Chicago Daily Observer

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...

Whatever the outcome of the Tony Rezko trial, it has had one salutary effect: The uselessness of another government bureaucracy is on full display

I’m referring to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which was created in 1974 with the misguided notion that health care costs could be controlled by government clamping down on hospital construction.

Rezko is charged with stocking the board with an acquiescent majority, which he used to try to engineer board decisions for kickbacks. At Rezko’s instructions, according to testimony in the trial, that board approved a new hospital in Crystal Lake, even though state health experts said the Crystal Lake hospital wasn’t needed. Expertise has a way in Chicago and Illinois of collapsing in the face of hurricanes fueled by greed and corruption.

As interesting as the testimony in the lengthy trail has been, detailing the ins and outs of the arcane form of government ... Read More...

Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he had publicly and repeatedly cited as his mentor and had named as a campaign advisor? Whom he chose to perform his wedding and baptize his two daughters?

Because, until then, we were in the midst of Phase I—preventative medicine—of the media’s version of campaign health care for the Senator’s Presidential bid. Call it the Plan to Protect Obama (PPO).

In giving out up and down arrows for the week, Newsweek has proven itself once again to be suffering from an acute case of Obamamania.

Sean Hannity along with Rush receive a down arrow for using “race-baiting to score ratings. Now that’s hating America.” I would assume that’s for them playing Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speeches. Now, of course, Newsweek doesn’t quote any race-baiting comments but just trust them on this one.

And then somehow after suffering one of the most impressive political implosions in recent memory Barack Obama merits only a sideways arrow with this message: “Will the greatest speech in recent history get him sidelined as a “black candidate”?

I’m sorry? The greatest speech in recent history? How recent? Like in the past week? I think Newsweek may have a Obamamania problem. Someone call for help.

The GOP appears to be settling on concrete mogul Martin Ozinga as its nominee to try to hang on to the congressional seat now held by retiring U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Morris.

Knowledgeable party sources describe Mr. Ozinga, 58, as “the consensus candidate” and say he is likely to be formally made the party’s nominee when 11th-District committeemen meet on April 30. The party’s previous nominee, New Lennox Mayor Tim Baldermann, withdrew after the February primary, creating a vacancy on the November ballot.