Committee on the Courts and Constitution to announce his support of Barack Obama for president is…well, how to I say it…as if Ed Meese were to quit the Heritage Foundation to accept appointment to the Herbert Marcuse Chair at Berkeley to co-teach “The Dialectics of Liberation” with Angela Davis. No other analogy will fit since I have dealt with authenticist Catholic Kmiec over the years and have depended on his solid, workmanlike analysis of the law as background for some of my own writing.

He is the Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University’s School of Law. He served in an extremely sensitive post, director of the Office of Legal Counsel with the rank of assistant U.S. attorney general for Ronald Reagan and George ... Read More...

As he sat down to write the lead “Tribune” editorial on Obama’s Philadelphia speech, Cringeley…who is there because he is not too liberal, not too conservative, not too moderate, not too pro-business, not too anti-free market…looked at the clock on the wall for some long seconds, calculated his deadline and started to ruminate.

He thought:

Let’s see. God the biggest thing I have to watch out for is that this paper not be considered racist. That’s first and foremost. So suppose I start out with the thought that Obama is undeniably the most talented man of his generation. No, can’t say that. Can’t use “man.” The most talented black man. No, AWFUL! That would make people think that there are separate classifications for talented blacks and others. No, let’s say “the most talented public official of his generation.” Is that right? No, that’s larding it on a bit too ... Read More...

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday designed to douse the flames caused by his on-again, off-again disinheritance of and then endorsement of, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was pretty—but sorry, no cigar.

Moreover it is a case history of a political disaster. Obama was never stronger when he ran…as he did initially…as a man of mixed color untouched by the old racial bromides that pock-marked our society for fifty years. He was of a new generation. Not only is he lighter in complexion than the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, he is much younger, more free-flowing, less taken with himself with wit (something the senior Jackson at least never evidenced). Juggling the hand-mike before a rapt audience, Barack Obama looks like the new generation, unencumbered with the old hand-me-down racial stereotypes.

Then along comes the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Laden with the old rhetoric he is a recycled Minister Louis Farrakhan. ... Read More...

The City's Timid Media Should Take a Hit

Blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

So thundered Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a video that was offered for sale by Trinity United Church of Christ about the government’s treatment of black Americans:

“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing `God Bless America’ No,no,no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!”

In addition to cursing America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after September 11, 2001 that the U. S. had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than ... Read More...

On March 12…five days ago which is like a century in politics…I wrote that the Chicago area media have been going soft on things to criticize in the liberal Democratic party while continually harping on how loony Jim Oberweis is—and I cited as evidence of such overlook the twin cases of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the anti-white, anti-US bigot who is Barack Obama’s pastor and…ahem…the pompous Reverend/Senator James Meeks of Salem Baptist Church who juggles contributions to his 501c3 church and partisan corporate and individual donations to his political career. I said that because the Chicago media are cowered for fear of being called racist, the transgressions of these two black ministers have been long ignored.

Well, they are still ignored by the Chicago media—but the national media, rising to their role as (supposed) evenhanded arbiter of the political scene, got off their duff having worried about (a) Mitt Romney’s religion ... Read More...

Throughout it all the un-calibrated, unexpected, improbable, impromptu and thoroughly vexing manifestations of the human condition…what British Prime Minister Harold McMillan called “events, my dear boy, events!”…change history more than any plotting or strategizing. And so: was what happened to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer yesterday confounding? Spitzer was found to be a patron of an expensive prostitution ring in Washington and was captured on tape negotiating with a woman with whom he was to meet at the Mayflower hotel.

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Democrat Bill Foster’s election as 14th district congressman over Jim Oberweis by a margin of 5,000 or so votes…winning 53 to 47…proved several things—to me at least.

1. Are we going to have to wait until Big Jim Oberweis spends ALL his money in primary elections after primary elections before we’re through with him? This exercise has little to do with politics of public policy but to prove to himself that he is loved—and after he loses, to prove at least one time that he’s loved. Those who know Oberweis well know this is clear. A string of consecutive losses are not hard to explain and may have more to do with this intransigent effort to prove something to himself to compensate for a shriveled ego rather than anything else. Suppose the nation had to endure re-runs for the presidency with Bob Dole, with ever diminishing returns in an ... Read More...

With Hillary Clinton back in the race, it is clear that Bill Clinton’s gutsy stratagem has won. It was a noble one for a formerly straying husband determined to make amends to his wife by laying down his reputation for her benefit. Highly criticized by an emotional and adolescent mainstream media who assume a black candidate must be treated more tenderly than anyone else, it was a magnificent gesture of husbandly self-sacrifice to a wife who had been humiliated.

By a few strokes, slick Willie changed the definition of his wife’s opponent who was on the way to more than nomination but canonization. Before Clinton took up the cudgel, Barack Obama was as non-controversial and as white-appearing as the Pillsbury doughboy plus the pillar of rectitude, the non-confrontational unifier of the nation who caused even Brian Williams of NBC to complain that it was insuperably difficult for the media ... Read More...

Divine providence has a special interest in looking out for straying puppies, drunks and the Republican party.

It seemed to do so tonight with the nomination of John McCain. While not my first or second choice…and not the prime choice of many conservatives…it turns out that the Vietnam war hero is indeed the logical man if there can be found anyone who can lead the Republican party to presidential victory. And it will not be easy. I am not optimistic. Already the innate flexibility that has been woven into the political fabric and which has saved the nation from ideological wars and multi-parties has taken hold once again…and McCain is coming home after pique and past resentments to the conservatism he once embraced. He is indeed the Republican Man of the Hour.

What he must do is to (a) get some rest, (b) take over command of the Republican National ... Read More...

All conservatives, indeed all Americans, owe William F. Buckley enormously. You can’t imagine how poverty-stricken we were, bereft of conservative thought before he came along. Everything we had in the post FDR years was vestigial liberalism with no challenge. And then came 1955 the the year he began “National Review.” I was 27 at the time, already working for a living in Minnesota as researcher, organizer and speech-writer for the state’s GOP. Robert Taft had died two years earlier. The only thing we had to read was Robert R. McCormick’s “Tribune” eloquent editorials-and McCormick died April 1, 1955 which led to a winnowing down of the newspaper’s positions and the loss of its hardiness which continues even today (although it is improving vastly). There was a magazine that was very strange-“Freeman”-which was Ron Paul-style leave-us-alone libertarianism, pinched, crabbed, opposed to making any stand whatsoever against Communism despite that ... Read More...

Just when the presidential campaign had degenerated into arcane bickering over who stole whose words…whether Hillary pilfered Obama’s “I’m fired up!” rhetoric or how Obama appropriated the catchwords of the Massachusetts governor to defend his (Obama’s) reliance on vague, misty poetic allusions, the campaign has turned exciting with the prospect of a real sex scandal. Huzzza!

The “New York Times” uncovers the a supposedly good looking female lobbyist, a partner at Alkcade & Fay, Vicki Iseman, had spent a good deal of time hanging around McCain’s office eight years ago. And she accompanied him on her client’s (Home Shopping Network chief) Lowell Paxon’s corporate jet. There is even a hint of romantic interest by the two although both deny it.

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For several times in this presidential campaign, the Obamas have been caught seeming rather embarrassed about their country and old-fashioned patriotism.

And it’s not by happenstance or accident. Barack Obama, the rock-star who sets crowds of young philistines swaying who are too young and too ignorant to know who Che Guevara was but who thrill to the coolness of revolution, purposely disdained wearing the American flag symbol on his lapel because purportedly patriotism is too intrinsic to be worn as an ornament. He has been photographed many times during playing of the national anthem with his hands at his side rather than his hand on his heart as candidates for office have been doing for decades. When questioned: oh, patriotism is too precious to be trivialized in this way. One time in a debate he seemingly let slip a view, but he caught himself, that at last he can be ... Read More...

John Stroger The newspaper and electronic obits said it as eloquently as they could for John Stroger without being struck by a lightning bolt generated by an angry God who desires some reportorial honesty. They decorously omitted the imperfections. He was a symbol of equality of opportunity in the Democratic machine. Before he came along, the big jobs…save only Bill Dawson’s (and his congressional seat was dependent on the black South Side)…were for pink-cheeked and pinky-ring fingered venal Irishmen and some eastern European hacks. John Stroger paid his dues, hunkered down, became a plantation worker for the Daleys and others, bided his time and rose to president of the Cook county board. They say he was a gentleman. Yes he was. I met with him a number of times and he always remembered to ask about an African American friend of mine with the elegant name of John Tobias Dixon ... Read More...

Every day I meet Republicans who believe somehow that things are as good for them today as they were in the hey-day of the Reagan years…so they allow that if McCain is nominated, they would “hold their nose’ and they cannot abide Huckabee and Romney is a issues shifter.

They should understand that 2008 may well be 1974, the Watergate year, and they shouldn’t be so cocky but be glad that anybody of any quality decided to run for president on their party’s line. Americans regard the Democrats as more competent than the Republicans by a margin of 5 to 3, more ethical by 2 to 1. They prefer Democratic policies to Republican ones from healthcare to taxes. The economy may be tailing south. The Republicans have a Rudy Giuliani with too much personal baggage plus prostate cancer. Fred Thompson is the first actor candidate to pout people to sleep ... Read More...

Hard Work—Not a Snap of the Fingers.

One of the more ridiculous debates going on in the Democratic party primary rages between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama’s people charge that Clinton is disparaging the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. because she has said that achieving civil rights takes more than a flurry of speeches. As everyone knows, the argument is valueless. The civil rights movement needed Martin Luther King to make the case and provide a sterling example. It also needed legislative craftsmanship to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the Congress. The skills of movement motivation which touched the conscience of America and legislative leadership worked in tandem.

Hillary made the perfectly reasonable statement that following King’s crusade and assassination, it took tough political action in the Congress by the Johnson administration to pass civil rights gains. For proof, read it again in my “Flashback” ... Read More...

Results From Both Party Primaries Certifies That Thanks to Obama, The Next President Could Be John McCain.

Projections by Fox News as of 8: 50 p.m. Iowa time were for the Democrats: Obama…37%; Edwards…30.9%...Clinton…29.68%.

For the Republicans: Huckabee…34%;; Romney…25%; Thompson…14%; McCain …13%...Giuliani…11%....Paul…10%.

I will assume these numbers hold or at least aren’t turned upside down by some quirk. If so, I want to take the Democrats first because the numbers will affect the Republican choice ultimately as well. We must remember that all along, Republicans have been facing the specter of 2008 being a variant of 1974 after Watergate. But the rise of Barack Obama gives us the chance to forestall that calamity.

That is because, given the makeup of the Democratic party today, Obama runs as very-very strong chance of taking the Democratic nomination. The reason I have been writing so tediously (to some people’s minds about McCarthy and ... Read More...

George Will is not all that hard to figure out. He just wants to be. So he will start a column something like this (a parody):

“DES MOINES, Ia.—As every Iowa schoolchild knows, the first known caucus in the Western world was convened at Lillebonne, France in 1066 in the form of an assembly of French mercenaries by one William the Bastard who, after his victory at Hastings, became known as William the Conqueror.”.

Well, thirty years of this kind of thing wearies me. And maybe you. But I doggedly work through it. Yesterday, however, in the “Tribune” was not work worthwhile. So you do not have the same experience, I will parse with you.

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DePaul University should be stripped of its designation as a “Catholic” university.

And not just for the reason that makes it no different from all other.

Sure, as with many other venerable Catholic schools, it waters down the teachings of the Church into a one-of-many options-an amalgam of views-without singling out any one objective truth. That goes for most of the colleges called “Catholic.” But with DePaul there are decidedly other factors, as this long study engaged by me-a former DePaul graduate student and an adjunct professor there and at a host of other schools, secular and Catholic for more than 30 years-proves.

The rap on DePaul that should deny it the name “Catholic” is this: In theology as in academic practice it is a psychedelic mockery of what a university is meant to be. It has gone berserk with at least two major derelictions.

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Dear “Sun-Times.”

I should let you in on a little news. Your coverage of the Henry Hyde funeral by Dan Rozek missed a significant news story. Paragraph 2: “The longtime Republican legislator, who led a successful effort to ban federal funding of abortions and an unsuccessful attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton… ” Uh, the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton was successful. On December 19, 1998 the House voted to impeach him. The charges were one count of perjury and obstruction of justice. What you should have said was that Hyde “led a successful attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton” but the Senate with a two-thirds majority needed to convict did not do so. On perjury, the count being 45 votes for conviction and 55 against; on obstruction of justice, 50–50 with five Republicans voting against.

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