Rue St. Michel

Our Subverted History, Part 1 - Setting the Stage

2020-06-19T16:08:00.001-05:00

Sharing this without comment because Asha Logos speaks for us, yes you and me. While the world is going Tribal, feel free to get your Tribal Boogie on. It's the thing to do these days, I'm told.

Edward Snowden, Hero Emeritus

2020-04-17T11:10:00.001-05:00

Get to know Edward Snowden. When the government began domestic spying after 9/11, passing The Patriot Act, our Master Minds began a concerted effort to creating a literal Police State.

We see it now with government agencies and corporations now marching in lock-step. They are defunding and unpersoning people they disagree with.

1984 is here and now.

The WeatherMen II - Of Media Money and Men

2020-04-17T10:54:00.001-05:00

A small glimpse of how deep the Rabbit hole goes when it comes to politics, corruption and racial Communism. What we have in Illinois is simply a leveraged push by hard Left revolutionaries to aid their ideological comrades and punish their enemies.

None of this is an accident. If it was, once in awhile things would swing our way - and they never do.

#JussieSmollett #KimFoxx #Lightfoot #Madigan #Durbin #Schakowsky #BillAyers #BernadineDohrn #TinaTchen #Obama

Identitarianism for All, or Nobody

2018-06-28T12:13:00.000-05:00

"Western civilisation needs a complete overhaul or it will fall apart one day or another. It has realised the most complete perversion of any rational order of things. Reign of matter, of gold, of machine, of number, it no longer possesses breath, or liberty, or light."

~ Julius Evola

As part of our collective decline, We've gone from Communism to Racial Communism.

The Left's biggest error within the last 30 years is thinking that whites (European Americans) would never engage in identity politics.

The reason?

Because while allowing all other ethnic groups to openly advocate for their individual ethnic interests: Whites were taught that doing so was "racist", and by using the word "racist" it effectively stifled any feelings of whites recognizing that they're being attacked and targeted.

But thanks to the alternative right, the Overton Window is shifting and whites are indeed seeing that there is a large amount of racial hostility directed at them.

The "Conservative" movement is dead, having "conserved" almost nothing: especially our First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly and freedom of association.

Levin, Savage, Gallagher, Malkin, Hannity and Medved (not so for Tucker), are willfully ignorant to the racial animus directed towards whites.

Here's a clip of some Based Tucker in action.

And Frame Games comes in with some Based Tucker information right here ---> It is our highest duty to be Truthful, to be honest and courageous enough to ignore morality in favor of verisimilitude. And that's why I say that we should have Diversity for everyone, or no one. If Diversity is going to be a $1 trillion dollar industry, then it needs to include whites and those of European descent.

Is that fair? Don't we have a right to exist? Aren't we created by God and endowed with inalienable rights? Don't we have a right to defend our interests as everyone else can?

Of course. As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing for evil to win is for good men to do nothing." To give you a primer on what we're facing and what the future holds, I'm posting these three youtube IBS videos of Canadian biologist Jean-Francois Gariepy. His guest for these special reports was a Jewish man who goes by the nom-de-guerre of Frame Games. (Editor's Note: Frame Games was taken down from every media platform as of January 2020. Mirror sites have popped up due to courageous people backing up the information.) Share this information with your circles of friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. If we don't take action now, we can see what was done in Haiti, in South Africa and Brazil.

Remember Fam - When you see calls for Diversity, it simply means No More White People.

Adam Carolla and "Chickenshit" cops

2015-09-21T13:39:00.003-05:00

Let me start by saying I love Adam Carolla. Witty, smart, original and funny as hell are what keep me listening to his podcasts and buying his books (Not Taco Bell Material, In 50 Years We'll All Be Chicks, Daddy Stop Talking!)

My Bro-Mance with Adam started long ago when he was co-hosting LoveLine with Dr. Drew Pinski. They've reunited for a semi-weekly podcast that is well worth your time.

The thing I sincerely enjoy from Adam is his honesty, and an honest person can't be censored. From time to time throughout the years Adam's career he's been highly critical of police in California and has gone ballistic on 'chickenshit cops'; due to himself getting stopped and cited for minor traffic violations (specifically: no front plate, no seatbelt and speeding).

During the September 17th, 2015 Adam&Drew podcast, Adam went on a tirade in which he said,"After 9/11 we made the mistake of saying that they're all heroes. They [police officers] are not all heroes. ("Chickenshit" comments are 15:01 thru 20:45)

That's fine and I understand the impetus for the anger and resentment because, to be honest, we police officers should be more lenient with the law abiding citizens who actually work for a living, aren't out creating disorder and are contributing to society in a positive way.

What ignited his ire for this podcast is that he was in London, England and observed that it is a regular occurrence to see Londoners loitering outside drinking establishments with glass pints of beer in their hands and smoking cigarettes. He used the observation to roundly criticize the police for harassing law abiding people here who would like to walk around their neighborhood with open alcohol or hang outside with a beer while playing a game of bags.

"The picture of civility - white folks out enjoying a pint"

Here are my comments as a veteran police officer:

1) Lighten Up: If you pin on a badge, step out in to the street and place yourself in harm's way then by definition you are a hero. You are by default putting your life and safety on the line just by being out in uniform. We aren't perfect, and some of us are barely qualified to sort glass at a recycling center, but the majority of us do the best we can. Any traffic stop can turn deadly. Any noise disturbance can be an ambush. We are getting murdered just sitting at stop lights these days. Are we on the same level as combat soldiers? No, but our job isn't to "break things and kill the enemy" like your standard infantryman; on a moment's notice we have to be able to engage people in various roles. Sometimes we're the law enforcer, sometimes we're the priest, or the psychologist - or sometimes we're the clown.

We aren't engineers, or dentists or radio hosts - careers where you never have to fight someone, arrest a violent offender who is twice your size, or see your co-worker lying shot in the face on a dirty sidewalk. How about some perspective, people.

2) Quotas: You live in an affluent area (aka California) which means that your local police departments are imposing "quotas" on their officers and compelling them to write "chickenshit" tickets. Contact your local politician, the mayor's office and your congressman and demand that the quotas be lifted. When you give the police more flexibility, most cops will be more discriminating in who they cite. And by the way, if cops were more stringent in citing and arresting black people, the incarceration rates of black would be even higher than they are now. The fact is cops give blacks breaks much more than is reported.

3) Equality: The mainstreaming of Marxism means that "Equality of outcomes" is now the bar that must be attained. All laws, at all times, must be applied to everyone, even when there is no rational expectation for enforcing the laws in that area. A white woman pulling her 3 year old in a wagon on Halloween and sipping a chardonnay is equally as deserving a ticket as a black gangster disciple walking with a glass of Hennessy at 1 a.m. at 71st and Indiana.

"Urban area" policing is becoming the template more and more in low crime areas because departments don't want to be accused of treating minorities different than whites. Even though white people aren't out drinking Hennessy in the streets til 2 a.m., playing dice games and murdering each other over a $10 pot - under the rules of Political Correctness, our leadership will compel officers to cite ordinary law-abiding citizens for the same stuff we do in the ghettos. By the way, we enforce the drinking in public and public gaming ordinances in the ghettos because putting Jojo or BooBoo in jail for 8 hours may save someone's life. Those laws are designed to avert violence in public. Why are Brits allowed to stand out side their pubs and drink? The obvious point is that their actions are not contributing to public violence. But go to a football match in the UK and see if the cops enforce public drinking laws and they do because there's a difference between hooligans and civilized folks. One group can't handle their alcohol and the other can.

4) Projecting: The problem with being a public figure like Adam is that his life story is an open-book. He is a contrarian and an iconoclast, and why? Because maybe his dad wasn't a part of his life and, of course, he's got a lot of resentment. Unfortunately he assigns his anger and hurt to "The Police" because on some level they represent Daddy. How many of the "BlackLivesMatter" people are in the same boat; blaming cops because they just hate their dads? Seeing the illegitimacy statistics for blacks makes my point for me.

In conclusion, it's easy to pick on the police because we are the "face" of the Big State, and nobody likes to get cited, stopped, intruded upon or harassed. We police officers are not mind-readers and don't have the ability to foresee who's going to commit a crime. So lighten up! If you get stopped for a legit reason; shut the fuck up, take your ticket and thank the officer.

Realize that if you believe you're living in a police state - it is due to Leftist politicians; not because cops are "assholes on a power trip."

This Brave New World

2014-03-31T13:24:00.001-05:00

Ronald Reagan said,"The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." He was referring to the Progressive Left's ignorance of history, economics and human nature, but in a large sense he was tapping into the wisdom that under-girds our civilization (ie. Nature's God and natural law.)

As Mark Levin wrote in his seminal book Liberty and Tyranny: A Manifesto:

Our rights come from God, not from Man or a senate subcommittee or an Imperial president. Therefore our rights remain unalienable.

The violation of these natural laws leads to tyranny. I use tyranny in the sense that it smothers free speech, free will, free thought. You, as the sovereign citizen, no longer enjoy the liberty to freely express your views, even those founded in Religious ideas. The State is actively now using legislation to stifle free speech and religious freedoms. The State is forcing religious institutions to provide birth control. The State is compelling you to purchase insurance; forcing you into a private contract against your will. The State is morphing into a sick parody of Orwell's 1984.

The Gay Agenda is now a real threat to your personal Liberty. Tolerance is now only extended to those who agree with the New Left's political agendas of political correctness and MultiKulti.

Love is a 4 Letter word

Such is where we find ourselves today with homosexuality and the rise of the spurious Gay Marriage movement. To be publicly opposed to the gay agenda makes you a "hater" and a "homophobe".

I've written about this back in 2013 and my thoughts have continued to percolate, and evolve, on this important topic. I can say in all earnestness that Gay Marriage and Amnesty are the most important battles for conservatives to fight because our society will fall (ie. Balkinize) if we don't stand against them.

Is this hyperbole?

No. We're losing the culture wars. Period. We have 1960's radicals embedded within academia, the media and the government who want to tear this country down from within. Here's an example of what's being fed into the New Normal (That's a family!):

Notice how the only mediating factor of what is a family is the presence of love. The word Love has devolved into a platitudinous morass. What is love? Can I love my dog? My pet hamster? My sister? The 4-year old daughter of my neighbor? Can I marry 8 women if I "love" all of them?

Our idea of romantic love was unknown before the 12th Century. Not until the story of Tristan and Isolde was published did anyone even have a concept of romantic love. Love was reserved for the special, for royalty to beget lands and marriage was for having children.

Where did we go wrong? Again, the 1960's "Sexual Revolution" catapulted sex into the mainstream and an incessant drumbeat of "sex is good, sex is normal" anything-goes approach to morality emerged. If you disagreed with that then you had "hang ups" or you were "too straight"

But what if you want to promote a virtuous, moral and religious life?

Dr. Judith Reisman addresses the question and provides the answer: Shut up about it!

The Predators

Flawed Assumptions

David Benkof, writing for the Daily Caller, challenges the fundamental assumptions about the Gay movement. He breaks-down the biases of "Gay parenting" studies (Gay Parenting Studies are flawed http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/25/all-the-gay-parenting-studies-are-flawed/

And in Nobody is born that way! he addresses the 800 pound Gorilla in the room that nobody else in the media wants to discuss -- that there is no empirical evidence that anyone has a genetic disposition to homosexuality.

Christianity gets singled-out and vilified for promoting One-Man-One-Woman relationships but what of Islam?

Celebrate Deviancy!

As much as I disagree with Islam as a societal blueprint, you can't argue with their understanding of homosexuality. I would make the case that men and women who dissipate themselves in multiple straight "hook ups" are equally wrong but as a conservative with libertarian inclinations, I believe you are free to do what you want in your own bedroom and with your own genitalia. My beef with the Gay Agenda is that it is now being forced upon us a Public Policy. I speak for most conservatives when I say that we don't want "Religious Police" enforcing Bible scriptures and locking up Gays for being deviants, but the whole thing begs the question: What is there to celebrate?,p>

• Homosexuals live 20 years less than their straight counterparts. • In Sex in America: A definitive study showed that only 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women identify themselves as gay or bisexual. • Gay "monogamy" is hardly on par with traditional marriage participants (https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02) • As a group, Blacks strongly oppose gay marriage for religious reasons. The top six U.S. male serial killers were all gay--- • Donald Harvey claimed 37 victims in Kentucky; • John Wayne Gacy raped and killed 33 boys in Chicago • Patrick Kearney accounted for 32, cutting his victims into small pieces after sex and leaving them in trash bags along the Los Angeles freeways; • Bruce Davis molested and killed 27 young men and boys in Illinois; • A gay sex-murder-torture ring (Corll-Henley-Brooks) sent 27 Texas men and boys to their grave; and • Juan Corona was convicted of murdering 25 migrant workers (he "made love" with their corpses). • Lesbian Aileen Wuornos laid claim in 1992 to "worst female killer" with at least 7 middle-aged male victims. She single-handedly topped the lesbian nurse team of Catherine Wood and Gwen Graham, who had killed 6 convalescent patients in Grand Rapids, Michigan. • A study of 518 sexually-tinged mass murders in the U.S. from 1966 to 1983 determined that 350 (68%) of the victims were killed by those who practiced homosexuality and that 19 (44%) of the 43 murderers were bisexuals or homosexuals. • The ‘hate crimes’ gays complain about are infrequent and seldom involve more than name-calling or snide remarks. The FBI reported 431 hate crimes against homosexuals for the U.S. in all of 1991. Only one was "confirmed" for Washington, D.C. – yet D.C. gay activists claimed 397 incidents! When pressed, they admitted that at least 366 of these "crimes" consisted of "verbal harassment." (Sticks and Stones)

#WAR

We are fighting for the very soul of our country. The culture war is on-going and the foundations of our country are being torn apart. Be not afraid - even the Buddha was subjected to temptations and Fear and he defeated them. As the struggle ended, he realized the cause of suffering and how to remove it. He had gained the most supreme wisdom and understood things as they truly are. He became the Buddha, 'The Awakened One'. From then on, he was called Shakyamuni Buddha. Here's a PSA from the 50's when sanity and common sense weren't outlawed by our Media Masters and political ruling classes:

For more information --- http://www.truenews.org/Homosexuality/homosexual_myths_and_facts.html

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/101126

http://www.robgagnon.net/SecularCase.htm

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1602382/posts

Crooked City, the interview

2014-03-20T16:22:00.005-05:00

Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest famously said, “It's the job of the writer in America to say, ‘Fuck you God, fuck you and the Old Testament that you rode in on, fuck you.’ The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.”

Chicago cop Marty Preib just published his new book Crooked City. It is a compelling story about a series of murders on the westside in 1982. It includes the violence that took the lives of the Parker family, Chicago Police officers O’brien and Fahey, and a young couple in Washington park. It is a story that the Chicago media are terrified to tell because it doesn’t conform to their ‘narrative.’

Their narrative goes something like this,The police are always bad and pick on people for no reason. The offender is always the victim of police abuse and is not an offender but a victim of ‘the system.’”

(See also Joe the Cop's Ghetto Shooting Template for a more focused reaction).

Sound about right? I wrote the above impromptu but you can read Stokely Carmichael’s speech from 1966 (link here) and recognize the same sentiment. Couldn’t you picture ‘Screwy-Lewie’ Farrakahn or Jesse ‘Jackass’ Jackson saying those exact words at a podium in a Bronzeville basement or in an MB (Make Believe) church at 71st & Prairie? Couldn’t you see Tribune senior editor Gerould W. Kern or Stephen Chapman laying down that bullshit at an editorial meeting with their senior writers? They’d all nod in unison as they sipped their no-fat soy Starbucks lattes while adjusting the hipster “pajama boy” glasses?

Of course you could because this drivel is what gets regurgitated almost daily in this rotten stinking city – through the politicians, and the Old Media.

To go against the media narrative, to confront it, is a big risk. A big, big risk. As the rank & file police officers know, there are no First Amendment protections afforded a police officer. We are guilty until proven innocent. We are not allowed to even voice our opinions or comment publicly unless we clear it through the News Affairs bureau.

That’s the beauty of Crooked City – Marty stands before the ‘Uni-Party-Race-Baiting Combine’ (my words) and boldly gives it the finger.

Marty’s book is a scathing indictment of the Innocence Project and is a lesson on how good intentioned Liberal policies never take into account the unintended consequences of those myopic world views.

Sometimes the consequences are palatable – affirmative action discriminates against a white student. Or sometimes the consequences are deadly – Mary Hutchison gets strangled to death by James Ealy.

In these vignettes from 1982, the consequences were death.

Marty’s book read’s like Capote’s In Cold Blood with the exception that you get insight into the author’s day-to-day strivings and his inner musings. His insights on the city are unique and are tinged, thankfully, with an outsider’s view. I picture Marty’s muse carrying a sword in one hand, and the scales of justice in the other. He stands solidly at the side of the victim’s whose voices were silenced and yet continue to cry for justice.

From the book (page 156) “These narratives [police torture] accomplish their goal by deflecting away from the crime scenes themselves and moving to places like the interview rooms at the police districts. No doubt Andrew Wilson [the killer of O’brien and Fahey] got his ass kicked while in custody. Likely other police killers got smacked around. But systemic torture? Electrocution? What freedom these myths provide to their adherents, what power. Activists like Protess wage any claim whatsoever, no matter how baseless or destructive. Is there nothing now that can’t be claimed or argued? …. But where, in truth, was the systemic abuse and fraud – in the police interview rooms or the law offices, university classrooms and newsrooms? …It’s becoming clear to me why the journey to people like [Ricky} Shaw is so fraught with failure, miscommunications, and menacing threats, whi I feel such hopelessness about it. Did I think it would be a simple task to confront these narratives that had taken hold of the city?

Marty is originally from Michigan and came to Chicago to follow his dream of being a writer. He worked as a doorman for 10 years and then became a Chicago cop because he “needed a good job, and I needed a pension and didn’t like being inside” (I could say the same thing.)

Chicago is a funny place to be an artist because Los Angeles or New York are bustling metropolises with strong creative enclaves. Chicago will still grind you down like LA or NYC but Chicago doesn’t have as many like-minded people surrounding you. I think that’s why Chicago is a creative wasteland.

In 2010 Marty was interviewed by Billy Lombardo and it was shown on C-span. It was filmed in 2010 and about two-thirds of the way through, Marty discusses this project and what drew him into the Wrongful Conviction maze.

At one point he was asked about the craft. Marty’s response was classic: “Writing’s all about getting up every day and staring at a wall.” I laughed out loud. How true.

I read Marty’s book and found it to be a page turner, and very enlightening. I reached out to Marty for an email interview and here is what transpired.

Rue: I thoroughly enjoyed your book and have been showing it, and discussing it, with fellow coppers. I've had about a dozen tell me they're going to buy it. I have seen your c-span interview, and read the Crossing Lines piece you wrote for New City. Very powerful stuff.

Ken Kesey famously said "It’s the job of the writer in America to say, 'Fuck you, God, fuck you and the Old Testament that you rode in on, fuck you.' The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful."

I love the fact that you're giving a big middle finger to the lawyers, the mendacious professors, the corrupt judges, and all those who stand in the way of authentic justice. You clearly stand with the victims and their families. God bless you for that. You've got the balls of 3 men, Marty. I know you wouldn't say that about yourself because your humility is palpable. But it really takes courage to share your story, your insights and your life with the entire world through your writing.

The biggest take away from your book, for me, is how the police have been successfully portrayed as "out of control thugs" and worse. You say that suing the city has become a "cottage industry" amongst several law firms. There are always a few bad apples in the barrel but the police get particularly singled out by the media. A dentist or doorman gets in a DUI crash and there isn't a beep from the media but if the drunk driver is a cop then it rates an "above the fold" front page story. I know the war against the police really kicked off in the 60's with the rise of the New Left. According to Marxist theory the police are the front line 'troops' for the capitalists, who protect the 'exploiters'; and there was a lot of head busting going in the 20's & 30's when Big Labor was in its ascendancy. The radicals were successful in using the '68 convention as an indictment of the Chicago Police department as brutal and violent. Is the animosity simply a holdover from those bygone eras? Any insight into that?

Marty Preib: This is a great question. About halfway through the book I stumbled upon a documentary about the Weather Underground, a group of young people mostly from Chicago who broke off from the Students for Democratic Society to form their own radical, violent group. They went around setting off bombs throughout the 70’s and called themselves marxist revolutionaries. Imagine my surprise when one of them, Bernadine Dohrn, was listed as a professor at Northwestern’s Law School, working on wrongful conviction cases. The media has largely given the Weather Underground a pass. They claim they never killed anyone, but I think that is nonsense. There is a lot of evidence that Dohrn killed a San Francisco policeman in one of her bombings. The San Fran Police Union asked the feds to indict her for this bombing.

But the truth is that the wrongful conviction movement is directly tied to the demonstrations in 1968. Many of these radicals went into higher education, including Dorhn and her husband Bill Ayers. They pushed their radical agenda on the students, mostly in the form of wrongful conviction. When you peel open the evidence in so many of these cases, you see there is very little evidence that these killers are wrongfully convicted or the police did anything wrong at all. No doubt there are police abuses. I'm not denying that. But it is not systemic the way these activists claim. In fact the evidence of systemic corruption is more obvious in their actions, than the cops. The fact is that the wrongful conviction activists have mastered the art of public relations. It helps that they have many allies in the media, who join in on their claims without checking the facts at all. All of this is very apparent in the Porter case. The ties to 1968 are very clear, though, and I plan on writing more about it.

Rue: In the book you wondered out loud why the local media chose, and still chooses, to ignore stories like this. You describe Chicago as a "city that has perfected its own evil - it does so by capturing people's imaginations." (I love that turn of phrase by the way). Why do you think they turn a blind eye to stories such as this and refuse to dig deeper? Why wouldn't the Tribune or Sun times do an expose on Porter or Ealy? On some level do you think it's due to Benjamin Plotinsky's view that we're being brainwashed into believing "black = good, white = bad" by our media? (see http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_liberal-enthusiam.html)

MP: Journalism schools have become hotbeds of radical activism, particularly Northwestern. Journalists like Eric Zorn and Steven Mills echo the claims of these professors without any fact checking whatsoever. Whoever questions them, they assail. Former Tribune journalist Bill Crawford, who broke the Porter case, is a perfect example. When Crawford was trying to get people to listen to him, Zorn and Chicago Reader writer Mike Miner wrote articles about Crawford being unreasonable, volatile, crazy even. Now, all of Crawford’s claims have proven completely correct, but they still vilify him. It’s as if anyone who violates the party line is assailed.

Another reason is that the newspapers and other media have dug themselves a huge hole in covering these cases. You have to remember that the Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize in large part because of their coverage of the Porter case. How is going to look when it comes to light that they won a Pulitzer for a case they got completely wrong, for a case in which they were journalistically negligent? Many of the editors and journalists wish this whole story would just go away.

I don’t know much about Plotkinsky’s theory. It’s just all very depressing. I think these radicals are fanning the flames of racial hatred rather than addressing them as they claim. It’s one of the dark ironies of these stories that these activists are foisting killers back upon the minorities they claim they are helping. They really aren’t helping anyone. They are undermining the justice system. I would like to hold out hope that the racial tensions simmering in these cases will be alleviated. More and more I think Chicago is a hopeless place. This sentiment took over as I researched these cases.

Rue: You described Officers O'brien and Fahey's last day, and how they were murdered by Andrew Wilson on that fateful day February 9, 1982. You also write eloquently in recounting Officer Doyle's encounter with Edgar Hope - and that Hope and Wilson were friends. You point out, and I'm sure most people don't know, that the day that O'brien and Fahey were murdered, the Wilson brothers were "gunned up" and heading to Cook County Hospital to spring Edgar Hope. You wrote on page 46 [Prior to the O'brien/Fahey murders] "In that year, 1982, these police murders were hanging over the heads of every officer, not just as reminders to be careful and events of aching sorrow, but as indications that something fundamental had changed. There was some shift in power they could not fully measure, as if some fate in the city now operated on behalf of the sociopaths, giving them more power. It was not a transient shift, or temporary one, but a shift for all time" --- that is a spot on assessment and it was clearly a shift in the direction of anarchy, not justice. A shift away from a civil society toward a new tribalism. Can you elaborate on that? Who or what was bending the curve in favor of the sociopaths?

MP: I think it was Chicago’s corruption that laid the foundation for this change for the worst. I think the revolution that took shape in 1968 by the activists never faded. It just took new forms. In many ways, they gained more strength and became more organized as they moved off the street into universities, newspapers, law firms and other professional jobs. But it was the weakness inherent in Chicago’s institutions that gave them their real power, the fact that the political establishment tried to buy them off rather than fight them. When Mayor Daley fired Jon Burge, he gave life to this movement that was, up until that point, a kind of laughingstock in the city. Daley threw the police under the bus because he was the state’s attorney when all these allegations against Burge took shape. He did what so many people in power in Chicago do: He made someone else the fall guy so he could preserve his power. So the groundwork was laid long before the wrongful conviction activists became organized. In short, it’s the fact that Chicago is one party political syndicate that gave power to this new chaos. It’s very depressing.

Rue: It's particularly galling that you point out that in 1999 the Tribune ran a bunch of articles assailing the criminal justice system and the Tribune held out the Porter case as an example of righteous injustice. That the law firms (leovy & leovy, et al) began suing the city, prosecutors and police - winning up to $70 million. This may speak to my first question but the Tribune was cheerleading for convicted murderers, rapists and felons and they couldn't be bothered to boil down the facts? Have you had a conversation about this with John Kass? If so, what's your consensus? To what end is the press taking the side of offenders?

MP: Kass has not spoken to me directly about these cases, though I believe strongly that he suspicious of them. I get the feeling that everyone at the Tribune has been told to keep quiet. The Trib is almost bankrupt as it is now. There are journalists who hate these wrongful conviction cases, who know what really happened. They just can’t say what they think. It took me five years to get one article about the Porter case published, Five years, despite the fact that so much evidence old and new shows clearly the Porter was the original killer. And the response to my article: No one will say a word. My former publisher, the University of Chicago Press, praised my book, but the editor told me over lunch he could never get the board at the press to publish a book saying what I am saying about the wrongful conviction movement. What does that say about how political correctness controls publishing? I was flabbergasted when the editor told me this. My first book was the bestseller for them that year. We got good reviews in several major newspapers and they just tossed me aside saying good job, but no thanks.

Rue: I think you’re right about that because a friend of mine who was a reporter for the Tribune told me that stories he submitted were reviewed by up to 10 different people before being published. He says that sometimes he didn’t even recognize his own writing because it had been so sanitized prior to publishing.

You also discuss the Howard Morgan incident when he tried to kill your friend Officer Wrigley, and Wrigley's partners that night. You describe very accurately just how most of us felt hearing this offender shooting at the police and then lying about it in court. I remember the acrimony raised by Morgan's family; how they whined at any press person with a microphone about how Morgan "used to be" the police, implying that Morgan was innocently driving down the street and the "racist" cops stopped him and just started shooting. The hysteria and race-baiting hijinks that accompanied this incident was truly disturbing on so many levels. A judge let Morgan out on bond even though he was charged with 4 counts of Attempted Murder of police officers. A "media disinformation" campaign was launched to discredit and smear the cops, and to bolster Morgan's case during jury selection. I was glad that Wrigley got a chance to say something to Morgan at the hearing (from Wikipedia: "You shot me, Morgan. You came very close to taking my life... you slandered our reputations as police officers. ... you are a fraud." But activist Ted Pearson compares the shooting to an Alabama lynching. The hyperbole is so outrageous - do you see any hope that the Race Hustlers will some day be marginalized and shown for the degenerate creeps that they are?

MP: The Morgan case was an example of this wrongful conviction nightmare moving into my own life as I was writing about it. It was very painful to watch a close friend go through this process, especially as I have interviewed dozens of really great detectives describe the same nightmare emerging in their own lives, merely for catching and prosecuting a killer.

They are very well organized and tenacious.

Of course I hold out hope that the race hustlers will lose out in the end. I couldn’t do this job or write if I felt as if it were hopeless. But Chicago is sort of the bottom of this hell, where these tactics originated and perfected. Sometimes I just want to get the hell out of Chicago, though. I’m sick of the racial hatred and the corruption here. I’ve always wanted to capture the real cost of the corruption in Chicago and I think these murder cases give form to it.

Rue: Sadly I share your misery and cynicism - as many of our brethren in law enforcement do. We see it every day in court rooms, read it every day in our newspapers.It's nauseating to see cold-blooded murderers get released back on to the streets to kill again.

To wrap up, I know you're a big William Kennedy fan and you speak eloquently about his influences on your writing. After finishing your book I couldn't help but think of Steven Pressfield's seminal book on writing The War of Art, and how at the very end he asks the question of The Ages:

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace?
In the end the question can only be answered by action.
Do it or don’t do it.
It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.
Don’t cheat ous of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.“
Thank you Marty for standing up for what’s right, for having the courage and tenacity to fight-the-good-fight and for giving us a truly remarkable gift.

I urge all my readers to buy this terrific book. You will be surprised at what you don't know.

Fleecing the membership

2013-12-13T12:29:00.001-06:00

Update: The Suntimes is reporting the Shields is now in full CYA mode - lobbing grenades at former, and current, board members claiming that they "fixed" the previous contracts. I say Bullshit on this one! Wag The Dog at its worst. What say ye?

We FOP Lodge 7 members can agree on one thing: Mike Shields sucks.

He makes over $200,000 per year. For some perspective, in 2010 we contributed $1.6 million in dues to the FOP and what did we get for our dues money?

Utter incompetence, malfeasance, skullduggery and a president with the leadership skills of a toddler.

Rope A Dope

Let's all get up to speed on Shields's Greatest Misses:

1. The "Letter of Intent" - Shields forgot to submit a formal letter of intent to either cancel the previous contract and start from scratch, or notify the city that the last contract would just be amended during the next round of negotiations. He missed the deadline to terminate the last contract. What this effectively means is that our Retro check will be delayed; most likely for at least one year. If the city really wants to get down and dirty, they could rationalize cancelling the Retro payment by simply saying a) "we are broke and cannot pay it." b) the union failed in its fiduciary duty to properly advise the negotiating parties and thereby inherently abrogated the previous contract. If they get a sympathetic arbitrator, that could happen. Is it likely? No. But for Shields to expose us to this is indefensible. Even though Shields proffered a public apology to the rank and file, it still looks as if it could be a $20 million dollar mistake. Each one of you could lose up to $2,000 in retroactive pay.

The city attorney has already informally discussed the issue with FOP reps and said,"The Chief City Negotiator is laughing. The FOP has no idea how Rahm is salivating about taking down the biggest union in the city. Rahm's going to punish the FOP like you've never seen."

What the city will do (most like) is this - No retro for the first year. They will frontload the next contract with a 4% raise the first year, then 1% - 1% - 1% for the next. That way they'll save millions on not paying the first year's payment to the membership.

2. Shields also missed a deadline to file an unfair labor practice over the above mentioned issue.

3. The Sun Times reported that Shields is on the company payroll for one of Rahm Emmanuel's biggest campaign contributors. Conflict of interest, anyone?

4. The infamous letter by former FOP employee Carolyn Bentivenga going around. The letter alleges that Shields uses union dues money for vacations, clothes, expensive restaurant meals and other malfeasance. She also claims:

When I started working for Mike Shields I instantly noticed his lack of organization, lack of attention to detail, he had no attention span, no dedication to work, no ability to make decisions, let alone follow up with any action. He was unfocused, immature and appeared to be self-absorbed.
Working for Mike Shields could be compared to working for a child.

(As always, SCC addressed the letter issue and recently on FOP politics here. Check it out.)

Bentivenga's letter simply confirms what many of us have heard via the rumor mill for years about what's going on inside the FOP.

5.In the last meeting Shields removed Bill Dougherty; unceremoniously dumping him back to a beat car. The reason? Because Dougherty and a majority of the board decided to bring Shields up on lodge charges.

The charges brought are:

1) Inattention to duty,

2) Failure to perform and execute the duties of the office of president and

3) Lying to the FOP Membership

Both Dougherty and Aguilar stood up at the last meeting and called Shields a "liar". Keep in mind that Bill Dougherty handles the medical cases for hundreds of members. Some of these members are waiting for resolution to their cases because they're in "no pay" status, want to return to duty, or are waiting for movement on their cases before the medical board. With Bill not in his FOP role anymore, no one is addressing those medical cases.

When Shields was charged, the charter states that a committee must be appointed by the president to investigate the charged member. Shields was asked to recuse himself because he is the one charged. Shields refused and appointed his buddies to the committee and, of course, Shields was found "not guilty." When Dougherty was dumped 90% of members voted to reinstate him for the good of the lodge but Shields refused to comply with the reinstatement, so now Shields is being charged again for "failure to perform the duties of the president."

Hope For Change

Well now we have an officer from district 003 who has taken the bull by the horns and wants to do something about it. From the district fax machine came these little gems:

I salute Officer Quarles for doing this but this is not the right tactic at this time. It is like pissing in the wind. It won't do any good because since the president is elected, it takes an election to oust him. Shields won't resign because he's too stubborn and narcissistic. He can't be forced to resign - but he can be impeached. But with 4 months left to go til the election, and with us in contract negotiations, this would be a terrible time to get an impeachment hearing going.

A high ranking FOP State Rep was also at the last FOP meeting and he was overheard saying [regarding the Shields fiascos], "this is the most disorganized train wreck I've ever seen. It's frankly embarrassing."

2014 is Critical

Apathy is our biggest enemy. In the last election only 33% of active members voted. A greater percentage of the 8,000 retirees voted and they put a large number of retirees in office. This isn't good because the retirees have different priorities than the active guys and gals. We must get as many active members to mail in their ballot! It doesn't matter what team you vote for - just vote! Next year I have seen who's going to be running and I am going to support our CityWide Team with all my might because I think they can get the job done.

We have very serious issues to confront next year, not the least is ObamaCare. I have already heard that the city is going to cancel the medical portion of our contract and throw every city employee into a healthcare exchange. They already tried to do that with retiress and we are next.

The city only cares about saving money, not about the health and safety of its first responders. Moving us to ObamaCare would probably save the city about $1 billion in costs. The time is NOW to start getting Shields, and his rump swabs, out of our beloved FOP Lodge 7. Spread the word, and get informed. Ask questions of the guys and gals that come to your district. Get involved; attend FOP meetings. Your future depends on it.

Crooked City

2013-12-02T21:42:00.000-06:00

I've written about the Death Penalty and, no matter the horrors visited upon the victims by some murderous thug, there is always a phalanx of self-righteous people who publicly oppose putting the convicted murderer to death. Moonbats like Mike Farrell, Lily Tomlin and Chicago "writer" Mary Mitchell regularly cry for "justice" for these convicted killers but, I always wonder if they would ever consider the fact that killing the killers would bring some authentic justice for the victims and their families.

No, they probably wouldn't even consider it.

Marty Preib wrote a letter to Mary Mitchell which I'm reproducing here with his permission.

Ms. Mitchell,

I am a writer and Chicago Police Officer currently working on a book about several murders in 1982. I have also followed closely the Howard Morgan case, sitting through much of both trials.

I have read many articles from journalists about controversial cases, but I do not think I have read any as depraved and morally banckrupt as your column today. Your overwhelming bias should banish you from serious journalism.

The reason Howard Morgan was found guilty was that there was overwhelming evidence that he pulled a gun on the officers and fired at them 17 times from a short distance for no reason. Naturally, you don't mention in your tripe that three of the officers were wounded a result of Morgan's firing at them, one saved from a probablly fatal wound to his chest by his vest. Nor do you mention the changing statements of Morgan and his wife throughout his case, the complete and total breakdown of his case during the trial, leaving his attorneys with no argument whatsoever to posit in Morgan's defense. You don't mention the fact that at one point the defense claimed that Morgan never even fired his gun, a claim devoid of reality given the immense amount of forensic evidence.

Then there are the connections you make from this case to Jon Burge and the shooting in Florida. There is nothing even remotely similar in these cases. Nothing. That you would tie them together reveals nothing about the Morgan case save your own despicable bias and racism.

The tide is turning in Chicago. The wrongful conviction movement is collapsing. Journalists, attorneys, cops, and civilians are seeing clearly the abuses of the justice system that have taken place in Chicago, particularly in the Anthony Porter case, where wrongful conviction zealots knowing freed a cold blooded killer for their own profit and celebrity. The most striking feature of this collapse will be the total negligence of the journalists in Chicago. You will be among the worst of them.

If you are seriously interested in rooting our corruption and racism in Chicago, you would do well to start by looking in the mirror.

See you at the sentencing hearing on Thursday.

Martin Preib ____________________________

Moprah gots herself bitch-slapped! LOL ... Marty wrote the book "The Wagon and other stories" back in 2010 and recently published some works on his blog (Crooked City (See blogroll on the right for the link too). Marty's been working on the Anthony Porter case for years and has done much to roll back the "wrongful conviction" movement. As a matter of fact, he has two videos posted to his Youtube space which show definitively that gang-bangers in 002 and 003 were coached to claim "police brutality" as a ploy to get their charges dismissed or to hit a pay day. That is exactly what Anthony Porter did and it worked. Check out Marty's page, and buy his book. I understand he plans to publish a new book sometime within the next few months. I'll have a review of it, and more info in the coming months. Stay tuned, and a big thanks to Marty for fighting for REAL justice.

Fools for Christ

2013-12-02T21:29:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to write about religion for a while so bear with me. As the Bard wrote "I will be but brief".

Don't let the title fool you - I'm not an atheist, and I don't think all Christians are fools. But just like Lenin identified select members of the Russian inteligensia as "useful idiots" we have our own brand. And you can find a large percentage of them either sitting in church, or preaching from the pulpit.

Most conservatives aren't atheists simply because anyone who is rational, and who possess a modicum of humility, understand that there is a Higher Power at work in each of our lives - even in the lives of Godless Communists like Leftisthebest, Cold Type, and Obama. We also believe in spontaneous order, the rule of law, inalienable rights and natural law - which all presuppose the existence and influence of God.

The impetus for this post is a recent sermon I heard from Pastor Eric Flood at South Park Church. (see audio file here.) Most of the time Pastor Flood does a very good job discussing the week's topic and keeps the focus on spirituality and real-life applications of scripture. I like that he's fluent in ancient Greek and can wheel around the bible with effortlessness; all the while making the message so personal and engaging. It's a tough balance to pull off and he does it with wit and vigor.

Personal Spirituality versus Public Policy

This week's sermon (12.01.2013) was the final discussion on "Exiles" and Eric took the time to quote heavily from I Peter 5. This chapter and verse deals with church elders and early church leadership challenges. Peter defined Satan (v.8) as a Lion that "prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Eric uses I Peter to admonish the elders that they are to "care for their flock" - as they're the leaders of the congregation and answer to the congregation. Eric even goes so far as to use Wayne Grudem's definition of the Devil ("A personal spiritual being who is in active rebellion against God and has many other Demons at his disposal and whose goal is to destroy you and the Church.")

Forgive me - but what utter dreck! Christianity is obsessed with Lucifer (latin: light-bearer) and to personify him really diminishes what Satan, and Sin, both ultimately are. What did we humans do for the 200,000 years of humanity before Christ died??? But that is for another time and another blog post. If you're interested, CG Jung (1952) exposed the psychotic public persona of the biblical "god" in his monograph "Answer to Job". I strongly suggest it.

The sermon then turned when Eric Flood began what seemed like a harangue - going as far as to state that the elders (or Pastor's) job is not to please everyone within the church (ie. there's no room for consensus) and then goes on to list 3 types of followers within the church:

1. Cynical - those who naturally distrust the authority of the church and who disagree with its leadership.

2. Idealistic - those who have an ideal vision of what the church's message should be and want it formed into a bulwark

3. Realistic - those who are flexible and patient enough to "trust the process" and who support the church's mission of "serving the common good." (Eric's words).

Eric presented these 3 options in a dogmatic manner - as if there really are only 3 types of parishioners in the world. I could count myself as all 3 at one time or another. But for now count me in among the cynics. It's not because I have some in-bred hostility to religion or reject the church and her teachings, but because I take the long-view when it comes to history and mythology. I know that I do not know.

I do know there is a higher power, a Great and Profound Mystery, operating in the Universe and that we are all God's creatures. Our various mythologies show us that there are energies at work in the universe; and those same energies are at work inside each and every one of us.

But what evangelicals teach week in and week out, all across the world is that we must engender a relationship with Christ. It is as if Christ is out there somewhere and we have to praise, supplicate and ingratiate ourselves to some outer diety in order to obtain the goodies (ie. salvation). Did God create us to be His personal rump swabs? (Again; read Answer to Job for a thorough discussion.)

East versus West

What constitutes enlightenment in the West is vastly different from the East. In the sermon Eric actually said some of us have obtained a "sufficient level of spiritual maturity" (What does that even mean?!?!?!).

But I do know that your personal spiritual endeavors are just that - personal. The virtues that South Park church supports - charity, pro-life, good deeds, missionary work, diversity, multiculturalism, and caring for your community are all wonderful if you choose to embrace them in order to unencumbered yourself from from the daily miasma of human existence. Through meditation and prayer we can seek a deeper spiritual understanding of whatever organized religion we follow.

But what we have now is the thread that most American Clergy are entwined with and that is the Social Gospel (ie. The Christian Left) ie. collectivism.

What we have is the atheist Left, using the censorship of political correctness, in an attempt at crushing religion out of existence so that the State can become the 'end-all-be-all'.

Your spiritual development is such a wide open and deeply personal journey, how can it be anything but extremely private? Nobody can put a One-Size-Fits-All template on it. That's why much of the bible's teaching are vague and written in general terms so that it leaves it up the communicant to determine his own path.

Here is the great Evan Sayet on How Liberals Think and notice how he talks about John Lennon's song "Imagine" and how, when you break down the lyrics it is a mandate to destroy society where nothing matters. This is the theme of Moral Relevance that is soul-crushing.

Steely Dan and Buddhism

If you want my two cents on what's wrong with modern Christianity (other than the infusion of Marxist Collectivism) is that it tries to be all things to everyone.

But what is Jesus Christ except the reincarnation of Gautma Buddha, Orpheus and Osiris? It is a story as old as the hills - the King who is ritualistically murdered and reincarnated. THAT should infuse our understanding of Christ's real message. The Ham Naggadi texts, which are ascribed to the Apostle Thomas, aren't recognized by most churches. Even though they've been carbon dated to about the time of Christ and were written by someone who claimed to be part of Jesus' inner sanctum.

The reason The Nag Hammadi texts remain unacknowledged is because they quote Jesus as saying "The kingdom of the Father is here right now and men do not see it." In effect Jesus says that through prayer and meditation, every one can communicate with the Father, and that God is actually inside each of us, surrounds us, and is ubiquitous.

Ask yourself one question: Why was Jesus Christ killed? Answer? Because he said "I and the Father are one." He committed the Prime Heresy. So did the Muslim mystic Hallaj in the year 700AD and they murdered him for saying the same thing.

___________________

While we're on the theme of heresy, as I write this I am listening to Steely Dan's "Time out of Mind" --- it is one of the most spiritual songs I've ever heard. Here are the lyrics.

Yea, I know some think it is an homage to heroin but I prefer to look at the symbols employed by Becker and Fagan. The symbols in the song are alchemical.

Keep your eyes on the sky (Look to heaven, our father in the sky, the Yin of the masculine), put a dollar in the kitty (do your devotions either with time, energy or money but do a good deed),

Don't the moon look pretty (the Moon is the feminine - as opposed to the masculine Sun in many myths. The moon is also a renewal symbol and a mandala. The mandala expresses perfection and wholeness.)

Tonight when I chase the dragon (The Dragon in eastern myths is a positive symbol of the Chi energy that brings luck, abundance and good health. Our idea of Dragons is that they guard gold and virgins: Neither of which they know what to do with. Dragons in our culture are mindless, greedy beasts.)

The silver will turn to gold, time out of mind (The alchemical philosophers converted base matter to gold. They hid the true meaning of the "processes" by using allegorical symbols. The base matter (food, drink, and stored sexual energy thru celibacy) was converted into "gold" (i.e.. Chi, or body energy and moved around the body through the various body meridians to achieve a spiritual breakthrough or enlightenment. The Buddhists, and Taoists masters speak of a light that the practitioner brings up the conception vessel culminating at the Crown of the head.) I am holding a mystical stone (see The Monkey King for a discussion of the Stone and how it relates to alchemy and power.)

Time out of mind (In Eastern philosophy, eternal doesn't mean "forever" - it means a place that is transcendent of our idea of time and space. It is a different dimension beyond our simple 3 dimensional concepts. The Taoists have a saying that the sage knows heaven and earth without leaving his hut.) From Lao Tsu's "Tao Te Ching"

Utopianism, ObamaCare & Star Trek

What set me off during today's sermon? Pastor Eric began to read (in a modern interpretation) from some document allegedly written by someone called Antony of Bithynia (1st century Asia Minor, aka. Turkey). I have been unable to locate this letter anywhere on the internet so I'm not sure if he was just creating a "skit" of what Antony, Silas and Lucius went through after receiving Peter's letter. This may have been a mock rebuttal from "Antony of Bithynia" that Eric chose in order to make a point.

Regardless, Eric read this "letter" in Antony's voice and expressed how hurt Antony was upon coming back to Bithynia and finding church elders getting into pissing matches over who would serve communion, what type of music Lucius would play on his lyre - and all sorts of issues that is, quite frankly, a part of any body or organization. I don't care if you're a church, a Boy Scout troop or a Lodge of Freemasons - these territorial squabbles are ubiquitous. They are part and parcel of the human condition.

The author of this "letter" then decries the elders as being in two camps: The conservatives, who if the church changed too much, would desert the fledgling organization - and the progressives, who if the church didn't change enough would leave. Antony allegedly states that all the elders were "governed by fear" and this type of conflict would keep people from wanting to be part of the church.

What I took from this was that Eric was telling us today ~ directly ~ that we were to keep politics; liberal or conservative from the hallowed halls of SP Church.

As I said, for spiritual development, you can disregard politics - for a time. What Eric doesn't understand is that this country was founded by Christians who wanted to keep God in the mix but wanted to maintain formal religious organizations from dominating the decision making within the government. And what we have now is an over-arching Federal government who is COMPELLING religious organizations to engage in behaviors and policies which those organizations are opposed to (ie. The Catholic church being forced to provide birth control.) When this type of threat is placed against you and your faith, you BETTER step up and say one is wrong and one is unacceptable.

Silence kills and if we Christians don't confront the abuse threatening to overwhelm us, then we will suffer and eventually lose our ability to worship God in the manner and form which we want to, as the founders envisioned.

As Mark Levin writes in Liberty and Tyranny:

"Reason cannot, by itself, explain why there is reason. Science cannot, by itself, explain why there is science. Man's discovery and application of science are products of reason.

Reason and science can explain the existence of matter, but they cannot explain why there is matter. They can explain the existence of the universe, but they cannot explain why there is a universe. They can explain the existence of nature and the law of physics, but they cannot explain why there is nature and the law of physics.

Science is a critical aspect of human existence, but it cannot address the spiritual nature of man. In this respect science is a dead end around which the Atheist refuses to reason. Reason itself informs man of its own limitations and, in doing so, directs him to the discovery of a force greater than himself - a supernatural force responsible for the origins of not only human existence but all existence, and which itself has always existed and will always exist.

For most, the supernatural reveals itself in the Creator - God. Man seeks God's guidance through faith and prayer. The Agnostic accepts the supernatural, but is not so sure of the form of its existence. The Deist accepts that God created the universe and man's condition but left it to man to sort things out through reason.

Man is more than a physical creature. As Edmund Burke argued, each individual is created as a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience and is bound to a transcendent moral order established by Divine Providence and uncovered through observation, and experience over the ages. There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all laws, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice equity -- the law of nature and of nations."

So to Eric I would say - "It's not about Left and Right, it is about Right and Wrong." If we Christians follow the Marxist Left, then we aren't supporting "social justice" and "equality" - we are taking the opposite tact. We are supporting an amoral and God-free zone of moral equivalence where nothing is wrong and we are suffocated by political correctness. Where conformity and equality become the highest goods.

Nothing can be more anathema to America than that!

South Park's mission statement says,"South Park Church exists to walk with God, connect as family and love people in Jesus [sic] name."

If you're an evangelical church which professes to obey God's word then why aren't you vocal on the immorality of the modern Democrat party? This party is endangering the health, and lives, of tens of millions of Americans by compelling us off our insurance plans, and pushing us into healthcare exchanges. ObamaCare will directly cause death, suffering and misery; all the while causing costs to skyrocket and quality to plummet. ObamaCare was founded on lies and deceit. The politicians - our modern Pharisees - told us that they had to pass the bill before we could find out what was in it. Now we have the Federal Gov't (HHS) cranking out 30,000 pages of new regulations. What about the $1.5 trillion in debt that Obama is racking up every year? What about unemployment? What about the millions who've dropped out of the job market and jumped onto government roles?

Forward! All for the good of the People, right?

Is it a moral position to remain silent when confronted with such abuse? When some from your congregation may DIE because everyone stayed silent out of Political Correctness - which is nothing more than FEAR? Didn't Antony of Bithynia exclaim his disgust with the Elders because they all seemed to acting out of fear?

Would organizations like South Park have stayed silent on Jewish murders during Hitler's Germany? South Park takes no public position on the murder and torture of Christians in Syria and Somalis. I've heard Eric support traditional marriage and Pro-Life causes but what can be more important than those if the very lives of your congregation are at stake?

The Democrat party that is bankrupting our citizens. It is promoting theft, murder and debt. It's core positions are fundamentally immoral and people like Eric Flood, South Park's elders, should have the courage to stand before their congregations and decry Obama, condemn Pelosi, Reid and Schumer. The Democrat party is wrong and collectivism should be criticized.

South Park Church, and all churches, should be mindful of the political environment when addressing the needs and concerns of their congregation. This isn't the bridge of the starship Enterprise and, Whoopi Goldberg isn't sitting in 10-Forward ready to dispense wisdom like the Oracle at Delphi. This is real life and we congregants who are concerned and scared for the future of our country would like the church to get behind the conservative movement in this country. Conservatism is the only antidote to tyranny - and bald-faced tyranny is what we are up against.

The last thing I'll say to my brothers and sisters is this: If you live within your means, pay your taxes, live responsibly, take action, take care of your family and friends, work every day and obey the laws then why don't you vote for the party that supports all of those virtues? Why vote for the party that wants to deride those virtues? Vote like you Live!

Prostrate yourselves before The Gay Mafia

2013-03-30T00:47:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage

Hmmm. What to do with that.

Well I will tell you exactly what you can do with that, and that is to stop using the word marriage and gay in the same sentence. By now it may be already too late, if you believe Rush Limbaugh. Though he's not always right, he's usually pretty close.

In his radio show today, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said defenders of traditional marriage have lost the battle, even though the Supreme Court won’t hand down its decisions for another few months. “I don’t care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable,” Limbaugh said, “and it’s inevitable because we lost the language on this.”
Limbaugh took issue with the idea that the word marriage was already applied to gay couples. Therefore, he asserted, modifiers like “hetero” or “opposite-sex” are now at times added to denote a union between a man and a woman.
“I maintain to you that we lost the issue when we started allowing the word ‘marriage’ to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it – because marriage is one thing, and it was not established on the basis of discrimination. It wasn’t established on the basis of denying people anything,” the radio host said. “Marriage is not a tradition that a bunch of people concocted to be mean to other people with. But we allowed the left to have people believe that it was structured that way.”

Gay people. They've come a long way since the infamous Stonewall Riots in NYC. But it has morphed into a David & Goliath myth; invoking a victimized underclass fighting for its Civil Rights and using violence as a last resort. But is this so? Were Gays so "put upon" that their only resort was to create its own cultural brand? Hardly.

Radicals

The 1960's saw the birth of several movements; including the Gay Liberation Movement. The New Left infused the debate in the 60's with a new brand of activism. To some it seemed that starting a "movement" was something that could lead to greater glory and personal esteem. We saw that beginning in the 60's a large number of Statist groups came to the forefront to Agitate under the banner of Saul Alinsky. These groups publicly decried for greater "freedoms" and for "liberation" but what they secretly wanted was a society that was unconstrained by the constitution, the church and ultimately God.
Whether the Statist group was black, latino, gay or communist - no matter. The ends justified the means. Each Identity Group began to stake out its claim on the Labor of the US Citizen. And make no mistake: the Statists of the 60's are no different than those that are preaching their "victimhood" today. As Mark Levin so eloquently pointed out on page 15 of Liberty and Tyranny, the Statist can be captured in one snapshot.

"The Conservative must accept that the Statist does not share his passion for Liberty and all the good that flows from it. The Statist does not acknowledge the tremendous benefits to society from the individual pursuits of tens of millions of others. The Statist rejects the Founders' idea of the dignity of the individual, who can flourish through ordered Liberty, for one rooted in unpredictability, irrationality and ultimately tyranny.
It is observed that the Statist is dissatisfied with the condition of his own existence. He condemns his fellow man, surroundings and society itself for denying him the fulfillment, success, and adulation he feels he deserves. He is angry, resentful, petulant, and jealous. He is incapable of honest self-assessment, and rejects the honest assessment of himself by others, thereby evading responsibility for his own miserable condition. The Statist searches for significance - even glory - in a Utopian fiction of his own minds' making, the earthly attainment of which he believes, is frustrated by those who do not share it. Therefore he must destroy the civil society piece by piece. For the Statist, Liberty is not a blessing but the enemy." ~ Liberty and Tyranny, page 15.

Levin goes on to describe that the Statist, thus put upon by the civil society, and expected to conduct himself in an honorable and responsible manner, realizes that he's encumbered with the anger and petulance, and that he must convince the Individual to be dehumanized and controlled. What better way to do that than through the instrumentalities of government. Because who's going to fight City Hall? Once the government becomes the All-encompassing Leviathan, then the citizen has nowhere else to go BUT to the State.

Pay No Attention to the Queen behind that curtain!

So the GLF starts to agitate for more "rights" (whatever that means, since the last time I checked Gays weren't being denied their constitutional rights; and thrown from buildings and placed into Internment Camps). And now ~ Voila! ~ 40+ years later after all the brainwashing, propaganda and demagoguery - we've finally arrived. Now, the Gay Statist believes, we can officially pressure the court through majoritarianism (ie. Mob Rule) into establishing homosexual marriage as Just the Same As traditional marriage. That way, the Gay Mafia can bypass the ballot box and go straight to the courts to get their warped world view institutionalized. And the Liberal-Straights go right along! Seems that nowadays, Conformity is the highest virtue of the Modern Democrat voter. And we know that every Gay person is just like the funny, witty and stylishly dressed Gay couple in the ABC TV show "Modern family' - right? From Mark Steyn's column today:

Gay marriage? It came up at dinner Down Under this time last year, and the prominent Aussie politician on my right said matter-of-factly, "It's not about expanding marriage, it's about destroying marriage."
That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a "meaningless piece of paper" or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it's a universal human right. They've figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did – that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within.
On the other hand, there are those who argue it's a victory for the powerful undertow of bourgeois values over the surface ripples of sexual transgressiveness: gays will now be as drearily suburban as the rest of us.
A couple of years back, I saw a picture in the paper of two chubby old queens tying the knot at City Hall in Vancouver, and the thought occurred that Western liberalism had finally succeeded in boring all the fun out of homosexuality.

And Steyn demolishes the "interracial marriage" argument here.

SCOTUS tissue

So here we are with SCOTUS hearing arguments from both sides on the Gay Marriage issue. We know how the "lesser lights" on the Supreme Court are going to vote (ie. Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Elaine "Diesel Dyke" Kagan). The only thing their brief will be good for is to wipe your ass with it. Where do I come down on it? I come down on the side of the sovereign individual, and on the side of traditional marriage. You cannot look back at the history of our civilization, including our ancestors who were painting the cave walls at Lasceoux France some 35,000 years ago, and ignore that traditional marriage (ie. between one man, and one woman) was the linchpin of human evolution. What society promoted and enshrined homosexuality and flourished?

Not one. Even Rome fell as a result of the rampant homosexuality that began to flourish after Roman citizens found themselves with too much time and luxury on their hands. From the article:

The fall of the Roman Empire was a result of "the effeminacy of a few in Carthage, a paradise for homosexuals, who infected the many.
"The abhorrent presence of a few gays infected a good part of the (Roman) people," Prof Mattei told Radio Maria, a Catholic radio station.

The Truth

Of course this author took a beating for daring to offend the Gay Mafia and its apparatchiks. You know they've got a society to convert! While less than 3% of Americans are actually Gay, the common belief amongst the population is that between 25 - 40% are Gay. That shows you how effective the Gay Mafia's propaganda machine has been these last 30 years. Everyone knows the story about Matthew Shephard, and while tragic, it was an aberration. But the Gay Mafia pounced on it like a cat grabs a field mouse, and ran with it in order to show "how homophobic America is." Don't believe the Hype. If you want to see what life in these United States of America will be like under a Gay Marriage banner, you need look no farther than Massachusetts. MassResistance put together a nice summation of what the Straights (and their children) have had to deal with since SSM was instituted. It ain't pretty! Back in the day, homosexuality was considered deviant sexual behavior. Gays were considered perverts and sex criminals. Today their lifestyle has been "mainstreamed" through the silver screen (ie. Broke Back Mountain) and TV (Modern Family, Sex and the City). The propaganda is that "they're exactly like you and me." When we know deep down that that isn't the case. Nobody is perfect and in the scope of my experience, many homosexual men that I come in to contact with are sexual abuse survivors. Many were abused at a young age (pre-verbal) and cannot articulate when they "got gay". Instead of demanding that gays deal with their dysfunction and "catch up" to the rest of society, the Liberal-Progressive have deemed that the easier path is to just use government to put the Stamp of Approval on it, and the hell with the ballot box. And just today, Drudge reports that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is outlawing the adoption of Russian children by foreign, Gay couples. How enlightened the Russian premier is! Gay Marriage is coming, of that I'm sure because the sissyfiscation of our country has already started; and combining that with the Low Information Voter creates a vacuum in which ANYTHING can get pushed through ~ all for "the good of the people" in our Brave New World. God help us.

Epic Mom

2013-03-29T22:16:00.001-05:00

You know I love to read.
You long time fans know I don't just read political screeds (ie. my review of Romancing Mommy). Those always point out how ridiculous the Left and their cheerleaders are and can be pretty redundant. I mean after all we've had 5 years of "hilarity" from Barack Obama and after giving up so much of your personal liberty; what more is there to say?

So the point of my post is this: The other day I was at my favorite Barnes & Noble, stimulating the economy of one of Chicago's more worthy suburbs, when I saw this book sitting on the "new releases" table.

The juxtaposition of the unhappy clay children getting run over by a Tonka Truck was too much to pass up. I picked up the book and flipped it open to a random page. Here is what I read on page 21:

In one of those rare moments of marital serenity when the children were asleep, the laundry was done, and the garbage had been taken out, I looked lovingly into my husband's eyes and asked the question many wives have asked their husbands throughout the ages: would you ever remarry should something happen to me?
I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to go on about my endless patience, virtue, and great beauty (all lies, I know, but I like to hear it anyway). Instead, he just said, "no."
Confidently, I prodded. But why? Because nobody could compare? Who else can heat up a frozen pizza better? You couldn't find someone else to put up with your rants during a Bears game? Why would you never seek love like ours again?
"Because being married is like having a boss."
To quote the Brits, I was gobsmacked. My response to that statement could be heard across Western Avenue. But we needn't go there today. Instead, let me recount another tale that occurred while I was pregnant with my 3rd son and we had to determine who was going to get "fixed" due to some pregnancy issues. I had suggested he handle the deed. Snip snip done. His response?
"What if, God forbid, something happens to you and my next wife wants kids?"
I had a host of angry words to say about his "next wife."
"Hold on there," he interrupted. "That's no way to talk about my next wife....she hasn't even been born yet."
And this is ultimately why I love my husband. He has a marvelous sense of humor, doesn't let me get too self-indulgent, and refuses to follow the script. The unexpected can be so much more fun. Once I calm down.

The book is Epic Mom: Failing every day a little bit more than you by Marianne Walsh and Julie Harrison. I found myself completely engrossed in the stories and realized that I'd been standing there oblivious to where my kids had wandered off to. They could have been kidnapped, for god's sake, and here I was standing reading a book on motherhood and laughing out loud.

I bought the book.

I know that this is off topic for my usual political commentary, but when I come across a really good book I like to share it with my Blogger community. At any time you can see what I'm reading by checking the blogroll "What's on my nightstand". I checked Marianne's bio and she's from the Beverly neighborhood and her husband "Joe" is a Chicago Fire-fighter.

I read almost all the book and it is filled with funny stories like the one above, so if you're a husband looking for a good Mothers' Day gift for your wife, mother or sister: look no further. I've saved you a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to look for that napkin holder you think your wife desperately needs.

You're welcome.

My status

2013-03-25T23:36:00.000-05:00

A sincere thanks to all the people who emailed me, or left comments on the blog regarding my whereabouts these last 4 months. As a conservative, and a concerned citizen, I was appalled that Obama got reelected in November. I really didn't think he had much of a chance at winning. Not like Romney was a strong candidate but he did do very well in Debate 1. The GOP Establishment did everything it would to push someone who "they" thought would win. And now we see the results of the RINO Cabal. My thing was, and still is, we need to put forth someone who stands on principles. That is why I wanted Rick Santorum as our nominee. 70% of this country votes Center Right. Why aren't we sending out candidates who can articulate conservative values? Regardless of the outcome, I just finally realized that after running this blog for 5 years, posting over 900 posts, and doing what I could to get the message of conservatism out in to the blogosphere; that my toils were for naught. Seriously - I feel like I'm spitting into the wind on this one. The Low Information Voters are the ones voting without doing the minimal amount of due diligence on who's running, their background, their experience and their voting record. It's like nobody cares. The fight will continue but now it has devolved into the conservative Republicans versus the RINO establishment. To name names that would be John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Karl Rove. These men need to step aside and stop sabotaging the Tea Party patriots that are trying to re-establish a constitutional republic here. It is the only antidote to the Tyranny pouring out of this centralized, authoritarian Federal government. I just wanted to put that out there and explain a bit as to why I've been MIA the last few months. As all of us are very busy, myself included, I will try to post more regularly but it won't be more than 2 per month. Thanks for your support, God bless our law enforcement, military and those who love and support them.

The Daily Kaos

2013-03-25T11:59:00.000-05:00

Apparently I, and my compatriots, were all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Who's to blame that we lost the election? An uninformed electorate? A complicit media? A slick and savvy Left Wing spin machine that is working on overdrive? The mainstreaming of Marxist theory vis-a-vis Fox-Piven? Yes. Yes. And Yes. All of the above. Where do we go from here? Well it can get much worse, and it probably will. Consider the following:

The New Greece

* The Greek government just announced that it will seize the bank accounts of its citizens. Deposits above 100,000 euros in both banks, which are not guaranteed under EU law, will be frozen and used to resolve Laiki's debts and recapitalize Bank of Cyprus, the island's biggest, through a deposit/equity conversion. The raid on uninsured Laiki depositors is expected to raise 4.2 billion euros, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijssebloem said. Greece debt is aroun 140% of it's GDP. We have just crested the 100% of our GDP mark, with trillions more spending to come thanks to Harry Reid's new budget. (the first in 4 years, by the way!). And the mayhem won't end there in the EU, The Telegraph is reporting that the EU Chief is claiming that other country's banks and assets will be seized at some point in the future. Isn't Totalitarian just a hip smacking great idea! Team Obama is actively trying to find ways to seize your 401K plans. How will they do it? Here's a snippet of far left labor activist Teresa Ghilarducci discussing how the government plans on confiscating your pension plan. Never heard of Teresa Ghilarducci? Well these are the types of people that Obama and his Far Left cronies surround themselves with. This is why ELECTIONS have CONSEQUENCES!

The Fed

* The Federal Reserve continues to print money (ie. QE3) which is why the stock market has been going UP as of late. It will eventually increase M1 and M3 to the point that inflation starts to rise. Then you will also see a rise in the cost of financing our US Debt. Right now we spend about 4 billion per day to pay the interest on our Federal Debt. If inflation goes up another 3% you could see that cost rise to 15 billion per day.

ObamaCare

* ObamaCare is poised to be implemented and the government has already cranked out 30,000 pages of new regulations. Your medical costs are about to get pretty expensive. Contrary to what this administration said in order to pass the bill, you WILL have lesser care, less options, fewer doctors to choose from, and high premiums. Hey Thanks for Lying to Us, Barry!

EPA Stormtroopers

The EPA, created as the erstwhile defender of all that is clean and good, has evolved in to nothing more than the enforcement arm of the Ultra Left conservation movement. The EPA is responsible for shutting down coal plants and, basically, deindustrializing this nation. You see the Left sees YOU, the citizen consumer, as an obstacle. If it weren't for YOU we'd have birds and baby rabbits frolicking through the woods leaving the perfect carbon footprint in the fresh fallen snow. If you go back 2 years and look at your electricity bills and compare them, you will see a sharp rise. In fact, ALL your household costs are about to go through the roof. And remember: This is all PLANNED by our president.

What can you do

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you do nothing about it, it will continue unabated. You need to get involved. Plug in to what's going on by visiting conservative news sites. Drudge Report, Michelle Malkin, CNS News and Breitbart News are all very good at keeping the info fresh and SITREPs up to date. And PLEASE support the Tea Party. They're on Facebook as well. The problem is that we have two parties in the nation: There is the destructive (dems) and the stupid (republicans). Unfortunately I belong to the Stupid party. RINOS like Karl Rove, McCain and Graham are too busy maintaining the Establishment instead of fighting against this Creeping Tyranny. The Chaos is coming - if you love this country, understand its history and culture, and want a better future - the time is now to stand up and get involved. As Yoda would say, "Wallflowers do not be. Warriors to fight you must."

Someone's counting on us

2012-11-05T19:54:00.001-06:00

Not just our children, parents and grandparents but ....

Thank God for Barack Obama

2012-11-05T19:35:00.001-06:00

That's right - thank God for Barack Hussein Obama.

23 million Americans continue to struggle to find a job. While almost 12% of Caucasians, 15% of Hispanics, and 17% of Blacks cannot find work (U3 numbers), Obama continues to claim we're "in a recovery."

While almost 50 million Americans are now on food stamps, welfare spending is up 34% over the last 4 years, and GDP growth is at a snail's crawl; Obama wants us to go "forward".

Obama pushed through Stimulus II (and voted YES to Stimulus I and every other Big Government Spending Scheme that came across his docket) and we borrowed almost $1 trillion dollars to pay for "shovel ready jobs." What do we have to show for it? Nothing. All of the Stimulus funds went into the coffers of his Big Labor cronies and went to fuel the exploding Entitlement Community.

Obama is hollowing out our military; while keeping his DOJ and DOD minions in check so that they don't do some thing "rash" by calling the Fort Hood shooter a "terrorist." Even though he screamed "Alla u Akhbar" as he gunned down his fellow soldiers. He lied about Benghazi; there are more US Marines in Paris than in Libya - even now. Department of State spent $100,000 to "green up" the US Embassy in Vienna. Why didn't they spend some money to have a squad of Marines in Benghazi to protect our Ambassador and fellow Americans? He lied about getting us out of Afghanistan and continues to lie about almost every aspect of his pathetic administration.

Obama pushed through ObamaCare: The single biggest Civil Rights violation in the last 40 years. It fundamentally transforms the Individual Citizens' relationship with the government in drastic and unconstitutional ways. It was passed on pack of lies: You can keep your insurance company, you can keep your doctor, your quality of care will be the same, your premiums won't go up -- all bald-faced lies. There are 16,000 IRS agents poised to enforce this government Leviathan under penalty of fine or imprisonment. When someone you know and love falls ill and needs the life saving drugs or surgeries to keep them going, you can feel comfortable knowing that you must petition before a board of 15 unelected officials who will decide if your loved-one gets the care he/she needs.

Our allies are scared to death of this guy, while our enemies are emboldened.

As you can see I took a sabbatical from blogging over the last 10 months because ~ in all honesty ~ I didn't feel like writing this blog did anything to keep Obama from getting elected.

I decided in January of this year to get more involved in the Ground game and began going door to door in my community, sending out personal email blasts and sending money to specific candidates that are truly conservative.

So I mean it, thank God for Barack Obama. He went so hard, so fast and so extreme to the Left that he forgot what his Frankfurt School - Critial Theory - Fox Piven mentors taught him about gradualism. As Milton Friedman said,"You cannot turn the heat up quickly on the frog that's in the pot: it must be turned up ever so slightly or it will just jump out. If you turn it up slowly, the frog will die and never know what hit it."

That's how the left in this county view you folks - as frogs, as your ethnic identity, as your gender, as what you do with your genitalia, as how much money you earn. It's all division and class.

So as I write this it is 04-Nov-2012 and tomorrow is election day. One of the most important in my lifetime.

Please spread the word, visit your friends and neighbors and get them to the polls. We are not slaves of the State; we are sovereign individual citizens and we deserve better than Barack Hussein Obama and his big-spending Queen Mooshell.

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ps. And here's a Big FUCK YOU to that ass-hat AstroGlide-Gadfly ""buzzkillington" who flamed out my blog back in October of 2008 whining about how wonderful his Messiah was. He's been noticeably absent from my blog the last 4 years ever since his Messiah was Immaculated to the American Throne. Where are you at now ass-hat? Were you able to find a job after you graduated from UIC? Are you happy that your agitation for this "historic" Leftist Rube has almost toppled this country from within? I have nothing but contempt for you and all I can say is "See? I told you so."

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God bless you all and here's hoping Romney / Ryan will win tomorrow. Please pray hard that they can pull it off; that there are still enough of us Americans who can think, rationalize and use our experience to choose leaders and not dictators.

John Kass, Dilettante

2012-07-27T12:36:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine, who happens to be very liberal, was discussing the dismal state of affairs in Illinois. He knows I'm conservative and asked me what I thought of Tribune columnist John Kass. "Fickle," was my reply. He laughed. "You know," he said."I'm convinced that Kass is simply a shill put in place at the Tribune in order to pretend that its still a conservative paper." The more I thought about it the more it congealed into a clear picture. Could one of my liberal friends actually be right for a change? And sadly - the answer is yes.

Kass The Dabbler

Kass comes off as "the lone voice in the wilderness" at the Tribune. Greek by heritage and a lover of good homecooked meal, he seems like Mr. Every Man. And maybe he is because many admire and love Mr. Kass for his down-to-earth writing, humorous quips, and ability to give amusing names to despicable figures like Rod "Dead Meat" Blogojevich, Rep. "How you doin'?" Deleo, deriding Obama's Hope and Change absurdity as "Smoking the Hopium" and the ubiquitous Pay-to-Play quid pro quo politics within the "Illinois Combine." You don't get a column on page A2 at the Tribune four days a week if you're not a solid talent, and a skilled writer with a large base of followers. John Kass is good at that. It is his political and ideological under-pinnings that bother me. He's a dabbler, a conservative Dilettante. One week he's good, defending Sarah Palin (though I still can't figure out why he thinks she's a goof)

(June 2011) Excited reporters rummaged desperately through more than 24,000 emails of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the hopes of finding her saying something stupid. So frantic were the New York Times and Washington Post that they went so far as to solicit readers to help them dig up the dirt on the conservative Palin.

It was what it was a liberal media witch hunt. About the only thing they forgot to do was shriek, "Burn her! Burn her!"

Though I'm a conservative, the charismatic and optimistic Palin isn't exactly my cup of tea. I preferred the charismatically challenged and much more pessimistic Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who's no longer running for president because his wife said so.

Isn't it time we just abandon the pretense of objectivity in news-gathering when Palin is involved? The public surely picks up on the snarky tone in the coverage, that coiled seething media rage against Palin. But for what, exactly? Her fertility? Her femininity? Her pro-life views? Her ability to shoot and pray?

And I've also seen seasoned journalists get as wiggly as puppies when President Barack Obama comes around. Their faces glow. Some even leave wet spots on the carpet.

So I can't imagine major news organizations asking readers to help their reporters dig up political dirt on Obama from his days as a Chicago politician. Yes, I know it's not fashionable to say so, but Obama is a Chicago politician. All you've got to do is see his chief of staff, Billy Daley, crouching in the Oval Office like some gargoyle. But you wouldn't know it from the national media.

The next week he's bad - sitting down to discuss the NATO protests with Police-Hater-extraordinaire Andy Thayer:

"It's absurd," said Andy Thayer, NATO protest organizer. "I don't even think absurd is the right word."

He attended Northwestern University, and he's now an office manager in a Chicago law firm that handles Chicago police brutality cases. As the face and voice of the Occupy crowd in Chicago, he's the one you'll see interviewed most often.

We sat together Thursday along the Chicago River, near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Wabash Avenue and Wacker Drive. If you saw us there, you might have thought we were some kind of political odd couple.

While we don't agree on politics, we do agree on the right of the American people to have their say.

As Chicago prepares for this weekend's NATO summit, and the protests that are part of the package, we talked of great men who spoke their minds long ago. Americans name lagers after them, and honor them on July 4, grilling meat and drinking beer in their names, lighting fireworks and waving flags.

And the nation tries to remember what it was they did exactly.

Here's what they didn't do. They didn't ask the government for license to stand in so-called protest zones.

or this back-hand to the face of Michele Bachmann:

Is President Barack Obama on the verge of being attacked by a bunny wabbit? Absolutely. All the signs suggest that Obama is in immediate danger of a rabbit attack. It would ruin what's left of his presidency. And it would horrify Democrats by ushering in, say, a President Bachmann.

It might happen while he's on that ridiculous vacation of his. Obama is chilling at some exclusive multimillion-dollar estate on Martha's Vineyard, even as thousands more Americans hit the unemployment lines, and as Republicans like Michele Bachmann make wild-eyed, crazed claims about bringing back $2 per gallon gas.

Or this diss to Bachmann and Santorum from December 2011:

Michele Bachmann had her troubles with American history, and Rick Santorum seems ready to punch anyone who won't let him attack Iran tomorrow morning.

Or this Passive-Aggressive Obama endorsement from January of this year:

As the Republican presidential candidates and their mouthpieces prattle on the TV from sunny South Carolina, I look up from the screen and out the window and sigh, a conservative heretic at rest, staring at all that cold Midwestern snow.

There's a yellowed sketch tacked to the wall of my work space, a cowboy Ronald Reagan smiling in eternal optimism. And on a bookshelf is a dusty, dog-eared copy of Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind."

Surrounded as I am by such dry artifacts of forgotten times, I sometimes wonder why I keep them. It could be self-mockery, or something like the way an amputee decides to keep the unused boot in the closet, out of sight, but near.

And still, I can't ditch this feeling that I might be boiled in oil for the heresy I'm about to spout:

President Barack Obama will win re-election in 2012.

The reason he'll win?

He knows who he is. And the Republican politicians don't know who they are. They've forgotten what they're about, or perhaps like some isolated tribe, they've lost the language necessary to explain it to themselves.

In the same article he says:

There are, of course, legitimate conservative critiques of the creative destruction so favored by Wall Street. Capitalism creates freedom, but it also destroys. It breaks families, associations; it leads to what some call radical individualism in the extreme, and unrestrained appetites and overindulgence.

The late Kirk or William F. Buckley could have made such arguments, but can the current crop of so-called conservatives?

I just don't think Kass is a committed conservative. He claims to have a "dog-eared copy" of Kirk's book but did he ever read it? Maybe his grandfather dog-eared the corners, or maybe Kass used it to prop open a window and it dog-eared itself. Who knows. What he does is wrap himself in the cloak of Kirk, Goldwater and Reagan but he dabbles in it. He's a "Cafeteria Conservative".

The Midwest Academy and the Tribune

J-schoolers are indoctrinated in the machinations of Marxism, but because Chicago is a fetid One-Party swamp of "pay to play" Democrats, the newspapers figure it is in their fiscal best interest to play along. Don't get me wrong - they'll put up some "special investigation" once in a great while to show that they're "intrepid" reporters but let's be honest. We haven't been able to put "intrepid" in front of a reporter's name since Jimmy Olsen at the Daily Planet. Tribune reporter Kate Thayer (related to Chicago Cop-Watch, Anti-War radicals Andy and Spencer Thayer perchance?) tied herself into a pretzel in order to slam Newt Gingrich and to claim that Saul Alinsky was not really a "radical" but simply "a community organizer". She also claims that Ayers and Alinsky couldn't have any ties since Alinsky died in 1972. Nancy Thorner does a great job breaking down Thayer's ridiculous contentions here. The Midwest Academy, founded by Heather Booth in 1973, claims to have trained 30,000 people. How many of those 30K ended up working at the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times or Chicago Defender? Well the Tribune is smart enough to not say. (Here's a great breakdown on what the MA is all about.) Frankly, when the Tribune endorsed Obama for president, they lost me. I'd been a subscriber to them since the early '90s but in February of 2011 I called them and canceled my subscription. Surprisingly (or not so) I continue to receive daily deliveries to this day. I wonder how much money the federal government contributes to rags like the Sun-Times and Tribune to bolster their subscription numbers. Everyone knows that the print media is dying but maybe Obama thinks Leftist papers are "too big to fail." Or maybe he's just buying the support of his alleged "home town" newspaper. When owner Sam Zell was planning on selling the Cubs to help get the financially troubled Tribune out of bankruptcy, the Rezko trial showed that Blagojevich tried to exploit the paper's financial trouble in an effort to have several editors fired. Remember that convicted felon Blagojevich is on tape saying that Obama is more "Tony'd up than me" - implying that the major Chicago papers and media were ignoring Obama's involvement in the Rezko deal. It's not a shock if you've lived in this city for any length of time. Rezko got the Obama's a sweet-heart deal on a plot of land in Hyde park for a song. John Kass treated it with kid gloves, not quite going along with it, but not really get worked up about it. He did criticize Obama for being guilty of being "boneheaded" but not for willfully engaging in a criminal act. That's kind of a big difference.

Rezko was of the old broken politics, which is the same as the new, hopeful politics. Human nature doesn't change and politics has always been about leverage, about stacking government boards and commissions with your allies to direct the spending of billions if not trillions of public dollars. The rest is pixie dust. It is the great game of who gets what, and how much. The larger the government, the greater the prize.

Obama is at the top of that heap. Rezko is at bottom,

I know you're thinking,"Rue - why are you wasting your time writing about Kass and not the election?" Because it needs to be said and it's been bugging me for a long time. Kass can't have it both ways. Either you're a conservative, or you're somewhere along the plane of totalitarianism (ie. Statism). I believe Kass, in his heart-of-hearts, believes in the fruits of having a conservative running the ship - he just doesn't buy into all the tough minded principles that go into growing that tree. Principles like Nature's Law, a civil society, a restrained federal government, a sovereign individual citizen, sovereign private property and judicial restraint. In a sea of Mary Mitchells, it is easy to look like a Ronald Reagan. Conservatives in Chicago aren't going to take accept bumper sticker slogans from reporters any more because we love this country too much, and conservative philosophy is now becoming mainstream. So when we read Kass talking about having a Kirk book on his shelf, it rings hollow.

The Misery Index

2012-07-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

The Misery index was developed in the 60's and simply took the Unemployment rate and added it to the inflation rate. The Fed is keeping inflation low - for now. But they're doing it by manipulating M1 and M3. Right now (July 6, 2012) the Misery index is 9.9% However, if you use the real unemployment rate of 15%, and assume 2% inflation, then the real Misery Index would be 17% (the highest index rate was 21.98% in June of 1980) _~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_ When Reagan was in office, the Left was quick to turn almost every negative news item into a travesty; and a life-lesson that Trickle Down economics would unravel our country and throw tens of thousands into the streets. Reagan's policies were proven to be successful and enduring. My question is: Where are the Leftist news wonks now? We are experiencing tremendous economic hardships - brought on exclusively by the policies of Barack Hussein Obama - and we get silence and diversions from the State-Controlled Media. Here's a snap shot from Today's Drudge report: Here are the low lights - Just 80,000 jobs added in June... One-third at temp agencies... 85,000 WENT ON DISABILITY IN JUNE! Broader Jobless Rate At 14.9%... Unemployment rate for blacks jumps to 14.4%... Rate stuck at 11% for Hispanics... 780,000 Fewer Women Employed Under Obama... WHITE HOUSE: 'NO QUICK FIXES'... Romney: 'It Doesn't Have To Be This Way'... Anxiety mounts as economy limps into 2nd half... DOW PLUNGES... Team Obama predicted 5.6% today with stimulus... IMF to cut global growth forecast... 'Tilted to the downside'... That is one day's headlines from one news source. And that is just employment data. It is really worse than you might think. The government uses a "U3" number to show the unemployment rate, but it is not as realistic because it doesn't include people who've dropped out or quit looking for work. The proper number is the "U6" ... it is hovering at almost 15%. 780,000 fewer women have jobs since Obama took office... so who's committing a "War against Women"? Obama is driving our economy into the toilet and the media "watch dogs" are nowhere to be seen from or heard. Meanwhile, George Bush is quietly doing good deeds and not thumping his own chest about it. Do you think Obama would be doing the same? Hell no - every little thing this cretin does is hailed as some historic event. As much as I criticized Bush for his "big spending" RINO administration, he's 10 times the Man, and 10 times the President than the one we have now. .... to be continued ....

If I wanted Americ to fail

2012-04-25T19:55:00.002-05:00

Chicago Justice Denied

2012-04-03T20:57:00.000-05:00

I added a new member to my blogroll: Chicago Justice Denied.

Here's what they're all about (from their website):

Chicago Justice Denied is a website devoted to revealing corruption within the city’s criminal justice system. This corruption has resulted in the release of convicted offenders who were in fact guilty of heinous crimes, particularly the Anthony Porter case.
Porter was sentenced to death for the murder of a couple in 1982. After the Innocence Project at Northwestern University became involved, Porter was exonerated and set free. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that Anthony Porter did in fact commit the murders.
By addressing this and other cases based upon the public record, investigation, and input from first responders, Chicago Justice Denied reveals a shocking complicity between activists and the media that has undermined legitimate convictions, ruined the careers of investigators and placed members of the public in grave danger.

Sentencing of Porter will be this Thursday at 26th & California, and promises to be a humdinger with all kinds of Chicago "community organizers" venting breathlessly about "justice". Already I'm told that quite a few retired police, journalists and others will be there to support Porter getting sent back to prison for the rest of his life.

Check out CJD's website .... they're doing the work of Sisyphus, and need the support of people who honor the rule of law, and cherish a civil society.

The lowdown on Cook County judges

2012-03-16T13:25:00.010-05:00

Here we are again, election time in the state of Illinois.

When it comes to judges in Cook County I could offer you the time-honored tradition of just voting NO to every last one of them, but out of fairness there are a few that should stay on the bench. They represent the 5% that operate out of knowledge, integrity and take the side of the law, not the criminal.

Most however are idiots who deride law enforcement. Many are political hacks with connections to the Magic Kingdom, or Madiganistan. Remember Cynthia Brim? I'm told that the "issues" with Judge Cynthia Brim were known about for many months and yet nothing was done to pull her from the bench. The Illinois courts have little oversight, no restraint and no accountability. There are many "Brims" sitting on the courts, and the only way to get them out is to get informed and vote NO to these despicable cretins.

You will remember that back in January of 2012 John Kass wrote a piece about Dan Degnan, according to Kass "the son of Tim Degnan, Daley's political hammer". ("It's easy to judge why this inexperienced lawyer will get on the bench" January 20, 2012)

Read the article and it tells you everything you need to know about what really goes on in the court system in Illinois.

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So without further adieu, let's look at the worst of the worst: Judge Mary Jane Theis. While she gets a "highly qualified" rating from the Illinois Bar, and an endorsement by the Tribune, don't believe the hype. What Theis doesn't want you to know is that she is a political flunky, and a divisive faction on the Illinois Supreme court. She lied about her background, she is imperious, condescending and has a superficial understanding of the law, courtroom procedures and decorum.

She cast the deciding vote in allowing Rahm Emanuel to remain on the mayoral ballot when his residency was called into question. What she never disclosed is that she has a relationship with Emanuel. She lives across the street from Rahm Emanuel, and her son either worked, or is working, for his campaign. She should have recused herself but she saw an opportunity to feather her own nest and put herself in a position to benefit should Rahm win the election. And - Voila! Here we are. Yet, Theis complained that Justice Burke should have recused herself from the Emmanuel decision because Burke's husband, the alderman , was supporting Chico. How ironic that it was Burke and Freeman who actually analyzed the issue in that case and wrote an opinion that put the majority opinion to shame. While these two justices agreed with the majority, they actually wrote an opinion that displayed some legal accumen. My connections on the courts tell me that Justices Burke and Freeman don't get along with Theis and secretly hope she gets knocked out by Pucinski.

She was appointed by Fitzgerald a year ago and is nothing more than a shill for the Demcocrat party. In fact, Progress Illinois says,"The Cook County Democratic Party also backs Theis and in her campaign commercials Theis dubs herself, “The Democrat for Supreme Court.”

From the ProgressIllinois website: "Emanuel called Theis the “Swing vote” on the court. That’s a questionable quip, since Theis was part of the court’s unanimous decision last year that found Emanuel to be a Chicago resident and, therefore, eligible to run for mayor." You'll also be shocked to learn that Theis has raised $1.1 million so far, compared to Pucinski's paltry $30,000. Hmmmmm ... I wonder where Theis got all those donations? Surely from hard-working "Middle Class" grandmothers in Canaryville, and not from Emanual's hand-picked Union Donation Squad. Even the left-leaning Illinois Committee for Honest Government says that Theis is "too beholden to politicans." She uses the endorsements of special interest groups in her advertisements. One example is Planned Parenthood. Citing this organization as a supporter of her candidacy sends the message that she might rule favorably in a case that is likely to appear before the Supreme Court where there are pro-choice and right to life issues. In my opinion, this is utterly inappropriate.

Vote NO for Mary Jane Theis.

(While we're on the topic of the Illinois Supreme Court, it is in shambles. It is in shambles primarily because of Theis and her shenanigans. Justice Evans has been trying to pull the group together and clean up the mess but Theis is standing in everyone's way. Theis aside, my sources tell me that many of the other justices don't
even show up for work, they're ignorant of the law, they have no limits, they are like kids wearing crowns on their heads, have a penchant for temper tantrums, petulant, abusive and disrespectful. The two good ones on the court are Burke and Freeman.)

Another one of the worst is Lorna E. Propes. She is running to keep her seat on the 7th Judicial Court. Here is Propes in a photo with her bestie Lisa Madigan.

Ms. Propes garnered the Second Worse spot on my informal survey. Her shortcomings: I'm told that she is ignorant of the law, ignorant of procedures, frequently makes mistakes in the courtroom and then blames the attorneys, and is imperious and condescending. Of course, like the good little political hack that she is, she's intent on using her own prejudices to enforce the law. Check out this interview in which she brags how she's going to rule in favor of Gay Marriage, Hate Crimes and civil unions. I'm told that Propes has no business adjudicating cases because she's utterly incompetent.

The honor of the Third Worse Judge in Cook County belongs to Judge Laura Cha-yu Liu. I blogged about her back in December. She is running unopposed for the 8th Sub-circuit.

She was allegedly diagnosed with cancer and has been on medical leave for quite a while. That, however, doesn't stop her from coming down to the courts, and yucking it up with some of her pals. She's not bed-ridden, is still on the public payroll. Other judges on her circuit are upset because they are carrying her case load. For all appearances she looks fine and capable of doing her job but she's more interested in milking her situation and not doing what she was appointed to do.

How does she continue to get away with this? She is none other than the wife of Michael J. Kasper - Michael Madigan's "favorite attorney". Kasper also represented Emanuel during his residency challenge. According to the website for Kasper's law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, Mr. Kasper has represented "Congressional Representatives Rahm Emanuel, Daniel Lipinski, Bill Foster, Phil Hare, William O. Lipinski, Bobby Rush and Jan Schakowsky." That's quite a resume, and not surprising that his wife gets special favors, and a judgeship to boot. It's also no wonder how she got appointed to a seat with no opponent.
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A great piece of investigative work that relates to Cook County judges and their collective ineptness can be found at Judicial Hellholes. It highlights some of the more egregious cases that our idiotic judges have decided in the last 12 months. It you have time it is worth the read. You'll learn some fun facts; like how a man named Dominic Choate made $3.9 million in a lawsuit against a railroad because the man's "jack ass" style trick cost him his leg.

Vote NO to these judges:
* Judge Mary Jane Theis
* Judge Gubin
* Judge Lorna Propes
* Judge Laura Cha-yu Liu
* Judge Scott Neville
* Judge Gubin
* Judge Ericka Reddick (Sam Amirante case)
* Judge Gillespie
* Judge Wheatley
* Judge Steven Connelly
* Judge Lyons
* Judge David Bender
* Judge George Skully
* Judge O'hara
* Judge Collins-Dole

Vote YES for the following judges:

* Judge Nick Ford
* Judge Kay Marie Hanlon
* Judge Patrick J. Sherlock
* Judge Pucinski (against Theis)
* Judge Pamela Leeming
* Judge Domenica A. Stephenson
* Judge Joy Cunningham.

Illinois is in the mess that it is in because of an apathetic voting base. Illinois voters continue to just punch the names that are followed by the "D" ... that's how we continue to get people like George Ryan, Mike Madigan, Rod Blagovich, Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

Illinois deserves better! Spread the word and get out there and vote.

Rick Santorum for President

2012-01-03T09:41:00.001-06:00

I am supporting Rick Santorum for the GOP nomination; though I still really like Michele Bachmann. I was a big fan of his when he was a senator from Pennsylvania.

I hesitate to endorse anyone at this point with the field wide open, but I think Santorum is the best and most authentic conservative that is running right now.

The Left is going to start pulling out all the weapons from their Bag of Dirty Tricks and start smearing him, Palin and Romney, so just get ready for the shit storm.

We are on the path of collapse, thanks in large part to Team Obama. Obama, the worst president in US history, is crushing us under massive tax and spending plans, killing jobs via Cap & Trade and a smothering flurry of EPA regulations.

Remember that what Obama inherited was $161 billion deficit (it's now almost 100% of our GDP), and a 4.6% unemployment rate. ObamaCare - which will effectively place the Government's cost schemes over the life and quality of the individual citizen, is the biggest Civil Rights issue that we've faced in the last 40 years.

Give Rick a hard look and decide for yourselves whether he's the best there is, and if he is worthy of your vote.

In 2012 we have to decide whether we want to be a Socialist clone of the EU, or a unique, constitutional republic that honors the individual while restraining the State's authority. As Mark Levin aptly put it, I'd vote for an orange juice can right now instead of Obama.

A Subdued New Year

2011-12-31T12:37:00.000-06:00

It's been a tough year. We lost Mike Flisk, Paul Nauden, and Cliff Lewis.

Line of duty deaths this year by gunfire are up more than 10% across the nation. Vehicle line of duty deaths are down 17%.

Remember to never get complacent, always stay aware and take care of each other. When you're driving around in the squad car, keep the cell phone in your pocket and pay attention to your surroundings and radio. Never take anything for granted.

Hug your kids, say a prayer, and keep yourselves in good physical condition.

God bless you. Thanks for all the great commentary this year and for the support.

Rue

The Son of Sam case

2011-12-31T12:16:00.001-06:00

We in law enforcement learn quickly that no matter how many arrests you make, how many gang-bangers you take off the streets, how many tickets you write; you're never sure that your bad-guy will stay off the streets because the Great Unknown is The Courts. As an officer, you always hope for the best - that the court will actually enforce the law as it is written - but you learn fast that sometimes a "Motion to Fix" will be filed and the perp will walk.

Routinely, the activist judges who "serve" Cook County rely more on cronyism than legal precedent in making their decisions.

Case in Point: James Amirante. (author's note: I do not personally know either James or Sam Amirante. This blog post is my opinion based on my reading of public court records.)

James is the son of retired-Judge Samuel L. Amirante. Samuel is the principal partner at Amirante & Associates. While on the courts, Sam made a lot of friends. People tell me that many of those friends are sitting judges in Cook County.

Enter James.

James has problems. Apparently those problems are a result of his behavior. He can't seem to keep from getting arrested. A public record search at the Cook County court revealed that James Amirante has been arrested for Aggravated Domestic Battery to a pregnant woman, and for multiple DUIs.

In fact, the courts were getting so tired of seeing James Amirante that in early 2008 Judge Marguerite A. Quinn issued a harsh sentence against James for his most recent drunken driving charge. But by August 2008 James was tired of having to comply with all those regulations that Judge Quinn ordered so he stopped cooperating.

The Social Service Department, the agency charged with monitoring Misdemeanor DUIs, are those who follow up with the offender's court-ordered rehabilitation program and report to the court. That department detailed James Amirante's short-comings in their Supplemental Violation of Supervision report in August of 2010. Here are the highlights:

* This petition alleges that the Respondent (James Amirante) failed to maintain the required contact with SSD, pay supervision fees, reengage in treatment at Haymarket, complete drug screens and comply with the Breath Alcohol Indicator interlock device on his vehicle.

The report goes on to say that --

In addition to not violating any criminal statute of any jurisdiction, this order of supervision included the following conditions:
* Level 3 Alcohol treatment
* Victim Impact panel
* Supervision fee
* Fines and Costs
* Random drug testing
* SSD Community service program (100 hours)
* BAI ID on vehicle

Amirante went on to violate all those court ordered protocols.

* Defendant was arrested for Domestic Battery in April 2010 and plead guilty. He did 2 years probation.

* Defendant was arrested for Aggravated Domestic Battery to a pregnant woman and unlawful restraint in May of 2009. He plead guilty and was found guilty. He was sentenced to 1 year in IDOC, with credit for 92 days served.

* Defendant was arrested for Domestic Battery in February 2009 and was sentenced to 18 months conditional discharge and 20 days of SWAP ( In March 2010 Judge Joel Greenblatt unsatisfactorily terminated this case and sentenced defendant to 10 days in Cook County jail.)

* Defendant failed to complete Aftercare program and was discharged in November 2009.

* Defendant had BAI ID installed in his vehicle in September 2008 and as of December 2010 has had over 200 failed start attempts.

* Defendant completed 8 out of 12 court ordered drug screens through CSI and Haymarket, however last Drug screen was July 2009. Defendant refused to submit to random drug screen testing in January, February, March and April of 2010.

* Defendant owes $425 in fines, and had completed ZERO out of 100 Community service hours.

* Defendant served 6 months in prison and reported to 1 appointment with SSD. Since that contact, defendant had failed to appear for 3 consecutive scheduled appointments.

The Social Servies Department wrote:
...that the court consider an alternative sentence for this defendant. The defendant has had total disregard for this supervision order since it was written on August 26, 2008. He continues to be non-compliant with the courts conditions, fails to maintain contact with the Social Service department and continues to be a risk to public safety. (emphasis mine).

The most maddening aspect of this case is that Mr. Amirante's case was continued 25 times! That means that Judges glossed over, or ignored, the numerous violations and decided to do nothing. In reality Mr. Amirante's drivers license should have been revoked, and he should have seen significant jail time. Unfortunately, his D/L was NOT revoked, and he saw very little overall jail time, in light of the charges and violations.

Here are some of the judges who touched this case:

* Judge Gillespie
* Judge Wheatley (2 times)
* Judge Steven Connelly (2 times)
* Judge Lyons (2 times)
* Judge David Bender (2 times)
* Judge George Skully (2 times)
* Judge O'hara (2 times)
* Judge Collins-Dole

The final disposition was rendered by Judge Erica Reddick. She terminated the case unsatisfactorily in January of 2011. That means that the case just vanished into thin air. A motion to reconsider this travesty of justice was denied by Judge Reddick in March of 2011.

Based on the court papers filed, it is evident that the Social Service department did an excellent job of cataloging and presenting to the courts just how dire Amirante's situation was.

The magnitude of this case is mind-numbing, but all too-familiar to those of us who actually attend courts in Cook County. Nothing will happen to these judges unless the public actually learns how corrupt they are and decides to vote them out of office.

(On a side note, Judge Thomas J. Carroll of Judicial Sub-circuit #3, believes DUIs are quasi-criminal, and decides the cases before his bench with that mind-set. Note to Carroll: DUIs are Misdemeanor offenses with punishment up to 1 year in jail, and $1,000 in fines.)

Also on my radar is Judge Laura Cha-yu Liu. Judge Liu left a large firm, was appointed to the bench in December of 2010, and then developed cancer. I don't know how many days she was actually a judge but she's been seen around the halls at 50 W Washington, smiling, chatting and getting coffee at Starbucks. She is being paid while she's on medical leave. Maybe the Inspector General can look into how "sick" Judge Liu really is.

I attempted to get audio or stenographer notes from other hearings and was informed that audio recordings, and stenographer recordings, were canceled 5 years ago. So the only information I could get were court filings and reports. With no recordings, it was impossible to tell what the various judges told their defendants, which ones acted like advocates and social workers, and what their courtroom decorum was like.

Satire Alert: More "transparency" from our Judicial Know-it-alls.

While Amirante's case is one of the most egregious, it appears that when DUI offenders violate the court conditions, the don't respect their own court orders. They do not take the order seriously nor do they take seriously orders of judges who might have previously sat in on violation proceedings.

Continuing cases in violation proceedings seems to be the order of the day. Many of these cases go on for several years past the termination date. It is not uncommon to find cases that are 5 or 6 years old.

What is uncommon is for a judge to take away the driving privileges of defendants that refuse to comply with the court's orders and continue to prove that keeping their supervisions in tact only serves to endanger the public.

The courts continue to prove that a defendant's privilege to drive no matter how dangerous he might be outweighs the public's right to get support from the courts in protecting them from harm.

There is no doubt that the conditions on the DUI court orders are onerous and expensive. On average it costs about $15,000 to fight a DUI in Illinois. But what does it take for a judge to understand that when for instance you have a defendant continuously dropping hot for marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, or opiates - the court needs to do everything it can to make it as difficult as possible for that individual to legally drive.

What does it take for a judge to realize that in great part the judges, through their behavior on the bench, are becoming enablers in very dangerous situations. In fact, defendants have been heard to say, when offered revocations of supervision or jail time, that they will never take it because the judges in many of the traffic divisions in Cook County will never send anyone to jail or revoke supervisions.

What we have are findings from a secondary department (SSD) that are routinely being ignored by sitting judges, and in fact, I'm told that the current trend is for the judges to get the case updates from the defendant's attorneys and discount all the information tendered to the court by the various monitoring agency. It is the agency that seems to be on trial in these courts and not the offender.

The next time you're in the voting booth and any of these judges names come up, please vote NO. That would be a start.

RIP Officer Clifton Lewis

2011-12-30T08:48:00.000-06:00

Chicago Police Officer Clifton Lewis was murdered last night while working security at a convenience store at 1201 N. Austin blvd.

Sad and tragic news as we wind down to the end of 2011. May you find peace and rest in the arms of the angels, Officer Lewis. God bless you, and may He give comfort and succor to all who grieve the loss of yet another Chicago police officer.