Chicago Daily Observer

So the fox says to thefarmer, “Hey, don’t fix the henhouse door, just buy more chickens.”

That’s pretty much the same advice that you, as Illinois voters, are about to be spoon fed.

Big business, big labor and some “good government” groups have teamed up to urge a “no” vote this November on the constitutional convention ballot question. They’re planning to spend $3 million on TV and other advertising.

Illinois voters are given a choice every 20 years about whether to call a “con-con,” and in 1988 the ballot question was defeated.

The entire Illinois establishment was opposed to a constitutional convention back then, including most newspapers. But 2008 is a whole lot different than 1988, when the political world was pretty stable here and most things were on track.

“A mess” hardly begins to describe our current state political situation. Some have suggested that voters might be so fed ... Read More...

According to David McCullough, Harry S. Truman was supposedly fond of making the observation that the only thing new under the sun is the history that you do not know. How right the haberdasher from Independence, Missouri was!

Although he never attended college,“Give’ Em Hell Harry” was an avid reader. Sadly, many disinterested people would never know it because they care nothing for the past and have little patience for current events. Some contemporary cynics call these people “Democrats.”

One of my cousins refuses to watch black and white movies because they are “too old fashioned.” From the standpoint of cinematography and film preservation, black and white film stock is arguably a much more expressive and permanent medium than colored film. More importantly, I think that some younger viewers are missing out when they refuse to watch older films. Many of the scripts filmed when the production code was still ... Read More...

Arguably the biggest local election this fall will be for Cook County state’s attorney, where Democrat Anita Alvarez will try to hold off Republican Tony Peraica. If you think about it, Alvarez is kind of a Peraica Bizarro (if it’s not the other way around). Peraica, a former precinct captain for Bill Lipinski, lost a couple runs for office as a Democrat before switching parties and winning a suburban seat on the Cook County board in 2002. Now he encounters the stench of Democratic Party corruption everywhere he turns, and without fail finds it loathsome and campaign-worthy—he just can’t find enough opportunities to talk to the press about problems with the county jail, the county sales tax, or the county board president.

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In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced ... Read More...

Dirk McQuigley at The Daily Kos thinks the Maureen Dowd and the New York Times are simply taking PR from the Obama campaign, and calling it evidence of the press trumpeting Sen. Obama moving towards a less radical-more centrist campaign. Peter Wirs at Townhall sees insertion of PR from the Obama campaign into major media op-ed pieces as a pattern of consistent with the media spiking methods of David Axelrod. Read More...

HT: Media Alert following Rahm Emanuel and Freddie Mac, finding a 2006 story

Freddie Mac, the home mortgage powerhouse, agreed on Tuesday to pay $3.8 million in civil penalties to the Federal Election Commission, which had accused it of improperly funneling corporate executives’ donations to candidates and holding lavish fund-raisers that often benefited congressmen on an influential House committee.

It is the largest fine that the F.E.C. has obtained in a civil case.

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