Fair Enough

Those who say there’s no politics to cover (attention: Carol Marin who shows us she’s one of the Springfield in-crowd by naming an Italian watering hole there) either purposely or by indisposition ignore one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in Illinois—the voting procedure scandal of March 21. There still is no precinct-by-precinct tally from the screw-up that Langdon Neal of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners engineered with $28 million in federal money (thanks, GWB!) with a California firm, Sequoia, a firm which may well be a front to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez which was approved without the o.k. of the Cook county Board. The foul-up was one of the most egregious in the nation, easily topping the Florida 2000 which dealt with hanging chads—well known to anyone who could calculate what would happen in a hair-line presidential election.

Now behind closed-doors, the talk is that in the future the vote counting will not be done in the precincts but at a central point in the county—downtown. That should bring chills to anyone’s heart—particularly this Blog who ran Project LEAP during the bad old days of the first Boss Daley.

Why no stories from the Sun-Times or Trib? Remember all the angry editorials, particularly written by Chicago’s “Bright One” during Florida? Why is it mum here?...

Who couldn’t support Pat Quinn’s bill to bar protesters—be they the crazy God-will-get-you-if-you’re-gay crazies or anti-Iraq war frenzies--at military funerals?…The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest, long-running national Catholic weekly gives front-page banner-line treatment to my story about how Illinois Catholic pastors are snubbing the proposed Marriage Amendment despite support of the amendment by all the state’s bishops including Francis Cardinal George, including some top-drawer wealthy suburban parishes where spine-less pastors worry they might offend somebody. Right: don’t make waves, don’t offend: just like Jesus Christ did. I’ll post The Wanderer article soon. But Catholics who read this should break down and subscribe to the only Catholic paper with guts and heart to match.

At 8:30 a.m. Mass this morning (Thursday) at Park Ridge’s St. Paul of the Cross which I attend every day, the homilist simply noted that there are forces trying to challenge the traditional concept of marriage—one man plus one woman…whereupon one guy in the pews shouted out, “Don’t try to politicize this!” Politicize something mentioned by God in the first chapter of Genesis? They should have thrown him out. With requisite charity, of course…

Anne Burke, scheduled to be named by the Illinois Supreme Court to its membership following the resignation of Justice Mary Anne McMorrow, deserves great credit for taking independent stands (in particular for calling the turn on ghastly priestly pedophilia)—but she shouldn’t kid us about how she made it on her own. Husband Alderman Eddie, the ace slater of judges in the Illinois Democratic party, so arrogant he surveys his own greatness, originally slated McMorrow who returns the favor by recommending

Burke’s wife. That’s old patriarchal politics. Anne was slated for appellate by her husband’s influence. In claiming she’s got there on her own, slow-down. After hubby did the initial slating and grunt work. When you were coming up, Anne, age 62, few women made it on their own so don’t try to fake it and dismiss super-aldermanic, if obnoxious, hubby. Still, you’re a lot better than he…and you did especially well in an extra-judicial capacity by standing up to the bureaucratic bishops of your Church. But as for that idea of doing it all on your own? You can’t con a con…

What is this—big, tough man stuff? Speaker Mike Madigan running out of words in the English vocabulary to deny he is not trying to politically wound Gov. Blagojevich—so barren of vocabulary that he said “I’m not trying to [obscene expletive] the governor” to a news source three times this week and then had his spokesman call back to be sure the writer used the word?