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...