Sun Times NewsPro Natasha Korecki Covers Burge Trial as it Should - Facts, Nothing But the Facts

The Chicago Sun Times has the best reporters and worst columnists in Chicago.

Mark Konkol, Tim Novak, Chris Fusco and sometimes Abdon Pallasch are strong and honest. My favorite read is Natasha Korecki she slides a sentence with the grace of sportswriter Dan McGrath and avoids the posing and posturing of the would be Menckens and Divas.

Paddy Fitz the Fed needs Media Points after his Blago Blunders and here he is playing to his orchestra. The Burge Trial will be a Circus and the Feds will play to the folks who only read what Carol Marin, Mark Brown, Mary Mitchell, and the Sun Times' weak-ass editorial board writes. The Sun Times has talent like Ms. Korecki who will report and not fabricate. BTW- The Sun Times Editorial Board is 10X better than the Chicago Tribune's.

Jon Burge has been convicted by the media and the media never checks its own sources - they are in agreement with all the nonsense that the Burge Industry ( Peoples Law Office, Mr. & Mrs. Ayres-Dohrn, Northwestern Law, CPUSA) have provided the lazy and the wildly ambitious columnists.

Thank you Natasha Korecki! This is a good read and a fine report.

Dressed in a black suit, tie, and blue shirt, former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge on Thursday spun around in his chair and seemed to struggle a bit as he stood up.

"Morning, ladies and gentlemen," said the man who for decades has been accused of torturing murder suspects.

» Click to enlarge image

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge as he leaves the Federal building for a lunch break Thursday.
( Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)


Burge was briefly inside a courtroom addressing the potential jurors who will judge his fate in his trial that starts later this month on obstruction of justice and perjury charges. A pool of jurors were summoned today to fill out a questionnaire but jury selection in the case doesn't begin until May 24. After court, a slow-moving Burge, who lives in Tampa, Fla., said he felt "terrible," physically and that it was "not unusual," to be back in Chicago.

Nearly 80 potential jurors were handed questionnaires in preparation for the upcoming selection.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow told the ethnically and racially diverse panel not to read or listen to any media coverage of the case.

While Burge and his underlings have long been accused of torturing suspects into giving confessions, he is not on trial for those actual acts. Burge is accused of lying on a sworn questionnaire that probed him of the alleged practices.

Sun Times Has Real Reporters, Natasha Korecki and Chris Fusco, Shedding the Light on Blago SEIU Senate Silverfish

The Icons and the See-nothing, Know -Nothing Sun Times Editorial Board gave Candidate Obama a Free Pass and Ride to the White House. Sun Times reporters would have dug deeper, but maybe the leash was on under Old Cyrus.

The Chicago Sun Times of neighborhood guy James Tyree is blessed with real talent - the reporters. Newspaper people Natasha Korecki, Mark Konkol, Chris Fusco, Maureen O'Donnell and the superb investigative pit bull Tim Novak.

The editorial board stinks and the iconic and fatuous loudmouth columnists offer little or nothing. The little that they do is enough to insult working people ( cops, firefighters, public employees and their neighborhoods) and drive a larger wedge between the races - to say nothing of the constant Catholic bashing.

That said, Jim Tyree's reporters are very good.

Today, Natasha Korecki and Chris Fusco beam some light on the SEIU Silverfish. Full disclosure: I met Tom Balanoff years ago over in Indiana when his father James represented the Steelworkers ( unlike most upper-echelon SEIU people, Tom Balanoff ( I think represented Cement workers at the time) is a working man and not a U. of Pennsylvania Social Worker manque) and found him to be a real gentleman and a rock-ribbed union man. SEIU needed a real working man in order to make sense to other real Union People here in Illinois -a real Union State. I believe that SEIU, which began here in Chicago with the sacking of the Old Janitors Local #25 in the 1970's, is anything but a real labor union, but that's me. Tom Balanoff, I believe has been triangulated by Stern and the Obama Staff and that Andy Stern will surface as the real deal maker. Again, what I know of Tom Balanoff is that he is a genuine, sincere and honest man getting jackpotted by power mad Stern and Anna Burger.

Here is Natasha Korecki and Chris Fusco's fine work:

It is the first indication that Obama personally called an official with SEIU, which had donated $1.8 million to Blagojevich.

Two sources with knowledge of the investigation say Obama called Balanoff on Nov. 3, 2008, to give Balanoff the green light to continue talking to Blagojevich about Jarrett's possible appointment. The man who would be elected president the next day first left Balanoff, whose union also supported Obama, an innocuous message asking him to return the call.

When Balanoff and Obama later spoke, Obama -- in addition to discussing the election and campaigning -- relayed to Balanoff that he would not publicly come out in favor of any one candidate for his replacement, sources said.

Obama also told Balanoff he preferred Jarrett to come to the White House with him, according to the sources. However, he said he thought Jarrett would be electable and a strong senator, the sources said.

Blagojevich's lawyers also cited a Feb. 3, 2009, FBI interview with the union official, quoting the official as saying, "Obama was aware that [Balanoff] would be reaching out to Blagojevich."

Balanoff interpreted the conversation as a green light to keep discussing Jarrett's candidacy with Blagojevich, the sources said.

The Blagojevich court filing doesn't accuse the president of any wrongdoing.

I hope that Tom Balanoff dodges any and all misery in this shabby tale, but I hope that Mandarin Andy Stern finally gets revealed as the Silverfish he is and has been.

Sun Times Attack Sen. Meeks, School Reform in Defense of Local Councils - local soviets wedging open the the doors of control.

A study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that the majority of LSCs appear to function well, noting that most do their work responsibly and draw in new resources for their schools.

Chicago Sun Times 02/12/10

Oh, by the way -

In 1991, (Mike) Klonsky co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago with Bill Ayers.

The Workshop was given at least $175,000 by Chicago’s Annenberg Challenge. This organisation was chaired by Barack Obama, who had been recruited for the job by a group which included Bill Ayers.

They wanted to build Public School soviets - you know grassroots*?

Uh Huh, it appears that the Sun Times is dead wrong again and consistently.

Supporters of this (LSCs) major reform argued that
creating Local School Councils (one of
several major changes brought about by
the Chicago School Reform Act) would
help catalyze substantial improvements in
the quality of Chicago public education

http://www.designsforchange.org/pdfs/LSC_rpt_final.pdfThat was in 1988. How'd that work out?

In 1995, the state legislature modified the
Reform Act to give Chicago’s mayor more
control over Chicago’s Central Board and
central administration as well as the power
to intervene in failing schools. National
publications like Newsweek have asserted
that Chicago’s mayor was given “near total
power over the schools” by the 1995
legislative changes.7 This assertion is
untrue. The basic powers of Chicago’s
Local School Councils have remained
intact to the present, and Chicago
remains the most decentralized big city
school system in the nation.

Uh Huh and that was 1995. How'd that work out? Reverend Meeks responded -

“If you want to go back to prior to 1995, then go back. I will never go back. This school system has changed and is getting better. I don’t care what anyone says.

One of the central changes made by the
1988 law was to establish an elected Local
School Council at each Chicago public

Our Local School Councils were the funded experiment by Bill "The Terrorsist" Ayers, Mike Klonsky and their confederates. Our President Barack Obama, then a young community actiovist lawyer seeking the Progressive imprimatur on his political aspirations served on the three 501(c)3 boards that funded the soviet/grassroots Local School Council Control apparatus that destroyed public schools in Chicago, backrupted Illinois taxpayers and pull thestrings on the Chicago Teachers Unions.


school (except for a few special schools).
Each LSC consists of:
1. Six parent representatives, elected by
parents and community residents.
2. Two community representatives, elected
by parents and community residents.
3. Two teachers, elected by the school staff.
4. The school’s principal.
5. A student elected by students (in the
high schools).
Unique among U.S. cities, Chicago’s LSCs
were given strong powers, including
powers in the following areas:

1. Principal Selection and Evaluation.
LSCs appoint the school’s principal
to a four-year contract and rehire or
replace the principal at the end of this
contract period. And they supervise and
evaluate the principal on an ongoing
basis.
2. School Improvement Planning.
LSCs set priorities for their school’s
improvement through helping develop
and approve an annual school improvement
plan. These plans must focus on
achieving student learning standards set
by the state.
3. School-Based Budget. LSCs help
develop and approve a school budget,
with major control over an average of
$500,000 per year in flexible funds from
the state.

Uh Huh, continuing and how'd that work out?

Here is where Local School Councils began:

The Community Renewal Society (CRS) describes itself as a “progressive, faith-based organization that works to eliminate race and class barriers.” Rev. Calvin S. Morris (left) is the executive director. CRS publishes both the Chicago Reporter and The Catalyst, in which the above announcement was run.

At the 48th Annual Eugene V. Debs – Norman Thomas – Michael Harrington Dinner, Morris was a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Chicago honoree (h/t Trevor Loudon):

Rev. Dr. Calvin Morris was the Executive Director of the Community Renewal Society, a civil rights organization with roots going back to the 19th Century in Chicago, and was a co-chair of Chicago Jobs with Justice, a Labor-Community organization active in supporting the organization of low-wage workers and in support of peace.

The Catalyst was founded by its current publisher, Linda Lenz.

According to her Alliance for Excellent Education profile:

Linda Lenz is the founder and publisher of Catalyst Chicago, a monthly news magazine that covers the progress, problems and politics of school reform in Chicago. She is also the publisher of the sister publication, Catalyst Cleveland. Catalyst is a publication of the Community Renewal Society, a nonprofit founded in 1882 that fights for racial and economic justice. …

Before launching Catalyst in 1990, Ms. Lenz was the education writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and before that an editorial writer for the Chicago Daily News. Following graduation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she was a political writer and columnist for the Pioneer Press, North Shore.

On August 30, 2008, former Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lenz dutifully penned an apologetic published in the Sun-Times on the Bill Ayers-Obama relationship. Lenz dismissed any connection between Ayers’ years with the Weather Underground and his more recent school reform enterprise, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the shared relationship with Barack Obama, who was CAC’s first executive director. Lenz writes


In other words, Obama does, indeed, know Bill Ayers as more than just a guy from the neighborhood. So do a host of civic leaders in Chicago.

On his Small Talk blog, Mike Klonsky praised Lenz’s effort, commenting “Chicago Catalyst’s Linda Lenz … gives us the real story on Obama and Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.” It should also be noted Klonsky’s Small Schools Workshop is “named as a major Chicago Annenberg Challenge beneficiary,” as he and Bill Ayers “[picked] up a bundle — $175,000 –– for ’small school workshops.’”

By the way, Lenz is also a low dollar donor for Obama’s presidential campaign, contributing only $1000 in 2008.

More Obama/Ayers/Klonsky connections

Following Lenz’s August 2008 article, RBO wrote in a since-deleted article that the Obama/Ayers/Klonsky connections continue:

Chicago Catalyst’s largest funder is The Joyce Foundation, upon whose board Obama served for eight years, beginning in 1994, during which time, in 1995, Anne Hallett of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, William Ayers of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Warren Chapman of the Joyce Foundation proposed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.


Mike Klonsky is a former member of Lenz’s Catalyst Chicago editorial board, as is John Ayers, Bill Ayers’ brother.

Thomas G. Ayers (more here), Bill Ayers’ father, was a contributor to the Community Renewal Society, as are: Bettylu Saltzman, whom we learned recently, has been an Obama supporter since at least his run for the Illinois legislature; Obama bundler John Rogers (and an Exelon director), through his Ariel Mutual Fund (more here); Sidley Austin, the law firm which employed both Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dohrn; Mike and Susan Klonsky; and Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama’s church until recently tossed under the Obama bus. In fact, funders for the 2005-2006 cycle reads like a who’s who list of Obama campaign funders dating from his earliest fund-raising days.
In that same article, RBO included the following video from May 2006 in which Lenz acts as moderator at the National Louis University forum on No Child Left Behind, in which Bill Ayers participated.

The geniuses at the Sun Times site the 1997 finding of the University of Chicago data padding study, yet argue that LSCs must remain. They go further demanding that the Illinois Legislature SPEND MORE to support LSCs of a Trainwreck of a Public School System. Catalyst is the mouthpiece of the radical leftists who dreamed up the school soviets- like Progress Illinois is the SEIU organ. They collectively and cordially hated Paul Vallas who attempted to bring real reform. He knew a soviet operation when he saw one. Kay Lenz and her surrogates hounded Paul Vallas, or rather Mayor Daley, who is not a huge reader it seems to me. These Radicals hate Charter Schools. They hate Vouchers and now they are building up the hate for Sen./Rev. James Meeks. They hate cordially and enthusiastically - nothing personal.

The Legislature should dismiss this bill and focus on efforts that might actually improve the Chicago Public Schools.

The Legislature should and will support this bill and focus on Vouchers and will help Chicago Public Schools.

As long as the Media and the Chicago Sun Times in particular gets its sole nurishment from radical leftists and lawsuit addicted lawyers, it will continue its path to irrelvance.

Supporting Local School Councils and fighting Vouchers? Not so hot, but the Chicago Sun Times is Okay with it. Radical. Radically stupid.


*

Originally, the soviets were a grassroots effort to practice direct democracy. Russian Marxists made them a medium for organizing against the state, and between the February and October Revolutions, the Petrograd Soviet was a powerful force. The slogan "All power to the soviets!" (Vsya vlast sovyetam!; Вся власть советам!) was used by the Bolsheviks to oppose the Provisional Government led by Kerensky.

Based on the Bolshevik's view of the state, the word soviet extended its meaning to any supreme body that obtained the authority of a group of soviets. In this sense, soviets turned into a hierarchical structure - Communist government bodies at local level and republic level[note 1] were called "soviets", and at the top of the hierarchy, the Congress of Soviets was the nominal core of the Union government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), officially formed in December 1922. However, the Communist Party officially played the "leading role" in society by that time; the soviets were in practice subordinate to it.

Later, in the USSR, local governmental bodies were named "soviet" (sovet: "council") with the adjective indicating of the administrative level, customarily abbreviated : gorsovet (gorodskoy sovet: city council), raysovet/raisovet (rayonny sovet: raion council), selsovet: rural council, possovet (poselkovy sovet: settlement council).

The term also came to be used outside the Soviet Union by some Marxist-Leninist movements, for example, the Communist Party of China's efforts in the "Chinese Soviet Republic" immediately prior to the Long March.

Chicago Brother-Love -Maureen O'Donnell's Odyssey of Jack Egan: Greek Ice Cream and the Kamikaze

History is about the truth and not what we'd like it to be and try to Krazy-Glu a patch job of what might have happened.

World War II was an epic fight in which good triumphed over evil. The Greatest Generation is term that merely seems to pay a passing nod at the millions of tough, skinny, energetic, independent and compassionate Americans who went to war against Fascism ( Nazi/Imperialist Japanese/Italian fascism) a belief that the State usurps the Rights of Man.

Maureen O'Donnell of the Chicago Sun Times presents a story that is a relic, a time-piece and evidence of what made newspapers great at one time. Her story of Jack Egan, an 86 year old gentleman, who wanted to learn the historical truth of his brother's WWII sacrifice as a sailor in the South Pacific is a thing of beauty.

It relates the historical context of Chicago in the 1940's and the roles played by teenagers in going to war against monsters.

Chicago's Greek community was the force behind the ice cream industry - the first Sundae was created in a Chicago Greek ice cream parlor; the first Soda Foundation was established in a Greek ice cream parlor and Greeks established ice cream manufacturing in 1920's Chicago. Hollis, Melvin - Ethnic Chicago p.280.

An Irish kid afflicted with Polio, Jack Egan could not go to war with his brother, but worked to maintain the American way of life here at home. Maureen O'Donnell presents the sadness of the War Department telegram coming to the helot's house at 7200 S. Seeley in 1945.

Maureen O'Donnell carefully and lovingly presents the treasures that make history come alive through the beauty of its simple truth -unalloyed by agenda:

Egan still has the telegram, sent to the old family home at 7231 S. Seeley, saying Jack was missing. It nearly stopped their mother's heart. She never recovered from her grief, dying six months later, at 52.

Egan has the Gold Star flag families hung in the window to show they'd lost a boy in the war and a chisel his brother made in shop class at Tilden Tech.

And now, 64 years later, the Westmont man has someone he can talk to about his brother, after seeing a Chicago Sun-Times story about Nick Korompilas, 85, a Mannert Abele survivor.

Egan, who turns 86 Sunday, couldn't believe it when he read the story. With one arm withered from polio and classified 4-F, Egan didn't serve in the military. But he always hoped to find someone who was on his brother's ship. Before the Internet, though, searching wasn't easy. And life got in the way. Egan worked at Kraft Cheese, Curtiss Candy and Glidden Paint. He married and raised a family.

But, after seeing the story, he got together with Korompilas at his Park Ridge home.

"I finally found somebody I could finally talk to," Egan said.

Click my post title for Maureeen O'Donnell's beautiful story.




http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/112827
http://books.google.com/books?id=2JbU1d9Xil0C&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=Chicago+Greek+%2B+Ice+Cream+Parlors&source=bl&ots=vK76kPguv0&sig=PUctrRtLAHBkUE2SL0M2kxIAM6I&hl=en&ei=IFmiSoy0BojsMamH2egP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Chicago Daily Observer Connects the Allison Davis Dots Found By Sun Times' Tim Novak

Tim Novak of Chicago Sun Times has done more to put ’some’ light on the Progressive Machine; however, Mr. Novak’s great work scatters heaps of Dots that remain Unconnected on the political table.

His labors are Augean, but also like those of Sisyphus - much uphill groaning and heaving only to have the stone roll back.

Dan Kelley's timely piece might just prod the Lap Dogs to connect the piles of Dots:

If nothing else exposing Davis would serve a higher purpose: publicizing the blatant hypocrisy of the phony activists who are really reliable cogs in the Democratic Machine. A one time civil rights protester, who marched outside of City Hall, Davis proved to be someone who could be bought off by the system. His one time protégé, Obama means to overhaul the American economy and engage in a massive expansion of the size and scope of government activities. Like Davis, Obama, exempts himself from the rules and intends to live a life of ease and plenty. The president can jet off for a dinner date on Broadway without worrying about the hypocrisy of simultaneously asking all of us commoners to pay higher taxes and make sacrifices while reducing our wasteful use of energy and limiting our pollution causing habits.
Posing as a community activist is a tried and true way to advance your political and financial career in Democratic Chicago: the Shaw brothers, Bob and his late brother, Bill, were supposedly fair housing activists; Dorothy Tillman attended Chicago Board of Education meetings where she shouted down Angeline Caruso, a former acting school superintendent, and ridiculed Caruso’s frumpy appearance in the name of education activism; Luis Guiterez marched with Communists and Puerto Rican Nationalists, some of whom were later accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism; Marilyn Katz ran with the campus radicals, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and protested the Viet Nam war while hurling missiles at the police before she became a public relations expert for the political machine; Jan Schakowsky and her unapologetic, convicted criminal spouse, Robert Cremer, are two other fakers. Interestingly enough, despite their varied backgrounds, these folks have something in common: all of these individuals seemed to fall into line as soon as their personal needs and wants were gratified and they were given a place at the head table. They have all been feeding from the public trough ever since. The former Soviets called such privileged leaders “the vanguard of the proletariat.”
Obama has accepted bushel baskets of money from Davis in the form of campaign contributions. He lobbied to place housing redevelopment funds in the hands of Davis and Rezko. Perhaps, a few dollars from the pension fund profiteering ended up in Obama’s campaign war chest too. Only time will tell as the investigation proceeds.
Someday soon, the president needs to explain his relationship with both men. Calling it another “boneheaded” move or claiming “This is not the Allison Davis that I once knew” may not cut it indefinitely. Laundering clean a stained reputation is not an easy task. Club soda does not remove all types of spots.

Click my Post Title for Dan Kelley's Expose of Chicago's Progressive Machine within its Very Nuanced Context and Chicago's Media's Feckless Disregard for Both.

Catholic Universities Must Be Progressive Jugglers - Not Bastions of Faith and Learning

Perpetually grinning and passive aggressive propagandist Carol Marin oozes more useless stuff than a tube of German Cheese paste. Ever taste that stuff? It would gag a maggot.

Carol made her bones on the lives of Mary and Chris Fogarty whom she blamed for the Langert Murders as a Septuagenarian I.R.A. hit team* - way back in 1995. Carol has never admitted her stupidity, nor her part in making life a Kafkaesque hell** for the couple. Carol cares not.

Nor does Carol care much about anything. Today, she positions herself for an Obama dog-yummy for a preen piece about the idiotic and gutless invitation to America's Abortionist in Chief - President Barack Obama - as Commencement Speaker.

Carol parses Catholic Doctrine, because the Bishop of Fort Wayne has already taken the proper position. Carol Marin's smarmy parsing is for Obamabots and Catholic haters -The Sun Times Demographic. Using the already un-Catholic DePaul University, which struck its colors decades ago, Marin tries to ooze out some nuance by citing one of the gutless trimmers who directed DePaul's surrender -

The Notre Dame decision once again raises the question of whether a Catholic university must be Catholic first and a university second.

In Chicago, this is not a new discussion, as Dick Meister, the former provost of DePaul University --the nation's largest Catholic university -- knows firsthand.

In 1986, Eleanor Smeal, then-president of the National Organization for Women, was invited to speak by the DePaul Student Affairs Office. Protests, petitions, threats and demonstrations all arrived at DePaul's doorstep, and Meister's boss, the president of the university, withdrew the invitation under pressure.

A counterprotest, led in part by Meister's undergrad son, Christopher, argued that the mission of a university is to hear all voices -- not condone them necessarily -- but hear them.

Dick Meister's job was to find a middle ground. That turned out to be an off-site location where Smeal could speak -- but not as an official guest of the university.

"It was a juggle," Meister recalled by phone last week.

Carol Marin argues that Notre Dame is testing its strength, by 'juggling.' That test was failed mightily when President Father Jenkins caved in to PC Ass-kissing by inviting President Obama.

Catholic Universities need to grow a pair - Loyola, DePaul, and Notre Dame have all run up the white flag and jettisoned courage and commitment. The Green checked pants crowd needs to snap shut a few check books to get the milquetoast pansies in stiff collars to man up. As for my life-long attention to Notre Dame and its once important mystique? I'd rather watch or read about Zanfir the Master of the Pan Flute.

Tommy Zbikowski is graduated, playing for the Ravens and Boxing Pro! I'm done with ND - Charlie Weiss is bad enough, but a School playind at being a Catholic Institution is childish. Tommy Z is still the Man and ND are the . . .Eunuchs.

You are known by the company you keep. You can have Carol Marin and our so-called Catholic Universities. No Guts - No Glory. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam my broad manly ass.

*
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20113567,00.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=3UF1l4dBRWMC&pg=PA595&lpg=PA595&dq=langert+murders+%2B+IRA&source=bl&ots=p6esbsV1R9&sig=ToESz2NEV_NsTNBsIht97GgDPYU&hl=en&ei=-oDOSdenNIiInAejyITgCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
**THE LANGERT MURDERS

Seven weeks later on April 21, 1990, in Winnetka, Richard and Nancy Langert and their unborn child were murdered in their townhouse. (Appendix A) Nancy knew her murderer, sixteen-year-old neighbor David Biro. The families were friends; their fathers had been co-workers. While falling to the floor in her basement, shot twice, Nancy knocked down a bookshelf. Her handcuffed husband was already dead. As she lay dying she dipped her fingers into her pooling blood and on that shelf wrote her murderer’s name.

The next morning Nancy’s father discovered the bodies. The police arrived and then assembled at the police station across the Metra bridge from the murder scene. There each officer wrote names of possible suspects on index cards. Upon inspection, the cards contained only one name, “Biro,” and that was before the message on the shelf was noticed. Biro was a disturbed 16-year-old with a police record, and officer Caldwell had seen him near the crime scene at about 9 p.m. on the night of the murders. Biro had expressed his ambition to become a professional hit man. He had a lawyer defending him in two cases of shooting persons with his BB gun, and he had poisoned the milk in his family’s refrigerator. Biro’s sartorial statement was his long black overcoat. About the time of the murders, a thin young man in a long black overcoat had purchased two pairs of handcuffs at the local hardware store and was observed testing them before departing. Biro had fraudulently applied for an Illinois Firearms Owner I.D. but his mother intercepted it when it arrived in the mail. From Biro’s bedroom window his victims’ house is within view, and the Winnetka police station is midway between them. Despite all this, on April 23 Carol Marin reported on prime-time network TV that the IRA was linked to the murders.
Biro murdered the Langerts on April 21 but aided by such allies he remained at large until October 5, when the Winnetka police arrested him. His friends told the police of his next plan which was to rob the local bank and murder its entire staff. In Biro’s bedroom the police found FBI agent Lewis’s 357 Magnum, the murder weapon. Despite agent Buckley’s insistence (until the police arrested Biro) that Nancy’s bloody message spelled “IRA,” the jurors were eventually quoted as saying that it was those same letters that convinced them. They convicted Biro of two counts of murder, one of Class X home invasion, and one of intentional homicide of an unborn child. He is in downstate Pontiac serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. I am grateful to Biro.

McCain/Palin- Sun Times Stuck on Stupid - Read This Idiotic Editorial on Sarah Palin's Speech! Wear Your Depends -or Borrow Some!

Hat Tip to my Pal Steve Rhodes at Beachwood Reporter! Thanks Steve! Have a Falstaff Son!

I did not get around to peeking at 'The Progressive Independent Voice of Chicago' this morning, as I was busy doing what most Americans do - taking care of kids, getting to work and actulaly doing something when I get there! Never on Queen's Time!

So, I turned to the Beachwood Reporter to get an update on Chicago Media Moon-Howlers!

Never disappointed - Heeyah 'Tis - The Sun Times (STNG) in all of its suicidal glory (excerpt of course)!

. . .Because his pick for vice president, Sarah Palin, is woefully unprepared to be Leader of the Free World.

Does this sound harsh? We know it does, though we mean no disrespect. Our sincere hope is that McCain, a good and brave American, lives a long and healthy life. But when the senator chose Alaska Gov. Palin to be his running mate, and in doing so deemed her fit to stand a heartbeat from the presidency, he either demonstrated phenomenally bad judgment or put politics ahead of country.

Palin has almost no experience on the national or international stage. She has virtually no qualifications to be commander in chief. She is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town about the size of a couple of Chicago high schools. She has been governor for 20 months of a wilderness state with a population of 684,000 -- about the number of folks in Will County.

And the more Palin's GOP defenders contort themselves to defend her credentials, attempting to inflate the uninflatable, the more obviously thin her resume looks.

Asked by a CNN reporter what qualifies Palin to be commander in chief of America's armed forces, a McCain aide pointed out that, as governor, Palin "commanded" the Alaska National Guard. The reporter then asked, to no avail, for a single instance in which Palin had involved herself in the business of the Guard.

A commentator for the conservative National Review generously granted Palin "foreign policy" experience solely on the basis of geography -- Alaska is next to Russia and borders Canada. If the commentator knew of any Palin-Putin talks, he failed to mention them.

Jimmy the Two-Headed Boy, or most De LaSalle Graduates could understand Palin's speech last night. Not Chicago's 'Progressive Independent Voice' - they are waiting for John McCain to explain it to them - Senator, Read Slowly!!!!!!!!! Use Pictures!