Hastert to lobby for Turkey

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a west suburban Repbublican, gets his due from Turkey. (Story here)

It's probably just a coincidence that he blocked--as the Speaker and at the request of then President Bill Clinton--a resolution condemning the Turks' killing of 1.5 million Armenians during the 1915-1916 genocide and that he shares (with former House Democratic Majority Leader Richard Gephardt) a $35,000-a-month contract to lobby Congress on behalf of Turkey.

True bipartisanship, that.

City 'wolfpacks' to hunt potholes

Wait, wasn't any "shovel-ready" project supposed to have "lasting impact," according to the Obama administration?

According to this, tens of millions of dollars of federal stimulus funding will go "resurfacing" Chicago streets. Considering the brief life-span of Chicago streets, how can the program meet the "lasting impact" standard. Unless, they meant a "lasting impact" that is political, and help get Mayor Richard M. Daley out of his pothole problem.

Frank never answers the student's question, and instead tries to make the student look like he has done something wrong merely by asking. Frank never explains his efforts to presure lenders into making loans to unqualified borrowers as part of the community reinvestment act.

For a response to Frank's dodging and weaving, watch this video:

Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism

That's according to a new Rasmussen Reports. It makes me wonder what they're teaching in schools these days.

Big Victory for Daley in Suburban Elections

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley wasn’t on the ballots in Bensenville or Des Plaines, yet he won resounding victories in the northwestern suburbs when his candidates for town leadership swept away their competition.

Daley’s successful assault on the towns now leaves serious questions about the viability of any remaining opposition to O’Hare Airport expansion. For the Chicago Boss, it has to be a sweet climax to his decade-long campaign to silence elected suburban opposition to the $16-billion-plus airport enlargement.

In Bensenville, he broke the back of O’Hare Airport expansion opposition by vanquishing President John Geils and in Des Plaines, he strengthened his pro-expansion tentacles with the mayoral election of the pro-expansion Martin Moylan.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Notre Dame is wrong

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

As a Marquette University graduate, I don't give a hoot what the University of Notre Dame does. It can endow an academic chair in honor of Attila the Hun for all I care, and my life would proceed apace.

But the Indiana school somehow has been crowned the "nation's pre-eminent Catholic university"—a dubious claim considering the quality of other Catholic colleges. So everyone must have an opinion on the honors it will award to President Barack Obama while giving him a commencement podium to expound, if he wishes, his extremist positions on "reproductive rights."

Thus, even secular columnists—well practiced in telling those papists, but not, say, Unitarian-Universalists what to do—have assigned themselves to defend Notre Dame. Don't give in, they say, to troglodytes who would sink academic freedom by demanding that an institution that bills itself as Catholic should honor one of the faith's central tenets: the inviolate right of every life created in its maker's image to enjoy all the inalienable rights bestowed on every person. Shame on those Catholics.

Social justice is another key teaching of the Catholic Church. (This will surprise some who have ignorantly categorized the Catholic Church as a bastion of oppression and indifference.) Now suppose Notre Dame decided to confer an honorary degree on an acknowledged opponent of that particular church teaching, someone like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, no adherent of social justice he.

Because it's always good to hear from "the other side" in academe, let's suggest more folks that Notre Dame should honor: North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il, who can explain why his approach to social justice is beneficial to all mankind. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who can expound on why the deaths of more than 200,000 and the displacement of more than 2 million people in Darfur was an exercise in social justice. We can all learn from listening graciously to this criminal, recently indicted by the International Criminal Court. Then there's Osama bin Laden. . . .Well, you get the point, which you will protest is too easily made. After all, Obama is none of those characters, and to in anyway equate them with the president is insulting, outrageous. And so it is. But there's this:

It is a firmly held belief by millions of Catholics, hierarchy and laity alike, that the abortion of millions of unborn people is a catastrophe of Holocaust proportions. To them, the legalized slaughter of innocents brutalizes us all. You might not agree, you might argue that the church is wrong on matters of "reproductive rights" and, therefore, there's nothing wrong with Notre Dame honoring Obama. But don't you see? You're telling Catholics what they should believe. It's as arrogant as entering a temple or mosque and telling the adherents that their refusal to eat pork is wrong, so line up for your ration of bacon. So much for your precious "diversity."

You can argue that the purpose of any university is discourse and disputation, so Notre Dame should invite whomever it pleases. John Henry Newman, a respected Catholic scholar, has a deeper, less simple-minded take. In his essay "The Idea of a University," he calls the university a "tribunal of truth." It is arrived at, yes, by conversing and disputation.

But truth is a hard proposition for modern ears to hear. To them, the search for truth is the entire story; its discovery is not to be admitted because truth, say some, is unknowable.

Newman continues: "Truth, a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, through his affections, imagination and reason; it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there in perpetuity by propounding and repeating it, by questioning and requestioning, by correcting and explaining, by progressing and then recurring to first principles, by all those ways which are implied in the word 'catechizing.' " If, then, disputation is the reason for Obama's appearance, then let it be in a classroom or confrontational format, where the antagonists can fence. Honoring Obama is not the same as disputing him.

Disputation in the academic sense is not the reason for Obama's appearance. Notre Dame assuredly knew that the Obama honors would cause a massive controversy, one that would catch the nation's attention and divide the church. It was a cynical move by an institution captivated by its own "pre-eminence" to draw attention to itself. At the expense of its (now-dead) principles.

A rift in the Democratic Party?

After hammering away at Republicans for years about their split between moderate and conservative members, the media need to take note of the rift between moderates and liberals that is splitting the Democratic Party and has the White House worried about enacting the president's far-left agenda. Details in Rasmussen Reports

Maybe Obama should stay in Europe

Rasmussen Reports finds that the number of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama's presidential performance has jumped dramatically since his inauguration. The number who strongly approve has declined slightly.

Dennis Byrne reviews the news tonight with Milt Rosenberg on WGN radio at 9 p.m.

It ain't working...

An item from the-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost department (Part 1):

AIG Rescue Has Failed, Greenberg Tells Lawmakers

Beware of Presidents Bearing Gifts

LONDON (API)—President Barack Obama, attending the G-20 summit, today presented Queen Elizabeth with a $250 gift certificate to Target stores as an “expression of American solidarity” with Great Britain.

At the same time, the president, responding to the uproar created by his chintzy gift of a bunch of old movie DVDs to British Prime Minister Brown weeks ago, sought to smooth things over by presenting him a with dozen White Castle Sliders. Brown cordially received the gift of Krystal’s miniature square hamburgers, wrapped in a tasteful paper sack.

However, a source familiar with the situation said the prime minister planned to “regift that crap” to the pet dogs at Number 10 Downing Street.

“We had planned to give the Queen an iPod, loaded with pictures of her last visit to America,” First Lady Michelle Obama later cheerfully explained to reporters. “But, we thought Her Majesty might already have one—you know she’s the queen and all that—so we just figured that if she did, she could use the certificate for whatever she wanted. Besides,” Mrs. Obama added, “we had already given recordings to the prime minister, and if we did the same for the Queen, some people might think we totally lack imagination in the gift-giving department.”

As it did after the DVD controversy, the British press was furious over the perceived slight to the Queen and regarded the hamburgers as only deepening what it called it the worst crisis since the War of 1812 between the two previously inseparable allies. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised intensified negotiations to restore normalcy. “We need to address the underlying causes of the problem that has festered over the past eight years of failed diplomacy,” said.

Clinton ignored media questions about whether a present she had earlier presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov bearing an incorrect translation that implied hostility rather than peacemaking was symptomatic of Obama’s own failed diplomacy.

In reaction, the New York Times opined editorially that the gift-giving brouhaha was a “tempest in a teapot,” a reference to the English taste for the beverage. Said the editorial: “We believe other overriding issues at the summit deserve greater coverage and more in-depth analysis, which is why we have assigned our best writers to report on Mrs. Obama’s outfits.

Congressional Republicans, meeting in caucus, could not agree about what to say.

Will the Senate approve a radical as Health and Human Services Committee?

Probably, but here is some interesting information on her.

Bensenville, DesPlaines: Chicago's new 51st and 52nd wards.

Daley is muscling into suburban elections near O'Hare, according to critics cited in a Tribune story.

A Daley spokeswoman said she didn't know any of the political operatives involved, although they worked for him politically. Sorry, Richie, the line that you've got no interest in the suburbs near O'Hare--where opposition to the airport expansion is strong--just doesn't work anymore.

No, a thousand times no

A poll shows some support for government bailouts for failing newspapers (which could be all of them). Thirty-three percent said they would support legislation that would allow newspapers become tax-exempt non-profit organizations as long as they don't endorse political candidates.

Thankfully, 51 percent oppose the legislation, introduced last week by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), thus showing that the entirety of the American public hasn't lost its mind. Besides some First Amendment questions, the very idea of a government-run media should set spines shivering. While the poll shows a slight majority believe that newspapers are essential to a democracy, the publications--like GM and banks--should rise or fall on their own merits. If all the people who believe that newspapers are essential actually were regular readers, newspapers probably wouldn't have the problems they're having.

Science and public policy

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The flourishing liberal dictum that the public should keep its paws off the funding and practice of science is a serious and dangerous fabrication.

Among liberal rhetoricians, this erroneous diktat blossomed when then-President George W. Bush limited federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. They said Bush and others with moral qualms about destroying human life to advance scientific knowledge were "anti-science." So, when the political left found they could advance their own scientific agenda by painting conservatives as anti-science, the slander became an embedded component of liberal group think. Anyone who opposed the politicalization of climate science or contemplated the nexus of science and theology in theories about evolution were dragged to the guillotine of political correctness. Even those holding secular or humanistic objections were unfairly labeled right-wing religious fanatics, hellbent on imposing their moral paradigm on an unwilling public.

This has to stop if America is to return to a thoughtful, intelligent discussion of scientific issues that are germane to the public interest. The setting of government-funded research priorities and the relationship between the public good and science are very much legitimate grounds for reasonable debate. Liberals once fought government funding for nuclear power research and nuclear weapons testing. They evoked moral, ethical and political considerations in the debate. Did that make them anti-science?

Liberals historically have opposed expenditures on space science, including missions to the moon, based on the non-scientific argument that the money would better be spent on helping people "here on Earth." Did that make liberals anti-science?

Liberals argued that the first claim on the federal health-science dollar should be HIV-related research, when cancer and heart diseases were clearly bigger killers. Did that make liberals anti-science? Then there's human cloning. Is opposing it anti-science?

Of course not. That made them citizens engaged in a proper democratic dialogue. And so are conservatives who disagree with some of the liberal science agenda. Disagreement over the funding of embryonic stem cells is not fundamentally a debate over science. Conservatives who caution against sliding into the easy fabrication and use of human life for research are not challenging the scientific potential of pluripotent embryonic stem cells. But I give an F for scientific literacy to many proponents of embryonic stem-cell funding because they have chosen, for political reasons, to ignore the science that has generated more immediate and promising results from embryonic cord blood and adult stem cells. Worse, instead of engaging in respectful scientific disputation, they disparage those who disagree with them as religious block-heads.

The same sorry spectacle has unfolded in the debate over global warming. Despite scientific evidence that challenges the "conclusion" that the "debate is closed" over climate change, the liberal default position is to label dissidents as anti-science. The science of how to make a nuclear bomb is closed; the intrinsically complicated understanding of the zillion variables in predicting global climate change remains incomplete. Nazis regarded eugenics and exploring the "beneficial" uses of human skin peeled from Holocaust victims as science. They dipped living people into salt water the temperature of the frigid North Atlantic Ocean to find better ways to save the lives of downed Nazi fighter pilots. Would opposing those horrors be considered anti-science?

As a former science and technology writer, I soon concluded that if science can be done, it likely will be done by someone, somewhere, whether it is beneficial to or destructive of individual and societal good. Efforts in a democratic society to encourage, guide, direct or regulate that science is not just a legitimate endeavor, but also a necessary one. If science was conducted in a vacuum, then who should care?

So, now we enter a debate about whether the University of Notre Dame should have scheduled a commencement speech by President Barack Obama because he is an advocate of using public money to fund the destruction of human life for the benefit of "more deserving individuals." Some will bewail the protests, claiming they are anti-science.

From this, we desperately need respite.

Kansas governor signs abortion law on fetal sonograms

Under it, abortion clinics will have to offer women the option of viewing a sonogram of the living fetus or listening to its heart beat. (Story here)

Of course, the abortion industry lobbied against the law, the story said, "arguing it was an attempt to erode abortion rights by placing new restrictions on clinics."

Restrictions? Offering more information for more fully informed consent to help women "choose" is an intrusion on abortion rights? Only in the Alice in Wonderland world of Planned Parenthood would such a requirement be viewed as an infringement on "choice."

Rahm Emanuel's profitable stint at mortgage giant

This is a must read. More revelations on the slimy character of Obama's trusted adviser.

Tollway officials OK breaks for violators

Why?

Tollway officials try to explain why here. It comes down to: We're supposed to feel sorry for the road runners.

Pelosi Vetoes Obama. Media Ignore It.

Obama was preparing a shock for military veterans

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

All too little attention has been paid to President Barack Obama’s shocking plan to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries.

For most of the media—and, consequently, the public—the plan briefly flashed like heat lightning in the summer sky and soundlessly disappeared. But the very existence of the plan, and the story of how it bit the dust, raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s political wisdom, its ability to govern and whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is running things.

The astonishing proposal raised an uproar among veterans’ groups...

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Haven't we had enough under Blago?

Now Quinn wants to hit us with a 50 percent income tax increase.

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

If you're not for Gov. Pat Quinn's 50 percent income tax increase and a raft of other new levies in his proposed budget then you're against the poor, elderly, veterans and children.

I'm doing it for the poor, elderly, veterans and children, Quinn repeatedly says to justify the boatload of new taxes in his proposed budget. Not helping them, he said, would be "mean-spirited."

Cork it, can't you?

It's the same old crippled logic that has been deployed against any member of the body politic that demurs from whatever big, new tax or spend number that shows up in a budget. After all these years, can't the people pushing ever-bigger government do better than suggest that their opponents are indifferent or cruel?

After all, suggests John Tillman, chief executive officer of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, can't being "mean-spirited" also mean dipping into people's wallets? Isn't it just as harsh (to paraphrase the left) as making people choose between paying their taxes and buying medicine or food?

Quinn, as Democrats often do, is arguing from the heart rather than the mind, which is why it sells politically.

But as a reasonable argument, it fails. The choice isn't just between a massive tax increase and doing nothing. A multitude of other possibilities present themselves, like not increasing revenues until demonstrating that current revenues—which have grown by $7 billion over the past decade—are well spent.

What Quinn is proposing is like pulling a wrecked car out of the ditch and deciding, while we're at it, to repave the road.

Give credit to Quinn for honestly facing Illinois' horrible financial condition head on; how refreshing not to hear ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich shucking about how he fixed the budget when he only made it worse.

But Quinn's budget also would make matters worse. Illinois is losing jobs and businesses. More people leave than settle here. An arguably low income tax is offset by higher-than-average property taxes, the nation's highest sales tax (in Chicago), a high inheritance tax and a multitude of other, less obvious taxes that Quinn would increase.

Illinois is becoming a tax sinkhole. If government workers in Illinois were paid what comparable workers were paid in the private sector, we could save $3 billion, argues Tillman.

Don't hold your breath. Even gradually narrowing that gap over time by limiting the exorbitant wage, pension and contractual benefits granted to organized labor is unthinkable in a state throttled by union power. Consider the additional money that Quinn wants for "the children"—meaning public education. Average per-pupil spending in Chicago now is about $13,000, prima facia evidence that taxpayers are getting rooked. Obvious alternatives (school choice) exist, but the teachers unions continue to resist freeing the children from their public school bondage. Incredibly, the Illinois Education Association thinks even Quinn's increases aren't enough. It criticized Quinn's budget for "balancing the state budget on the backs of public education employees and state government workers." The only satisfaction to be derived from such an absurd statement is that some of Quinn's rhetoric (he's doing it for "the kids") is getting tossed back at him.

On top of all this, the special interests (including the teachers union) that demand so much bloat from the Illinois budget managed to kill a proposed constitutional convention that could have addressed some of the structural problems that have led to our financial crisis. No matter how much we do for the poor, elderly, veterans and children, we always can do more.

But we're already doing plenty, so much so that the state's financial health is greatly endangered. Continue on this route and we'll for sure end up doing less, not more, for the poor, elderly, veterans and children.

With Blagojevich gone, legislative leaders now have an opportunity to demonstrate their reasonableness.

We have a right to expect better governance. Illinois' reputation already is bad enough, and deservedly so. An astonishing 50 percent income tax increase will only convince the rest of America that we are, indeed, nuts.