Fiefdom politics in Cook County

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Aristocracy --Government by a small group of people, especially hereditary nobility.

Or maybe feudalism is a more apt description of Cook County government as run by Democratic Party bosses, as they demonstrated last week by installing the unqualified Todd Stroger as the next lord of the realm.

Feudalism --The dominant social system in medieval Europe in which the nobility held lands from the crown, in exchange for military service. Vassals, in turn, were tenants of the nobles. Their serfs were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor and a share of the produce, in exchange for military protection.

Just substitute "government jobs" for "land" and you're on your way to understanding the dominant political system in medieval Cook County. Like serfs and vassals, the patronage workers give the lord homage, labor and a share of the political produce, in exchange for job protection.

It took Europeans centuries to free themselves from the servitude of feudalism. How long will it take for the voters and taxpayers of Cook County? If they don't do it now, they'll never do it.

Because they will have demonstrated that there is no insult, no abuse they cannot endure.

Yet, there's hope. They'll need a plan to combat the blindly loyal serfs as they come marching out of Castle Stroger during the campaign to inflict grave wounds on the citizens of Cook County. It would take:

- An uprising of Democrats. Not as far-fetched as it seems. Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool received almost half of the vote in the Democratic primary for County Board president. True, Todd Stroger's father John, the incumbent Claypool challenged, had just suffered a stroke, making his ability to handle the job suspect. And some Republicans were crossing over to vote for Claypool, believing it was their best bet for cleaning up government. Still, many Democrats did show an ability to protest the many failings of the "system" by voting against the elder Stroger.

- Fed up African-American voters. Predictions that they'll dutifully vote for Todd Stroger because of his race imply an insulting stereotype. Perhaps some black voters may look at it this way: Stroger is a creature of a political organization headed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the same man who as state's attorney outrageously ignored the warning signs that Jon Burge and other police detectives were torturing African-American suspects.

Moreover, some black voters might not buy the deeply flawed logic that the endless nepotism of white politicians justifies the same fault in black politicians. And some black voters might be just as sick as white voters of "the way things are," as they most assuredly are in county government. And that the Stroger anointment is simply another example of fiefdom politics as practiced by the Daley vassals on the Cook County Democratic Central Committee.

- Democratic social liberals with a conscience. As much as they would loathe to vote for anyone who doesn't share their views (such as some social conservatives), they might dampen their ideological purity to do something right and vote for Todd Stroger's opponent, Republican Commissioner Tony Peraica.

- Seriously reinvigorated county GOP. Might the business and civic leaders who have signed on to the Daley-Stroger-Democratic organization decide for once to support their natural allies in the GOP?

Those are a lot of ifs, but with regular GOP voters, maybe they can build a new reform coalition that can end the practices that Todd Stroger's puppeteers represent. The puppeteers' strategy, of course, will be to argue that he is independent, competent and a refreshingly new voice for honest and efficient government. Maybe the strategy will work because the rest of us will be laid up, our sides split from laughter, and unable to make it to the polls.

What does Stroger represent? Consider: His biography shows a long series of government jobs, while proudly proclaiming that in 1994 he joined the SBK-Brooks Investment Corp., even though his resume shows no prior investment banking experience. Maybe his old man didn't clout Todd into the job. But the regional investment banking firm's Web site lists its involvement as co-manager of more than $1 billion in bond deals with Cook County and additional hundreds of millions with other Illinois and local governments.

Draw your own conclusions. Mine is: If Stroger is elected, nothing will change. Absolutely nothing.

Bring in the Troops

By Dennis Byrne

Leaders call for international military force to impose peace in worsening Israeli, Lebanon conflict--News item.

Gee, now why didn't someone think of that sooner? Like 45 years ago?

You'd think that there would have been calls for an international military force years ago to keep Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of that bunch from cutting each other up. After all, similar calls have routinely gone out to cool bloodthirsty conflicts in places like the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda. So, why doesn't the same logic apply to protecting innocent lives in Israel and surrounding lands?

Maybe it has something to do with the last time the United States tried it in 1983. More than 200 Marines died in their Beirut barracks from a terrorist bombing. The U.S. hightailed it out of there and never returned.

Now United Nations Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan has called for the deployment of a multilateral force to Lebanon. So has British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said, "The blunt reality is that this violence is not going to stop unless we create the conditions for the cessation of violence. The only way is if we have a deployment of international forces that can stop bombardment coming into Israel."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly opposed the plan, based on the belief that it won't work while also depriving Israel of the right to defend itself. Instead, according to some reports, he wants Lebanese forces to take control of the border and disarm the Hezbollah, the terrorist group which set off this most recent havoc.

What Lebanese forces? Olmert must be making a joke.

Continue at realclearpolitics.com

In search of employment

Will Chicago aldermen suffer an outbreak of good sense and reject a city wage law?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

We suburbanites will have to send Chicago City Council members our thanks if they make it harder for big retail stores to operate in the city.

It'll mean more sales and property tax revenue for our local governments, more jobs for our residents, more money for us.

Obviously (to everyone but the aldermen), Chicago aldermen would better serve their constituents by welcoming the business of the Wal-Marts, Targets, Kmarts and other "big box" retailers into depressed city neighborhoods whose residents really need the jobs.

But some aldermen are poised to adopt an ordinance on July 26 telling retailers with Chicago stores of more than 90,000 square feet or more than $1 billion in gross sales how much to pay their employees who work more than five hours a week. (They'd also tell them they couldn't refuse to hire convicts.)

For the "nonpartisan" Economic Policy Institute--which regularly supports such liberal causes--the ordinance is of global importance. Chicago, it exclaimed, is in the "throes of fundamental debate about the future direction of the American economy and its workers, one that touches on our most pressing concerns, from globalization to the role of government."

For this Washington-based group, it should be no big deal for Chicago to slit its own throat by adopting an ordinance that would require a minimum starting wage of $10 an hour and $3 an hour of health-care benefits by 2010. Its "analysis" said it would merely increase the price of a pair of $1 Wal-Mart socks less than a cent. Or reduce its profit margin by less than a percentage point.

"A more logical course of action by a well-run company would be to reduce their work force by 20 percent," responded David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association. The trade group figures that the ordinance would increase labor costs 40 percent to 50 percent in stores that have an average profit margin of just 1 percent to 2 percent. It also argues that any government-imposed increased labor costs should be across-the-board nationally, to avoid discriminating against larger businesses or certain geographic areas.

But it doesn't really matter whether prices increase a penny, nickel or dime. What counts is what the retailers think, because they are free to open or close stores wherever they want. This does not make them evil, no more than shopping for the best bargain or searching for a higher-paying job makes you evil. It makes them businesspeople, although in some people's eyes, that automatically makes them evil. If they conclude that the economics of doing business in the city won't work, then they won't do business in the city. Simple as that.

And if they decide to take their business elsewhere, who will that hurt? Chicago's unemployed citizens who live in neighborhoods with high joblessness. Those with limited skills who are looking for entry-level jobs. The city's employed who, again, will have to find a way to get to the more numerous suburban jobs. Chicago shoppers who will have to go the extra mile to find a wider, better and more affordable selection of merchandise. But nuts to them; the aldermen have bigger fish to fry.

You'd think that the aldermen would have learned by now. A few years ago, they rejected a Wal-Mart proposal to build two stores in Chicago. The council only allowed one--on the West Side--forcing the company to find a site in Evergreen Park. Some 25,000 people applied for the 325 jobs in the store, which produced about $1 million in sales and property taxes for the suburb. Money and jobs Chicago could have had.

Why are aldermen acting so stupidly? To placate organized labor, which wants government to do the union's work for it by enforcing wage and work rules that it can't bargain into place by itself. As usual, its handmaidens are aldermen who value the political organizing muscle and campaign contributions that labor provides more than the good of their city.

But, you never know when a majority of aldermen might suffer an outbreak of good sense and reject the ordinance. So let's get in touch with them now, to encourage them to do what's good for the suburbs. We suburbanites also should encourage organized labor to keep up its pressure on the aldermen. Because that's how the "city that works" works so well for suburbanites.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Independence Day for City Hall

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Political consultant David Axelrod is absolutely right: Whatever federal juries may conclude about the illegalities of the Chicago patronage system, the voters of Chicago will re-elect Mayor Richard M. Daley, if he decides to run.

Maybe even if he decides not to run. Maybe without any opposition, even Spanky the Clown.

No matter how many indictments U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald obtains against patronage gatekeepers, grafters, insiders and schemers. Or how many federal juries convict the system's practitioners, as one did last week with Daley's former top patronage aide and three others on charges arising from a system of placing campaign workers on the city payroll.

Axelrod last week explained on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" that voters would re-elect Daley because he's a great mayor who has done wonderful things for the city. And, as Axelrod implied in an article he wrote last year for the Tribune's Perspective section, the alternative of a system in which workers aren't recommended by "elected officials, business, labor and community leaders" is as scary as the federal bureaucracy. As the widely accepted (in Chicago) argument goes: Hiring sponsored workers makes them more responsive to their bosses and their bosses more accountable to voters.

Except the patronage system is not as benign as Axelrod and its supporters would have it. No need to go over the evidence of how the system has dumped incompetents into such important positions that are supposed to protect public safety. Someone needs to explain how the existence of thousands of incompetents, slackers and no-shows on the public payroll makes for a better city. And how workers responsible only to their political sponsors ensure quality. Yeah sure, thousands of energetic and competent workers are on the payroll, and so what? Aren't they all supposed to be energetic and competent? Isn't that what taxpayers are paying for?

Those who argue that a well-oiled machine makes for a "wunnerful" city engage in a fundamental logical error: The simultaneous presence of a patronage army and the existence of a viable city is not automatic proof that the first causes the second.

Dare I suggest that things beyond Daley's patronage workers, contractor buddies and City Hall itself may also account for Chicago's success? That the city rose on an expanding national economy and lifestyle choices made by yuppies and others who value urban living? Or that the city's success came in spite of a system that encourages dishonesty and corruption?

This apparently is a hard concept for Chicago voters to grasp, as they reliably march to the polls to ratify misconduct and fraud. Among their numbers are the tens of thousands who directly benefit, through jobs and contracts. And the tens of thousands more who indirectly benefit from relatives and friends on the payroll. And the uncounted more in business, labor, civic and neighborhood organizations who buy their way inside. Also include the misguided who honestly believe that illegality is necessary for success, illegal as in violating civil and criminal law.

Such is Chicago's lore, fed by those of us in the media who enjoy writing about it, who value graft for its humor and entertainment. Reformers like Robert Merriam and Martin Kennelly are mocked as ineffective daydreamers, and perhaps they were. While newspaper editorial boards are fuming about corruption, favoritism, secrecy and nepotism at the city, county and state levels, commentators, historians, authors and others are getting their jollies describing the goofiness and grittiness of it all. It's all part of the city's patina.

What I'm trying to say is that the network of political, business, labor, community, media and other interests has become so invested in the system that few are left to risk being labeled excessively moralistic for protesting the "way things work."

One clear symptom is the nearly complete absence of what used to be a vibrant community of political independents, something of a loyal opposition that brought the force of conscience into the public arena. Nobody wants to be a "do-gooder." How ironic, then, that Daley recently complained about the City Council messing around with a proposal to ban Chicago restaurants from using cooking oils that contain trans fats. Maybe if he gave the aldermen something real to do, they wouldn't be wasting the taxpayers' time with such nonsense.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Save Patrick Fitzgerald

By Dennis Byrne

President Bush faces a major test of his integrity when, or if, he ever gets around to reappointing Patrick Fitzgerald as U.S. Attorney in Chicago.

The nation needs to know that Bush's failure to back Fitzgerald will betray a gapping hole in the conscience of the president. While most of America may think of Fitzgerald as the aggressive prosecutor in the Valerie Plame affair and the bombing of the World Trade Center, those of us in Chicago have a closer view of the man.

He is one of the few government officials left in Chicago and Illinois that loathes corruption, and who is in a position to do something about as the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois.

In that role, he has put away former Illinois Gov. George Ryan and a host of other grafters. He is scrutinizing current Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration for its hiring practices. And he is hot on the trail of the corruption that pervades Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's City Hall. Score another for Fitzgerald as a federal jury this week convicted Daley's patronage chief and three other men on charges that they engaged in an elaborate and long-running scheme to reward the mayor's campaign workers with choice jobs.

Read more at realclearpolitics.com

Contorting the law as a rebuke

By Dennis Byrne

Now that we've exhausted ourselves arguing the politics of the U.S. Supreme Court's "repudiation" of the Bush administration's handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, maybe we can take a closer look at the decision itself.

Whatever you think of Thursday's ruling that gives Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard the same protections as prisoners of war who fight in uniform and by the rules, the path to this conclusion was twisting, indeed.

For example: Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision, said the war against terror is not an "international conflict." He had to say this to arrive at the conclusion that the detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, is just another prisoner of war who deserves the same legal protections as our own soldiers under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You'd have to read his opinion to fathom his reasoning, but to suggest that the terrorist war being waged against us is just some localized conflict defies fact.

He also said (as paraphrased from the case syllabus):

- It is "unsound" to presume that the field-grade military officer who would preside over Hamdan's case would conduct the proceedings "in good faith and according to law." Why? Because if his prison sentence is "less than 10 years," he has no right to a federal court review of the commission's decision. (In other words, a military judge would be so biased that he would allow Hamdan off with less than a 10-year sentence, just to escape an appeal. Amazing.) And because he "will be and, indeed, already has been excluded from his own trial." Excluded?

Read on.

- It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions to prevent Hamdan from sitting and listening to classified evidence against him. That would include information about who turned him in, how the government tracks terrorists and a load of other intelligence useful to them. It's not enough that Hamdan's appointed military counsel has access to all that information. Never mind that the judge is not required to exclude Hamdan; the rules only gave the judge the discretion to--but then again, we can't trust the judge.

- While Hamdan is charged with conspiracy, that crime has "rarely if ever been tried as such" by any U.S. military commission, nor does the charge appear in the Geneva or The Hague Conventions. Here I guess that Stevens means that because war criminals are rarely tried for conspiracy, Hamdan and others should never be tried for it. By the way, our own soldiers can be tried for conspiracy under the UCMJ, but I guess that part of the code doesn't apply to Hamdan.

- Even if he could be charged with conspiracy, the commission wouldn't have jurisdiction to try Hamdan on it because he is not "alleged to have committed any overt act in a theater of war or on any specified date after Sept. 11, 2001." As if the United States isn't in the theater of war. As if post-Sept. 11 acts are beyond the commission's reach.

- Common Article 2 of Geneva Conventions doesn't apply; Common Article 3 does. This takes some explaining. Article 2 says signatories to the convention (meaning us) have to abide by the provisions of the convention only if the other side (Al Qaeda) accepts those provisions. Since we can't just dial up bin Laden to ask whether he would refrain from taking hostages--as if we didn't know the answer--it's clear, to me anyway, that the Geneva Conventions don't apply. Stevens, however, just brushes aside Article 2, as if it didn't exist. Article 3, which provides some protections for Hamdan, applies, Stevens said, because the war on terror isn't an international war (there it is again).

By most accounts, Article 3 was meant for internal civil wars, and Article 2 for international wars. Here's the exact language of the convention: Article 3 applies in cases of "armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one or more of the [signatories]." Article 2 says signatories shall be "bound by the Convention in relation to the [non-signer], if the latter accepts and applies the provisions there of."

I'm not a lawyer, but I can read. And what I read is a desperate effort by one of the court's most liberal members to twist the law to obtain the desired outcome, which is "a stunning rebuke" to the Bush administration.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Cutting Through the Hyperbole on Hamdan

By Dennis Byrne

With all the confusion, rushed judgments and overheated rhetoric created by the U.S. Supreme Court's Hamdan complex decision, it's perhaps best to first look at what it does not do.

It does not:

• Satisfy the supposed demands of "world opinion:" the closing of the Guantanamo Bay camp and the immediate release of its detainees.

• Free Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the acknowledged driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

• Exclude Hamdan from a court martial or, if Congress decides, trail by a military tribunal.

• Say that Hamdan or any others cannot be held "for the duration of active hostilities."

• Require that he, or other detainees, be tried before a civilian court, as some anti-war activists had demanded.

• Prohibit the United States from detaining future enemy combatants.

Read the rest at RealClearPolitics.com

Guillen speaks: Do we really even care?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The men's locker room is where you get your butt snapped with a wet towel. Where names are called, insults hurled, dirty stories told and resounding belches brought up. All without penalty.

It's called "locker room humor" for a reason. It is the last refuge of what a clever TV commercial calls "man law," where indignities, slurs and various disparagements are as constitutionally protected as the practice of religion in Old St. Pat's. It is the male safety valve, as effective as a woman's gentle touch in an anxious moment. It is crude, ribald, sweaty, smelly and possessed of all the ambiance of a jockstrap hung out to dry.

By logical and lawful extension, the locker room includes the courtside bench, sidelines and, in baseball, the dugout, where White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen recently committed the capital offense of disparaging a local sports columnist by calling him a name that insults gays.

It has caused pandemonium. News stories have flashed around the world, describing his breach. Columnists and talk-show hosts issued condemnations. Activists and the targeted columnist--Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times--have called for Guillen's suspension, or worse. (Garroting has yet to come.) Of course, Mariotti has not noticed the irony of someone who has set world records for offending (that would be Mariotti) insisting that someone else should be removed, even temporarily, from his job for offending.

Losing a job for exercising a constitutionally protected right is a sanction that Guillen, and even Mariotti, should not suffer. But it appears that Major League Baseball has decided to succumb to the long arm of the "feelings" police. We now can truly say that no place is shielded from Big Brother's eyes and ears. We now, as a society, have become touchy beyond measure.

Nevermind the hypocrisy of it all. Up pops Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois (as his business plan requires) calling for "appropriate sanctions," including suspension for using the word. Here's someone who hurls his own insults, for example, by calling Cardinal Francis George a "bigot" and classifies those who disagree with him as "homophobes." Nevermind that Mariotti himself is one of the town's biggest name-callers.

True, Guillen could have called Mariotti something else; Guillen had so many fitting and accurate pejoratives to choose from. Also true, if Guillen had used any of those other pejoratives, sportswriters probably wouldn't have made much of it, because, charitably put, Mariotti is not the best loved by his colleagues.

Which brings up a question: Sportswriters unfailingly mention Guillen's penchant for using salty language. But much of that language never appears in print or on the air. So, why publish this one? No, seriously. Why publish one offensive thing and not publish another? Is there a hierarchy-of-insult list that someone keeps? Say "blah" and it gets on the news, but say "blah-blah" and it doesn't?

Actually, I've never understood how sportswriters work anyway. They're blessed by the fact that they've got plenty of drama to describe, right there on the field or court of play. All they have to do is show up at the assigned time. Usually with the benefit of preferred parking and preferred seats.

So, then, why is so much time spent describing the "action" in the locker room? And gathering post-game quotes? As I've said before, if the locker room action was more interesting than the on-field play, then viewers would be clamoring for more TV cameras in the locker rooms. We might even dispense with live TV coverage of the action.

Even more, this entire uproar occurred as the White Sox were clobbering one of the best teams in baseball, the team that was supposed to meet them in last year's World Series. That's enough excitement for me, and I bet if you asked most Chicagoans, it would be for them too. Most Chicagoans, I bet, would say that all this fighting over what Guillen can or cannot say sounds too much like manufactured news.

It's almost as if the White Sox had created a news vacuum by winning, and something stupid like this controversy had to be rushed in to fill it.

Copyright 2006, Chicago Tribune

Social Conservatives Were Right, Again

By Dennis Byrne

The number of the tributes in the mainstream media to dads over the Father's Day weekend was stunning, something that no one would have believed a decade ago.

Even liberal columnists were praising fathers, their own included, when not long ago it was a matter of progressive conviction to either ignore or ridicule the importance of fathers.

Even black columnists recently have been uttering the unthinkable, that the absence of fathers in the lives of African-American children has had a devastating impact of the social, psychological, economic and moral well being of their families. God bless them for having the courage to stand against same charges of racism that rained down on lonely social conservatives who were making the same point years ago.

Continue at RealClearPolitics.com

Bush Playing Like a Big Leaguer Again

By Dennis Byrne

Oops, President George Bush's approval rating has started to inch back up, so we media need to do something about it.

I got it; let's hint around that Bush was a coward for visiting Baghdad's "Green Zone," the protected American sector but, which we won't mention, is within range of mortars, etc.

News person Claire Shipman beat me to it on ABC's Good Morning America when she concluded her report on the president's surprise trip to Iraq: "There's a flip side of course; the fact that the president...had...to...sneak...into Baghdad [emphasis not added] hardly suggests a situation nearing stability there."

Back to you Robin Roberts at the anchor desk, for an endorsement: "Good point," Roberts seconded.

Good thing we had Claire to point it out; many people otherwise might have thought that Bush was on a stroll through Ramadi without a flack jacket. If you missed Claire's report, others showed up to remind us that Bush was cowering in an impenetrable stockade. Everyone from the left-wing flamers at the Guardian to Workers World. Which tells you the value of that commentary

Continue at realclearpolitics.com

Who's running Cook County?

By Dennis Byrne

Chicago John Stroger's family and friends are doing the Cook County Board president no favors by keeping his true medical condition a secret from the public.

If Stroger, 77, is healthy, as they say he is, then one hopes that he would order his doctors to make the kind of medical disclosures one expects from important public officials, including the president of the United States, who are "suspected" of being incapacitated.

I say suspected because months after his serious stroke on March 14, Cook County voters, to whom Stroger is accountable, still don't know if he is capable of running a $3 billion enterprise.

Yet last week when Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica (R-Riverside), Stroger's Republican opponent for the board presidency, reasonably asked for a doctor's accounting, some county commissioners turned on him with ridicule and anger.

It's disrespectful, they said. John Daley, chairman of the county's Finance Committee, declared it to be a "damn disgrace."

No, here's the disgrace: that tin-pot politicians on their high horses think that we are not entitled to know. That they are such vassals that, even though they're legally responsible for running the government, they're perfectly willing to be kept in Kremlin-like ignorance.

Those who demand to know Stroger's true condition are not the ones who are stomping on his dignity. It's Stroger's gatekeepers who are turning this process into an inexcusable joke.

This is such a high-stakes game that the insiders (the Stroger family?) dared to tell Rev. Jesse Jackson to take a hike when he asked to visit the president. Jackson, who has mediated international disputes, can't even get through the door on this one.

I hope that Stroger returns in good health to seek re-election. But if he does return, his health and the secrecy that surrounded his rehabilitation will be a suitable topic for debate, in addition to his record as president.

Read on

Leslie Pinney, a member of the Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 board, didn't deserve the tarring she got when she tried to exercise board control over what students are required to read.

I emphasize "required" because she wasn't trying to tell students what they "can" or "cannot" read, as at least one student put it. She wasn't trying to "ban" books from the classroom or the library. She wasn't trying to "burn" books or conduct Hitlerian censorship, as others hysterically would have it.

She is no guiltier of trying to "ban" books than any schoolteacher who makes up a class reading list and leaves certain books off, for whatever reasons.

Get it straight: When a teacher makes up a required reading list, he is making a judgment about what is good for his students.

This is not a neutral action. It is giving official sanction to a value judgment. That parents can have their kids "opt out" of the list is not an adequate response to complaints about its content, no more than an opt-out option for non-believing students makes mandatory school prayer acceptable.

Pinney was doing what an elected member of an Illinois school board is obliged by law to do: set education policy. She is not preventing anyone from raising his children "the way I want to," as one overwrought critic said.

Yes, she had a different view about what is suitable for required reading than other board members, her critics and perhaps me. That is a proper matter for debate. But her right to challenge required reading lists cannot and must not be denied.

For those telling her to shut up and go away, a compulsory remedial logic course would be in order.

----------

E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Will Supreme Court take the side of parents on school choice?

Here's a lesson in how bad public policy spreads, until it becomes the law of the land.

The bad policy being: A plan that was designed to offer parents more “choice” in educating their children, actually turned into a state-concocted straightjacket requiring that some kids be bused across town, because they were the wrong race.

Continue reading at the Heartland Institute's blog, "From the Heartland." This is the first of what will be my regular contributions to the blog.

Pro-Gay Groups: Offer Your Own Amendment

By Dennis Byrne

Here's a suggestion: If pro-gay groups don't like the Marriage Protection Amendment--declaring that marriage in America shall consist solely of a union of a man and a woman--they should offer one of their own that will settle the issue once and for all.

The amendment would be as simple as the long-debated and failed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with the addition of one word and a small change to another:

"Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sexual orientation."

Then, let's see where the chips fall.

Continue at realclearpolitics.com

What will governor try to sell next?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune


What Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is trying to do to the state and its taxpayers used to be called "living out of the attic."

That's selling your assets in order to pay your everyday expenses, such as eating. Because you irresponsibly have been living beyond your paycheck, you must sell your car, furniture and first-born. Soon, your attic will be empty, and then how will you eat? Having sold off your house, where will you eat?

It's a recipe for disaster, as it is for the State of Illinois.

In Blagojevich's cynical attempt to (in the following order) get himself re-elected, cover up his gigantic fiscal mess and live the liberal dream of a cradle-to-grave caretaker state, the governor wants to sell our assets, most recently the lottery and tollway.

It's not the first time he's tried this scam. Three years ago, the Democratic governor was ready to put up the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago's Loop. The state office building is still in the hands of taxpayers, but no telling what he'll try next: Navy Pier, McCormick Place, U.S. Cellular Field, the state Capitol, state parks, the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Cicero, the governor's office?

Not that selling off some of the state's stuff is necessarily a bad idea. But when it's the only alternative left to balance the budget, then it is bad. It's a sure sign that the budget is nothing but a pile of rot. It is an act of desperation.

We're at this point because of Blagojevich's prior flimflams, such as raiding the state's pension fund. I suppose he could try to squeeze more money out of state retirees, but that would be too politically expensive.

Even the usual political allies are concerned. John Adler, of the Service Employees International Union, said selling the tollway could be perceived as the equivalent of Native Americans selling Manhattan Island for $24 in beads and trinkets.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, sent out a letter to fellow lawmakers raising serious questions about the lottery: "Let's slow down and take a look at what assets should be held perpetually in trust for the taxpayers. Is this the best way to fund education? How much would it generate and which schools would benefit? Will it lead to further state-sponsored gambling?"

Funny, those are the same kinds of questions that Republicans, including Blagojevich's GOP opponent, state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, are asking. They are not getting answers.

Republican state Sens. Peter Roskam, a west suburban congressional candidate, and Kirk Dillard want to know a potential sale's effect on suburban drivers. In case the governor hasn't noticed, the tollway serves the suburbs. Will their (increased) tolls be siphoned off, in effect, to benefit other areas of the state? Apparently, that's not a question that interests Blagojevich, as the Democrats (who run the tollway) failed to schedule any hearings on the proposal in DuPage or suburban Cook County, the tollway's two largest users.

The lottery, the governor claims, could go for $10 billion. But he refused to let anyone examine the study. It would be like sharing a sports playbook with an opposing team, his office said, meaning that companies interested in the lottery could use the information to bid lower.

Arrogant nonsense. Forget about the public's right to know. Any company that would spend $10 billion to buy a lottery will rely on its own study, not someone else's, to decide how much to bid.

Arrogant nonsense is all we've been getting from Blagojevich. Every week seems to bring more reason to regard Blagojevich as a dangerous windbag who will do anything to get re-elected. Most recently was the disclosure that the governor's aides, early in his administration, reviewed and approved hundreds of employment decisions, often by name--jobs that were supposed to go through the non-political civil service process. Or using the lottery idea to buy off state Sen. James Meeks, a Chicago independent who threatened to run against the governor.

All this from the guy who promised a new day of reform. One who has the feds sniffing around to find out if he has handed out jobs to campaign donors and political allies.

Sound familiar?

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E-mail dennis@dennisbyrne.net

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Remembering a Special Group: Draftees

By Dennis Byrne

This Memorial Day, I want to remember a special group of men who died for our country: draftees.

Time is running out, as the last men drafted in 1973 begin to fade from life and memory. And because several American generations have grown into manhood without knowing conscription, as the draft was otherwise called. They don't have a clue in these times of heightened self-interest, self-awareness, self-absorption and self-everything what is like to be told to march to your death.

This may come as a shock to some who believe that women, and men, have an absolute right to "control their bodies." The men who were drafted can testify that there is no such thing.

Read more at reaclclearpolitics.com

Board game: Don't ask, don't tell.Cook County voters should demand answers about John Stroger, or vote for GOP in the fall

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Only in Chicago would a candidate for public office demand proof that his opponent is alive.

Usually, that's a question reserved for certain mysterious voters.

But here comes the Republican candidate for Cook County Board president, Tony Peraica, demanding a "verifiable, objective message" that his Democratic opponent, the incumbent President John Stroger, is "alive and well enough to function."

Stroger has been hidden away--that's the only honest way to describe it--since a week before the March primary when he suffered a serious stroke. No one outside his immediate family, Rasputin or other select insiders knows whether he can run the nation's second-largest county. And in his absence, the county, whose $3 billion budget is bigger than that of many states, is being run by a shadow government.

If Cook County voters don't rebel against this sharp stick in their eye, then there's no hope, and they'll get what they deserve: continued bloated payrolls, incompetence, wasted taxes and who knows what else goes on behind the Kremlin-like walls of the County Building.

I can't say what would constitute a verifiable, objective message: maybe a tape of Stroger speaking from some secret place. Or a picture of him holding a newspaper's dated front page.

It is bad form to be talking this way about a man who may be teetering somewhere between a tragic situation and robust health. But that's exactly the point. The fact is that Stroger is missing, and all we have is the word of his son, Todd (who coincidentally wants his father's job), that John Stroger is, well, somewhere.

John Stroger's house reportedly has been sold and he, again according to Todd, has moved into a downtown high-rise condo outside of his South Side district.But Ald. Todd Stroger (8th) assures us that Pop will tell us his plans when he's ready. Don't ask when; it's all family business. As in: Royal Family. The House of Stroger. Even for a town that has been numbed by the stunning autocracy of the House of Daley, the arrogance of the Strogers--or whoever is pulling the puppet strings--is stunning.

The Cook County presidency is not a papacy in which we, the assembled masses, gather in the square awaiting puffs of white smoke. We don't even know which cardinals are meeting, or in what chapel, or their intrigues.

I am reminded of the review of the Chicago opening of Shakespeare's Henry IV by Tribune theater critic Chris Jones. Prince Hal thinks his father, Henry IV, has died and "then literally walks off with the crown." But the old man isn't dead; he roars back to life, and the rest can be seen at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

So, did Todd Stroger or a number of other Princes of the Machine try to walk off with the crown--until John Stroger became alert enough to roar back and pull their plugs? Did they try to tell him that he's in no shape to run the county? Is he?

Illinois law provides for the replacement of a Cook County Board president in case of death, resignation or other inability to act. It only takes a vote of the commissioners to choose one of their own as a replacement. Does a coalition of Republican, independent and non-servile Democratic commissioners have the guts to do it? When will the hearings begin to receive sworn testimony about Stroger's state of health and whether he is a capable of governing?

Cook County voters, of course, will have the final say. And they ought to consider Peraica, a Croatian orphan who came here as a teen unable to speak English and made something of himself: a successful lawyer, civic activist and County Board commissioner representing the 16th District.

Peraica is appealing to independents who voted for Forrest Claypool in the Democratic primary against Stroger. A strong crossover vote from them might work, if Republicans finally acted as if they had a party in Cook County. In other words, if the Illinois GOP provided the necessary financial and other support. If they do, it might be the first time since 1966, when Richard Ogilvie was elected president, that a Republican has held the office.

Cook County hasn't been governed as well since.-

E-mail dennis@dennisbyrne.net
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

English is Spoken Here

By Dennis Byrne

The second dumbest statement in the debate over Senate legislation establishing English as the national language came from Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who said it was needlessly divisive.

Wait. A law that unifies a country under a single language is divisive? What kind of logic is that?

Perhaps Salazar's statement is symbolic of just how contorted our national debate has become under the directives of multiculturalism. Consider the reasoning: We can't pass a law that helps bring us all together under a common language because it will drive us apart. We can't say that we will understand each other better when we speak the same language, because that will only worsen our misunderstandings.

If it were only Salazar, we could ignore this mindlessness. But Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) agreed that it was divisive, and "mean-spirited" to boot. (This would put Reid in a second-place tie with Salazar for saying the dumbest thing, but Reid managed to lap the field and win going away by calling legislation to affirm the pre-eminence of English "racist.")

Dennis Byrne is a regular contributor to realclearpolitics.com. Read full column here.

Chicago and its corrupt leanings

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The sideshow put on by the Chicago aldermen during the City Hall corruption trial is almost as entertaining as the main attraction.

Who but a bunch of Chicago aldermen would throw dirt on the idea of prosecuting people accused of fraudulently ripping off taxpayers by denying them the right to have their money spent on qualified city workers? Yet, here they come whining about how U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald supposedly is stepping over some imaginary line by prosecuting city administrators who participated in an alleged scheme to ladle out jobs and promotions to political toilers for City Hall and other Democratic organization candidates.

People are afraid to talk to them, the aldermen complained to Tribune reporters last week. What the defendants are accused of doing is just politics, not really a crime, some suggest. It's merely a violation of a civil agreement sanctioned by a federal court to limit patronage hiring. No one should have to go to jail for that! The agreement and the prosecution amount to federal micromanaging of city affairs, they say, as if left to their own devices the aldermen wouldn't sell every job in sight.

"You guys decide: Is it a crime or is it politics?" U.S. prosecutor Patrick Collins asked the jury in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan.

The jurors decided it was a crime. And the fraud charges faced by Robert Sorich and three "co-schemers," as the indictment called them, in the current corruption trial? As the indictment explains: "the defendants were full-time salaried employees at the city. Each ... had a role in administering the hiring and promotion process at the city, and each owed a duty of honest services to the city and the people of the city in performing that duty, as well as various duties under state law."

Only aldermen would have to be reminded of such basics. To illustrate: Incredibly, they have exempted themselves from investigations by the city inspector general, David Hoffman. He said he knows of no other "major" city that provides such an exemption for its city council. No fooling.

The aldermen's reasons for this self-granted exemption are good for a laugh: They said they would be harassed by opponents who file anonymous and false charges. And this: Allowing the inspector general--a part of the executive branch of government--to investigate the august council would intrude on legislative powers. As if they've been studying political philosopher Montesquieu's theory on the separation of powers.

It's beyond me how the aldercreatures can keep a straight face about the need to fight off "intrusions by the executive branch" when the genuflecting council allows the city's chief executive--Richard M. Daley--to tell them when to breathe.

Inevitably, some will say that because I live in the suburbs, I should just shut up (even though my Chicago roots go deeper than most such critics).

- First, it is my business, because some of my taxes go to Chicago.

- Second, Chicago is a legal creation of the State of Illinois, my state.

- Third, we all should uphold the rule of law.

- Fourth, if Daley and his minions would leave the suburbs alone, maybe we would be glad to leave Chicago alone.

Chicago's patronage system provides an army of political workers that Daley and his machine sent into Will County and other suburbs to do his bidding. This army of stooges helped elect Rahm Emanuel to Congress representing Chicago's North Side, and now is invading the west suburban 6th Congressional District, to foist Emanuel's handpicked, carpetbagging candidate, Tammy Duckworth, onto voters.

The aldermen apparently think that Chicago works better when served by the kind of incompetents and sloths that sprout from the patronage compost pile. Or when unqualified safety inspectors are sent into the field. Or when the system shafts qualified applicants who play by the rules.

To some, this is what Chicago is; it's what gives the toddlin' town character, and it makes for lots of fun copy. They tell us that patronage is why Chicago is "The City That Works" because the politically beholden, unlike entrenched civil servants, can be fired if they don't do a good job.

Maybe someone can tell me the last time that happened.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

NSA Story Has Media Confused, Carried Away

By Dennis Byrne

Not that it matters that three giant phone companies said they didn't do it, they stand convicted of turning over the personal phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans talking to their Aunt Millies.

All we have to go on is a story in USA Today that, while long in words, is thin on facts. Nothing about how the National Security Agency actually monitors billions of phone calls. Nothing about how they aggregate the data. Nothing about what data they're aggregating. Nothing about what they do with it. No confirmation that the story was even close to accurate.

All we know is that President George W. Bush has done it again--committed an immoral outrage against all Americans by "listening in" to their conversations.

Read more at: realclearpolitics.com

"The Da Vinci Code" Doesn't Exist. Dan Brown doesn't either.

With the release of the movie, The Da Vinci Code, I am re-releasing my Dec. 15, 2003 Chicago Tribune column on the book.

By Dennis Byrne

After reading the immensely popular book "The Da Vinci Code," I have decided that its author, Dan Brown, does not exist.

Why? If someone, like the alleged Brown, can distort, fabricate or even wipe out a couple thousand years of political and religious history for the sake of an exciting adventure mystery, then why can't I deny the existence of a single individual for the sake of a good column? If a Dan Brown can capriciously make up a whole bunch of stuff to entertain, why can't I do the same by hitting the delete button on whoever this Dan Brown is supposed to be? Oh, sure, I know there's a picture of someone claiming to be Dan Brown on the book cover, smiling out at us in a writer's uniform of khaki pants, black mock turtle neck and tweedy jacket. And it says right there that he wrote some other books and lives in New England. But I've never seen him. Have you?

Yes, my phone might ring and the voice might say, "I saw your column, and I'm Dan Brown." But I know that would be a lie. The voice can't prove that it's Dan Brown. Someone could come to my door and claim to be Dan Brown, producing a driver's license, voter's registration card and a birth certificate. But that doesn't prove anything. I choose to believe it's counterfeit.

And you people who are about to send me e-mails, telling me I finally have provided incontrovertible proof that I am a moron? You don't exist either. Then who wrote this 454-page book? Offhand, I'd guess that the author was Oliver Stone, a noted fabulist. Except that Stone doesn't exist either. He is the creation of a conspiracy that wants us to think that John F. Kennedy's assassination was a conspiracy plot.

Actually, Kennedy does exist. He lives in a bungalow with Elvis. In France.

So what if I'm selective with facts? Whatever suits my purpose, I say. For example, I don't believe in Des Moines. I do believe in Des Plaines. But why is denying the existence of an entire town more moronic than what this supposed Brown guy is doing? An example. He turns the Star of David into a sex symbol. The bottom half (the V) is a female symbol called the chalice. The top half (the inverted V) is really a phallus symbol "still used today on modern military uniforms to denote rank." And the more such "penises" you wear on your sleeve, the higher your rank, we're told. This, of course, will surprise U.S. sailors and airmen whose higher enlisted ranks are designated by the number of female chalices they wear on their insignia.

Minor mistake, sure. But not so minor are nonsense assertions that the Dead Sea Scrolls talked about Mary Magdalene, that "80" gospels were written, that the gospels portrayed her as a prostitute. Laughable is the assertion that a church which has been criticized for nearly "deifying" Mary the mother of Jesus has engaged in a centuries-long plot to destroy the "sacred feminine."

More absurd is an underlying presumption of this novel, that Christianity, and especially the Catholic Church, would for two millennia knowingly hide theological truth from millions upon millions of believers so--why? Just the fact that any institution could survive for 2,000 years is remarkable enough. That it could survive while hiding some dark secret that is directly contrary to its core belief--the divinity of Christ--is an assertion that can be swallowed only by the incurably gullible.

See, this story, while an exciting yarn, is so filled with errors, you have to start wondering if it was written by an incompetent (whose root, found in the ancient scribblings of Iyioneic lore, means nincompoop). If not, then someone who is trying to make the church's presumed enemies look stupid. Maybe someone who wants to discredit, say, gnosticism, by making up such a foolish story that any examination would expose its absurdities. Someone, maybe, working undercover for the Catholic Church. Maybe not a someone, but a something, a computer, a robotic writer, which compresses all the silliness and goofiness out there into one blockbuster of a book. Yes, it's becoming clear now. Dan Brown really didn't write this book! Because Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" is an anagram for the Vatican's new hidden robo CD.

Tape to come later.

The risk that I didn't know existed doesn't exist. After all.

Flying does not cause blood clots, say experts - News and Comment - Times Online

Let the throat-cutting commence: How can it be anything but business as usual if the 2016 Olympics comes to Chicago?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune contributing op-ed columnist

Good, now we've got something new to fight about--the Olympics.

Whether Chicago should bid for the 2016 Olympics will provide fresh and irresistible material for commentary, politicking, demagoguery and, if things get really good, bar fights.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, once a skeptic about holding the Olympics here, had a vision and slapped his forehead in the sudden realization that it could mean a lot for Chicago, as in a lotta money, prestige and power. The vision has led him to China, to see how they are preparing for their 2008 Summer Olympics.

While he's there, he might want to pick up a few tips from the Chinese about how to avoid the bickering that's bound to break out here over a multibillion-dollar project. The Chinese might say that rolling a few tanks onto Daley Plaza would do the trick.

Which, of course, would require Daley to start a "hired-tank program," something that might be a little awkward for the mayor, considering how well the corrupt program worked for the city.

Somehow, I don't think that even tanks will mute the fight that will erupt over this project, including the necessity of maybe building a huge new stadium, bigger than the newly remodeled Soldier Field, to accommodate the world's most chemically enhanced athletes and all their publicists.

First up to complain, as usual, will be the "neighborhood advocates," who think that every project that involves a lot of concrete or downtown is a direct assault on the "people in the neighborhoods." They will say that the money instead must go to improve "vital neighborhood services," "educate our children," "raise the quality of life" and reinforce their conceits about what a city should be.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, except their argument is based on the incorrect premise that if the money isn't spent on sports facilities, it will be spent on neighborhood improvements. In fact, money not spent on sports facilities would have plenty of other places to go, besides neighborhoods. Or not be spent at all.

They also are leaving out what economists call the "multiplier effect." New, outside money that is brought into a city gets spent over and over again, multiplying its impact as it flows through the neighborhoods, increasing jobs.

Closely allied are Big Business haters, who will automatically oppose anything that involves corporate bigwigs. Except that they might not show up for this one. Didn't they already get sucked in enough by cost overruns from Millennium Park? How much more would they be expected to cough up for a project that already is being hyped as mostly privately funded?

And speaking of big money, there is the matter of huge contracts involving consultants and contractors, lawyers and accountants, design teams and architects, truckers and earthmovers, sand and gravel suppliers and all the rest who would be eyeing the billions of dollars.

The huge potential for corruption in the "City that Grafts" can't be overlooked. And the suspicion that Daley is proposing this to enrich insiders can't be so easily dismissed.

Let's not leave out of the fight those who don't dream, who would not have reversed the Chicago River's flow or who would have opposed skyscrapers because it would be too costly, impractical or just inconceivable.

If they had their way, Chicago today would be a suburb of Gary.

Then there are the usual overly rosy promises that have cast the public into a deep cynicism about anything coming out of the mouths of politicians. Such as: The Olympics will "reshape" the city, provide plentiful new housing and improve transportation.

All of this is entirely predictable and tiresome, because we went though the same thing years ago with the big fight over the proposed 1992 Chicago World's Fair. Like the Olympics, it was to be a global event, marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America, and the 100th anniversary of Chicago's historic World's Fair of 1893. The idea died an ugly death, crushed by the same predictable divisions that will arise from the debate over the Olympics.

The coming debate will be marked by lots of speculation, ideology, personal vendettas and bellyaching. It doomed a World's Fair that could have greatly benefited the city, its residents and businesses. It doesn't make for a very exciting column to say so, but maybe this time we can wait for some solid information and analysis before cutting each other's throats.

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E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Heaven help us when politicians start governing

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

On May 1, millions of illegal immigrants and their supporters marched to demand that huge numbers of their own immediately get out of America.

I haven't seen anyone else put it that way, but if the protesters took to the streets to force Congress to pass what is dishonestly called "comprehensive," "balanced" and "fair" immigration reform, then that is exactly what they want.

The Senate legislation would require that an estimated 1.6 million immigrants who have lived here illegally for less than two years turn themselves in and leave America, perhaps forever. They're supposed to do this without any incentive, when a better option for them would be to stay here undetected. Who among the millions who marched would throw themselves under that bus, just because a new law comes along that says--just like the present one--that they must?

No one.

Here's something else all those marchers are demanding of millions of their compadres who have been here illegally for two to four years: They must uproot their families, travel hundreds or thousands of miles, return to a U.S. port of entry, announce they are illegal immigrants and then hope they are issued a temporary work visa to let them re-enter America. Some won't get the cards, because only 1.4 million work visas will be issued over three years, and about 2.8 million people would be asking for them.

As for the estimated 8 million illegal residents who have been here five years or more, the marchers are demanding that they: turn themselves in, pay a $2,000 fine (or $4,580 for an average-size illegal immigrant family) and any back taxes, hope to clear a criminal background check, learn English, keep a steady job and then, maybe, they'd be eligible for citizenship.

I keep harping on this because this legislation is a cruel hoax.

And the hoaxers are the immigrants' alleged friends--assorted "activists," agenda journalists, organized labor, above-the-law clergy, self-righteous "progressives" and, of course, politicians. Every politician knows perfectly well that it's a hoax, but they push ahead with their deceit to make themselves look good, and to hell with the immigrants. The disservice that this legislation does for illegal immigrants is so obvious that those who won't confront it have to be dishonest or blind. Or so enthralled by the sight of all those people marching arm-in-arm that they have abrogated their obligation to read the legislation and report on its real impact on real people.

In the contempt-of-the-public department, this dishonesty ranks right up there with politicians who know that pushing down gas prices is something that's way beyond their reach, but they act like they can do it anyway, calling press conferences and looking seriously into the camera as if they mean it. Pass a law, punish a villain. Ignore the law of supply and demand. Hand out $100 rebates. Have you ever seen so many transparently witless ideas taken so seriously by so many supposedly responsible people? Why is it that so many politicians think that we'll like them more if they treat us like idiots? Probably because they know it gets them re-elected.

Speaking of idiots, Illinois legislators obviously want us to believe that they're doing their job (governing) when they pass a $56 billion ("rough" estimate) budget a mere two or three days after they first see it. It was handed to them by a legislative oligarchy that has run Illinois government for years, effectively reducing remaining lawmakers to mopes. You know few of them are giving $56 billion the scrutiny that a pile of money that size deserves. Not when they only have enough time to check whether projects they promised favor-seekers back home made it into the budget.

Not a person who lays eyes on this budget even momentarily can fail to understand that it is a dishonest document, supplying money not for the public good, but for re-electing whoever is in control, which happens now to be a cluster of Democrats. How else do you explain Gov. Rod Blagojevich securing agreement from the Democratic-controlled legislature for funding "universal" pre-school?

"This is the real deal," Senate President Emil Jones said last week of this charade, apparently not noticing how foolishly self-serving that statement makes him look. Just like the "real deal" is a new immigration law that penalizes the very people it's supposed to help. Or vapid promises by reckless politicians to lower gasoline prices.

Do these people have a conscience?

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. dennis@dennisbyrne.net

Biden's Counterproductive Iraq Proposal

May 03, 2006

By Dennis Byrne

Just as the Iraqis were finally putting together a unity government, along comes Sen. Joseph Biden with a "detailed plan" to unravel it.

Brilliant.

As brilliant as Abraham Lincoln preparing a detailed plan to end the Civil War upon the fall of Vicksburg.

In a much heralded and publicized op-ed in the New York Times (where else?), Biden said the only way to prevent chaos was to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions, along religious and ethnic lines. Give each their own army and, I suppose, let them have at one another.

Biden pops up with this lunacy just as Norui al-Maliki, Iraqi's new prime Minister is trying to put together a cabinet under a three-week deadline and form the long-sought unity government. Biden's timing couldn't have been more self-serving or destructive.

Dennis Byrne has joined realclearpolitics.com as a regular columnist. Read the rest of this article there.

So what if we were punked? Soldier Field should have been bulldozed

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

On an autumn weekend in 1958, we St. George High School "Dragons" filled 500--to be charitable--seats in Soldier Field. Far across the gridiron were the fans of another Catholic League football power, whose name I forget, filling another, say, 500 seats.

That left 99,000 empty seats. Well, not seats. Benches, with places to put about 100,000 butts.

Which is how I remember Soldier Field: A pile of concrete rubble getting in the way of a perfectly good ride on the Outer Drive. A place so unattractive, dysfunctional and unwanted that it had been reduced to hosting high school football games.

St. George, late of Evanston, played there only because it didn't have its own football stadium. So we always were on the road, pretending that this or that stadium gave us home-field advantage. Gately Stadium or Lane Tech Field, for example, where a crowd of 1,000 actually looked big.

If you haven't seen a few hundred fans spread out loosely between the 47-yard lines at Soldier Field, then you don't know the meaning of the word "empty." Empty meant Soldier Field. The Bears played elsewhere. So did the Cardinals.

Soldier Field was so desperate that it even booked stock-car races. I remember them in the late 1940s, the jalopies not exactly speeding around an asphalt track on the field's perimeter, just inside the stands. I can't remember how large the crowd was, but I doubt that anyone was in that 100,000th seat at the far north end of the then-horseshoe-shaped stands. Actually, that seat might not have been occupied since the celebrated 1927 Dempsey-Tunney world championship boxing match, one of the events that supposedly made Soldier Field a national treasure.

This was a pathetic, miserable place, and some of us native Chicagoans wish for an end to the constant carping about the conversion of what we're told is a venerable landmark into a yucky, discordant playhouse for the Bears. The latest lamentations were heard last week when the world awoke to the awful news that some obscure committee of the U.S Department of Interior had yanked Soldier Field's designation as a "national historic landmark."

For a while, we had been warned that Interior Secretary Gale Norton, on the advice of the National Park System Advisory Board, was about to de-designate Soldier Field. As if it were our last chance to repair our mistake.

But the expected de-designation came anyway, meaning that Soldier Field no longer was one of the nation's 2,500 most-hallowed sites, as historically significant and possessing "as much exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States" as--get this--the White House. For years, some of us were unaware of the Rock Pile's historical luminescence. But please, don't make us laugh so hard that it hurts.

The de-designation of Soldier Field now is being read as a comeuppance to Mayor Richard M. Daley and the rest of us Chicago provincials who, well, just don't care and no longer deserve this great honor. I guess we're supposed to say: "Oh, gosh, we're really sorry now that we didn't listen to the landmark preservationists when they blistered the idea of any alteration or removal of the Lakefront Blemish."

It was explained to us that the loss wasn't just Chicago's, but the entire nation's. Said Carol Ahlgren, architectural historian of the U.S. Park Service's Midwest regional office: "If we had let this [designation] stand, I believe it would have lowered the standard of National Historic Landmarks throughout the country." Here's news for her: Just including it on the list lowered the national standard.

Years ago, I suggested that the best way to settle the fight over Soldier Field was to bulldoze the entire mess, start from scratch and construct a memorial stadium befitting the 120,000 American military personnel lost in World War I. But no, the heat was on, and the designers of the remodeled facility had to accommodate the absurd demands of the preservationists. The result? An absurd compromise that indeed may be the ugliest structure in the city, if not the nation.

Well, perhaps, this will assuage the preservationists: Yes, Soldier Field was expelled from the landmarks list, but we got something better added: Lincoln Park's "exquisite" hidden Alfred Caldwell lily pool, which "symbolically celebrates the history of the Midwest." Which, according to the list's creators, puts it in the company of the U.S. Capitol.

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Comment: dennisbyrne.blogspot.com

Oil Slick

Award Congress another Brass Ball for doing its bit to make gasoline prices soar, then launching a witch hunt to nail someone else with the blame.

Because it takes a lot of brass for anyone in Congress to point fingers elsewhere, when Congress itself helped create, by its constant political and self-serving meddling, soaring gasoline prices and tightening gasoline inventories.

To appease the nation’s ill-informed greens and big-oil haters, Congress instituted a timetable that requires refiners to switch to ethanol from an additive called MTBE as the main component of clearer burning gasoline.

The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association pleaded with Congress: Don’t do it because that will increase the “likelihood of higher prices and a possible volatile market through 2006.”

Why? Among other reasons, there wasn’t enough ethanol capacity to replace the MTBE. The result: reduced inventories and higher gasoline prices, just as summer driving demand arrived. Along with other global factors, such as Middle East uncertainty and the impact on the industry of Katrina.

Never mind that the oil industry doesn’t have enough refining capacity to start with, thanks in part to overly rigid environmental and other regulations imposed by…Congress. Or that the clean air trade-offs of substituting MTBE with ethanol are debatable anyway.

The warnings were ignored, of course, even though they came from someone who might have known what he was talking about.

So turning from its own role in creating this mess, Congressional mops, such as my very own senator, Dick “the Lip” Durbin and others (i.e., Democrats) rushed to a gas station to stage a call for congress to “protect Americans from gas price gouging,” as if we got rid of some evil folks, our problems would end. Unconscionably, President Bush also added to the clatter by promising to do the same. All of which become bigger news than MTBE, federal regulations and timetables, gasoline refining capacity, market supply and demand, and that other boring stuff.

So, while we’re awarding Brass Balls, give one to media morons who focus on so-called price gouging and “outrageous” Big Oil salaries because they find the rest of the complex story all too difficult to understand, or who understand it, but don’t think the public will, so they just ignore it.

Executive salaries and anti-consumer conspiracies are standard scapegoats for liberals, the media and others looking for simple explanations for complex, bad news. But if they want to blame big business and their other bogeymen, they might keep in mind that one reason Congress helped create this mess was because of the involvement of the ethanol lobby, whose leading members include top ethanol producer ADM (whose political contributions are legend) and corn farmers. Their feasting on taxpayer subsidies is gluttonous and growing.

So, why don’t the politicians and media mention them? Is it because Durbin, for example, represents one of the biggest corn-producing states, which also is the home of ADM? You bet it is.

Ain’t no foie gras kind a town

Aldermen in that toddlin’ town, Chicago, have banned the sale of foie gras, the goose- and duck-liver delicacy. Or as one anti-fatty-liver blog puts it, the “delicacy of despair.”

Foie gras now joins smokin’ in public places, handguns and nuclear weapons as verboten in Chicago.

What’s next, a ban on not just the sale, but also the possession of foie gras? Carrying concealed foie gras? Second-hand foie gras?

Won’t the ban simply push the sale of foie gras into the suburbs? Just like Chicago’s decision to be a nuclear-free zone decade ago turned suburban Cicero into a nuclear zone?

At least Chicago’s aldermen will be able to boast: “Ain’t no foie on us.”

Dem Snow Job

A gleeful Democratic National Committee has discovered that Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary and former Fox News commentator, has in years past been critical of President Bush.

Obviously lying in wait for the happy moment that Snow’s appointment was made official, the DNC rushed out a jubilant press release quoting Snow’s past criticisms of Bush: The president looks guilty (Katrina), is “impotent," an “embarrassment,” and so forth.

This from a party that has criticized Bush for supposedly surrounding himself with yes-men. Imagine the DNC’s joy if Bush had installed as press secretary someone who had never uttered one critical word about Bush, or who had never encountered a single original thought.

The Sorry State of Illinois

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune Op-ed Columnist

April 23, 2006

Why was there even mild surprise last week when a jury convicted former Illinois Gov. George Ryan of corruption? When Illinois juries get their hands on a governor, they tend to put him away.

Of our seven prior governors, three now have been convicted. In Illinois, jurors are batting .750. So, give jurors a chance and they'll take down corrupt governors. Which makes me wonder about any bewilderment that this jury convicted Ryan on all counts. Look at history: just three governors before Republican Ryan was Democrat Dan Walker, who served 17 months for fraudulently obtaining bank loans. But that was after he left office, so maybe he doesn't count; the governorship was only training camp.

Five years before Walker was Democrat Otto Kerner who was convicted in 1973 on charges of bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud, tax evasion and perjury. He was paroled after serving a year. Immediately before him was Republican William Stratton, who was indicted for federal tax evasion. He was acquitted. Not to worry; while the governor's suite at the federal pen is unoccupied, other top state officers often keep it warm.

Has any other Illinois office harbored such a high proportion of serial offenders? (Chicago aldermen, maybe, but doing the math gives me a headache.) In the face of such gubernatorial recidivism, you'd think that at least a few Illinois politicians might recognize the dangers and run the other way. How to explain such recklessness?

I think I know one reason, but obviously not the only reason. Once elected to high office, their lordships begin sharing the same rarified air that the rich and powerful heads of the town's big national and international corporations breathe. It's a long way from the humble work of hustling votes by ringing doorbells or holding someone's fedora. On MRI brain scans, it shows up as metastasizing clumps of self-importance. Governors, mayors, agency chairmen, department heads and even aldermen all display the symptoms. It makes them feel untouchable.

In fact, their egos are tolerated, if not cultivated, by the corporate power structure. It never hurts to have a few gofers who can change a law, ease a regulation or smooth over certain misunderstandings. Pols don't get it; they're grubby street urchins who are allowed into the ball to serve hors d'oeuvres.

But the corporate community also has large quantities of things that the Ryans and Daleys desperately want: power, access to money, endorsement, legitimization, to name a few. In this game of favor doing, the business leadership holds the high cards.

So, the corporate denizens are just the people to put the corrupt pols in their place. "George, we're running global businesses bigger than yours; don't hand us the same crap you give the voters about your pure heart and clean hands. We and this town can't take it any more. Cut it out, or we'll cut you out."

"Richie, your joke about not knowing about all the graft going on right under your nose makes us laugh. If we were running our businesses the way you run City Hall, we'd be out on our butts. Or, on trial, like those guys from Enron. You're through."

Instead, this town's corporate leadership gathers in well-upholstered clubs, patting themselves on their backs for their "civic involvement" with various booster projects. Or they issue studies telling us what the Chicago area ought to look like in 2020. They jabber on by "decaying infrastructure" and pony up millions for lakefront parks. And gratify themselves with their roles as community leaders whose names appear on the letterheads of visible do-gooder groups.

But get their hands dirty to clean up the swill--our state's most pressing problem--and where are they? Yes, they support such efforts as the Better Government Association and the Chicago Crime Commission, which carry on the fight, with quixotic-like determination. But the unwavering silence of the corporate suites about the costly and destructive system of graft inescapably suggests acquiescence, approval or even complicity.

This is meant to be a broad brush and harsh attack; it wouldn't be necessary if Chicago's and Illinois' business community were united in shutting down career criminals like George Ryan and some in Mayor Daley's inner circle. I don't mean that we should turn government over to a corporate junta. But the 12 honest jurors who convict the likes of Ryan sure could use some help.

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Comment: http://dennisbyrne.blogspot.com

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

When Conficting Civilizations Collide

Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist

April 17, 2006

In H.G. Wells' "Time Machine," the helplessly fattened Eloi spend most of their time waiting around their pleasant surroundings to be snatched away by cannibal Morlocks. Those succulent pinkish Eloi who luckily aren't invited for dinner this time can only wait their turn, not so much in fear, but--simpletons that they are--in resigned ignorance.

Though he wrote it more than 100 years ago, Wells nonetheless had many of today's Americans nailed. Today's Eloi are Americans whose only "strategy" for dealing with the dreadful and grisly terrorist assaults on us is to pull back and wait for the next one.

The death sentence hearing of Zacarias Moussaoui, the "12th hijacker" of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a gory reminder of just what this non-strategy can produce. We relived it last week in the jarring words, sounds and sights of doomed people begging in the last seconds of their lives for help; screaming in terror as the World Trade Center collapsed around them; leaping in desperation and flames to a crushing death; or engaging in a final, fruitless life-or-death struggle with their murderers.

Such evidence, as well as Moussaoui's affected disinterest in the carnage, kindles a deep yearning for revenge. Creative revenge. Not simply execution, but just compensation. Suffocation in toxic smoke. Slow immolation. Drowning in blood gushing from his slit throat. A shove out the 86th floor. Release to the public at high noon on ground zero.

Maybe it's a measure of a civilized America that such suggestions are only newspaper column babblings and, thankfully, not a widespread sentiment. Even more, I sense that many folks, even in the face of the horrific evidence unveiled last week, aren't really that outraged anymore. At least in Chicago, it seemed to provoke less indignation than the news, revealed in the Chicago Tribune, that Sun Myung Moon, the head of the "controversial" Unification Church, is a lurking force in the sushi business.

As much as Moon's involvement bothers some, it serves an additional purpose by illustrating the relative importance of things. For example: What's worse, a religion that calls for arranged marriages or one that publicly stones women, but not men, for infidelity? A religious leader who says offensive things in the name of God, or adherents who invoke God's name as they murder thousands of innocent people? As much as it repulses some, Moon is trying to buy world domination, not grabbing it with terror and violence.

Thankfully, in America those offended by Moon only call for fish boycotts, not beheadings.

The Moussaoui trial should underscore the fact that we're fighting brutish enemies over more than power and money. We're fighting over values and beliefs. Moussaoui unapologetically claims that the Koran requires Islamic world domination and that non-Islamic nations must pay tribute to Islamic ones. "We have to be the superpower. You have to be subdued," he said. And in pursuit of that goal, his only regret is that he couldn't fly a planeload of innocents into the Capitol.

Moussaoui understands it better than Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and others who see little of global import in our conflicts and counsel a vague sort of withdrawal. Moussaoui sees beyond the gotcha politics of the Beltway and correctly regards this as an engagement of fundamentally conflicting civilizations: One more advanced and compassionate against another--violent and monstrous--that still is fighting in the Dark Ages, against Crusader spooks.

The fight over how and why the Iraq war is being fought is a legitimate one. But Iraq is just one part of the larger and more important debate. That bigger debate should have been settled by now.

To all you naysayers

Speaking of Iraq, some readers, in response to my April 3 column, explained that good news from Iraq isn't reported because there's no good news to report. None. Period. So, in response to their challenge to come up with some, I give you the liberal Brookings Institution and its "Iraq Index."

The index (www.brookings.edu/iraqindex), brought to my attention by blogger Jim Bowman, is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive statistical compilation of Iraqi conditions, tracking economic, public opinion and security data. While partisans make sweeping assumptions about what are factual questions, the periodic report lays out such comparative data as pre-war and current levels of telephone and water service, unemployment, Iraq security forces, troop facilities and coalition strength.

I won't try to characterize the report one way or another, except to say that those blind to any good news will be surprised.

Illegal Immigrants: Just another unit of economic measure

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
April 10, 2006

Long ago, that supposed "giant sucking sound" of American jobs heading south to Mexico began to be muffled by a stampede of illegal immigrants coming north to grab away more U.S. jobs.

Now, if you're of a free-market mind, you might think that this is just ducky. Just as goods, services and capital should flow freely across borders to allow the market to work its magic, so should people. After all, isn't a person just another unit of economic measure, and if illegal immigration depresses the living wages of Americans and legal immigrants, well, it all works out for the higher good of economic efficiency.

As callous and daffy as this sounds, some posturing politicians actually believe it. Or act like they believe it. They don't see much difference between a person as a unit of economic activity and a person as a human being. They talk about the "collapse" of the American economy that would follow if we turned off the ready supply of cheap units of labor. Americans, they argue, would never tolerate a better paid, domestic and legal workforce to pick their veggies or mow their lawns because they would have to pay a few dollars more.

We should be scandalized. Arguing that economic necessity demands that we have a ready supply of cheap, exploited labor sounds like something that apologists for slavery would say. Yet, the argument has been so shamelessly expounded by liberals and conservatives that I've come to worry about the state of our national soul.

Think about it: Under the mislabeled "guest worker" program, official government policy actually would endorse and enable the exploitation of human beings. Years of struggle to make the workplace more humane--the minimum wage, no child labor, work-week standards, health requirements and so forth--would be diluted.

The majority of Americans know what this is about, and it's why they strongly oppose having immigration "reform" shoved down their throats by President Bush and Congress. "Reform" is really about special interests. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, put it well when he laid this outrage at the feet of Big Business, Big Politics, Big Labor, Big Media and Big Academia. Big Business for bigger profits. Big Politics to demagogue some votes from a growing segment of the population. Big Labor to bag more dues-paying members. Big Media because, well, that's what the media do. And Big Academia because its elites know what's good for the average American mope.

Krikorian also threw in Big Church, referring to clergy and laity angered by the possibility that their acts of charity, such as feeding, clothing and hiding illegal immigrants, would become a serious crime. I somewhat agree; it's too much like criminalizing the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, the faithful also should ask themselves if the kind of servitude they are abetting conforms to church teachings about social justice.

You'd think that the Kennedys, Durbins and Obamas would be furious at this betrayal of their party's historic principles. They aren't. So, irony of ironies, it is up to conservatives such as me to remind them of it. Not that I expect it to make any difference.

It won't, because Washington creatures are hellbent on feathering their political nests and doing big favors for their friends in business, labor and elsewhere. Never mind that the pols know that they are engaged in a charade by passing a joke of an unenforceable law. Ask yourself: If you have been here illegally for years, would you turn yourself in for some vague promise that some day you might get a chance to become legal? Why bother? Why trouble yourself with paying fines and back taxes, patiently standing in long lines waiting for a bureaucratic stamp of approval, suffering background checks and learning English--all to get something that you already have? You know it and the hypocritical pols know it: It won't work. It's worse than doing nothing at all.

We know so because it didn't work 20 years ago when the government offered amnesty to about 3 million illegal immigrants, at a cost to taxpayers of billions of dollars, only to have a fraction of those eligible apply. It was such a disaster that another 9 million or so have arrived and stayed illegally since this last "solution."

At this pace, in 10 years we'll be asking what to do about the 24 million people here illegally.

Maybe the NY Times Figured We Wouldn't Notice

OK, I admit that when I saw a lengthy and prominently played New York Times story this morning about a congressman who "used his powerful perch on the House Appropriations Committee to funnel $250 million into five nonprofit organizations that he had set up," I assumed that the paper was going after another Republican.

True, that assumption was my own bias against a paper whose liberal bias is reaching legendary heights.

As I read the story, I didn't even notice that the story failed to identify the political affiliation of the congressman, Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia, in the first paragraph. Nor in the second. Nor in the third.

By now, I noticed this omission, because standard journalistic practice calls for a politician's party to be identified, if not in the first paragraph, at least pretty damn quick.

I read on. Fourth graph, still nothing. Fifth, sixth and seventh. Nothing. The New York Times must figure that everyone knows who Mollohan is. Only us rubes wouldn't.

Finally in the eighth graph I find this:

The case has led several Republican leaders to call for Mr. Mollohan's removal from the House ethics committee, where he is the senior Democrat. [Emphasis added]

That's 315 words into the story. Before the first mention that Mollohan's a Democrat. And, it turns out, an important one.

Maybe someone has a logical explanation for why it took so long. The choices are:

• Incompetent and careless writer and editors.
• Biased writer and editors.

Or maybe the Times figured that political affiliation--this time--was of no consequence.

Actually, it is of significant consequence, as you might gather from the straight news story, which broke in the Wall Street Journal on April 7:

Congressman's 'Earmarks' Spur Federal Probe

By JOHN R. WILKE
April 7, 2006; Page A1

FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- On a mountaintop above old coal seams that once fueled West Virginia's economy, a gleaming steel-and-glass research center is taking shape, its winged design and 120-foot data tower visible for miles.

The $136 million building is being built with taxpayers' money for the Institute for Scientific Research, a nonprofit group launched by the local congressman, Democrat Alan Mollohan, and funded almost entirely through provisions he put into annual spending bills.

A 12-term congressman, Mr. Mollohan sits on the House Appropriations Committee, a panel that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff dubbed the "favor factory." Working with fellow West Virginian Sen. Robert Byrd, Mr. Mollohan has steered at least $178 million to nonprofit groups in his district over the past five years using "earmarks" -- special-interest provisions that are slipped into spending bills to direct money to pet projects.

The money has brought more than jobs and building projects to his district. It has formed and financed a tight-knit network of nonprofit institutions in West Virginia that are run by people who contribute regularly to Mr. Mollohan's campaigns, political-action committee and a family foundation. One of these people also invests in real estate alongside Mr. Mollohan and his wife. The network of contributors also includes private companies that get contracts through these nonprofits.

Such a pattern raises questions about whether the donations or deals might be a way beneficiaries of earmarks could influence the legislator's actions. Now, federal prosecutors have opened an investigation of Mr. Mollohan's finances and whether they were properly disclosed, according to people contacted in the inquiry. Mr. Mollohan hasn't been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, whose public-corruption unit is conducting the inquiry, declined to comment....

Here' how the UPI reported the story:

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- A Democratic congressman has fueled five non-profit groups in his West Virginia district with $250 million in earmark funding, The New York Times reports.

This post also appears on RealClearPolitics.com

Let's have good news from Iraq, please: Criticisms of a liberal media bias seem valid

By Dennis Byrne

April 3, 2006

Is The New York Times going bi-polar, or what?

The nation's imperial paper recently said it wouldn't engage in off-the-record sit-downs with President Bush, an invitation that other papers have accepted with no twinges of conscience. Not so the Times. Explained a top executive to Editor & Publisher, a newspaper industry publication: "As a matter of policy and practice, we would prefer when possible to conduct on-the-record interviews with public officials."

Oh, come on.

The Times--like many newspapers--feeds off anonymous sources, especially if the leak trashes the Bush administration. A Times reporter spent months in jail for refusing to reveal an anonymous source, and the newspaper happily ran leaked, classified information about the wiretapping of international conversations with terrorists.

So, save us the baloney. The public knows that anonymous sources usually spill information that benefits the spiller or his interests. Yes, the public understands that an occasional unnamed source is useful in exposing wrongdoing. But it also understands that the many "high purposes" the media use to justify the unabashed spread of "spin" (it used to be called propaganda) under the cloak of secrecy is just bunk.

Yet, the Times and others continue to embarrass the business with this kind of transparent nonsense. It's one reason that newspaper circulation and the viewership of evening network news are declining. Like a gravely ill patient that refuses to listen to a glum diagnosis, too many of my colleagues greet criticisms of a liberal media bias with a closed-minded, "I'm sick of hearing it."

Just like they did after Bush recently joined in the criticism. "The kind of progress that we and the Iraqi people are making in places like Tal Afar is not easy to capture in a short clip on the evening news," he said. "Footage of children playing, or shops opening, and people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an IED explosion, or the destruction of a mosque, or soldiers and civilians being killed or injured."

Editor & Publisher followed up with a story, "Iraq reporters hit back at claims they are biased on war coverage." Taking the offensive, they replied that the administration itself fails to come up with enough good news stories, and when it does, reporters don't get enough protection to go out and safely cover the story.

Those of us who haven't been in a war zone criticize the work of war correspondents at our own peril. Yet, for all the assertions that little or no good news is to be found in Iraq, it is simple to find some on the Internet from, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is helping rebuild Iraq. (Why is it called "rebuilding" Iraq, when it was a sorry state before the war? Shouldn't we be talking about "building" Iraq?)

Billions of dollars of highway and other public works projects; new safety nets for the poor and vulnerable, entrepreneurial opportunities, a free press, leadership training--all requisites for successful self-government. For all the stories about power shortages, for example, how many explain that they are partly the result of exploding demand, a good sign of economic progress?

Oddly, some journalists give little credence to such official, attributable reports. In today's upside-down world, official government reports don't carry the same weight as whispered, unattributed reports.

News often is defined as something that didn't happen before, or rarely happens. So, if indeed little good is happening in Iraq, every piece of (rare) good news ought to be reported with the same fervor as every act of violence--which we're to believe is an increasingly common occurrence. And, logically, less deserving of reporting. Or does the absence of reporting "good news" in a country the size of Iraq actually mean that reporters can find absolutely nothing good?

If all this is confusing, it's nothing compared to the confusion shared by the American public about what actually is happening in Iraq. The media's credibility has become so strained that partisans on both sides have to admit in good conscience that they're unsure of what's real. Obviously, this isn't good for a democracy.

So, the media might give more thought to being less defensive, and more objective, not just in covering the news, but also in evaluating their own performance. The public would appreciate that kind of good news.

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant.

E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune