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.