David Feith, in the Wall Street Journal, describes a Hispanic organization with the right perspective, and recounts a heart-warming anecdote of ethnic interaction between older and newer American immigrant communities.

According to [Juan] Rangel—CEO of Chicago’s United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) and co-chair of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent election campaign—the central question for Hispanics to answer as they grow in number and potential political influence is: “Do we want to be the next victimized minority group in America, or do we want to be the next successful immigrant group?” ...

UNO’s main operation is an 11-school charter network serving 5,500 students, 98% of whom are Hispanic (mostly immigrant families from Mexico) and 93% of whom are at or below the poverty line. The schools—which the Chicago Tribune says outperform city averages—include many staples of effective charters: strict uniforms, an extended school day and year, and a contract laying out parents’ and teachers’ responsibilities to students and vice versa, which may soon be the model for a contract distributed city-wide.

At UNO’s schools there’s no controversy over reciting the Pledge of Allegiance daily or singing the Star-Spangled Banner before every public event. On Flag Day every June, roughly 100 immigrants swear oaths of citizenship at a naturalization ceremony held in an UNO gymnasium. ...

One of the UNO network’s newest outposts is Veterans Memorial Campus, which has three schools, each named in honor of a Hispanic-American war hero. The campus is in the traditionally Polish Archer Heights neighborhood, and when Mr. Rangel initially proposed it, the neighbors were suspicious. Having met with the neighborhood association and earned its trust, Mr. Rangel invited the Poles to name one of the school buildings after a war hero of theirs. After several days of deliberation they responded, to Mr. Rangel’s surprise, by naming Omar Torres, a Hispanic son of Archer Heights who had recently died in Iraq.

Michael Barone cites 1,372 waivers from Obamacare, the NLRB’s intervention to prevent Boeing building an assembly plant in South Carolina, and an innovative attempt by the IRS to apply gift taxes to certain 501©(4) organizations guilty of supporting Republican candidates.

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends—politics Chicago style—seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS’ gift-tax assault on 501©(4) donors.

They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

One thing they don’t look like is the rule of law.

———————————————————-

Warner Todd Huston finds the same “Chicago Way” of doing things applies also to White House press pool access.

The Boston Herald recently found itself excluded from the press pool covering presidential visits. The Herald angrily reported finding out the reason for the ban.

The White House Press Office yesterday refused to address its policy on choosing local reporters for pool coverage, after the Herald was denied full access to the president’s Boston visit this week in part because the administration didn’t like the newspaper’s coverage. A press staffer’s e-mails cited a Mitt Romney op-ed that ran March 8 on the front page, challenging Obama’s policies the same day the president came to town for a fund-raiser.

This New York Times feature has a representative slide-show:

Vivian Maier, evidently one of America’s more insightful street photographers, has at last been discovered. The release of every fresh image on the Web causes a sensation among the growing legion of her admirers. ... Ms. Maier’s streetscapes manage simultaneously to capture a redolent sense of place and the paradoxical moments that give the city its jazz, while elevating and dignifying the people in her frames — vulnerable, noble, defeated, proud, fragile, tender and often quite funny. ...

What is known about Ms. Maier is that she was born in New York in 1926, lived in France (her mother was French) and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for about 40 years as a nanny, principally for families in the North Shore suburbs. On her days off, she wandered the streets of New York and Chicago, most often with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. Apparently, she did not share her pictures with others. Many of them, she never saw herself. She left behind hundreds of undeveloped rolls.

Vivian Maier blog

Russell Bowman Art Advisory Exhibition, Chicago, April 15, 2011 – June 18, 2011

Finding Vivian Maier: Chicago Street Photographer exhibition, January 8, 2011 – April 3, 2011

Vivian Maier, 1926-2009

Hat tip to Xavier.

Chicago is a great city for weather watching and photography.

John Hinderaker from Power-Line, respects Obama’s behavior.

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Conservative cultural commentary venues The Notes and Culture11 went under. (link 1 & link 2).

Some people think they were not populist enough, but I am inclined to believe that the fact I never previously heard of either one of them could be part of the problem.
——————————————————————-

Cigarettes $10 a pack in NYC.

New Yorkers ought to take up chewing tobacco.
——————————————————————-

Write fiction based on your own life experience and they’ll sue you.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Michael Barone associates Obama’s political methodology with the aberrant and pathological political culture of his adopted city and argues that the politics of Chicago cannot be successfully implemented on a national level.

An interesting thing about Barack Obama is that he chose, on two occasions, to live in Chicago—even though he didn’t grow up there, had no family ties there, never went to school there.

It was a curious choice. Chicago has a civic culture all its own and one that is particularly insular. Family ties and personal connections are hugely important. Professionals who have lived and worked there for a quarter-century are brusquely reminded, “You’re not from here.”

Nonetheless Obama moved upward in the Chicago civic firmament with apparent ease. The community organizer joined the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church in search of street credibility in the heavily black South Side. The adjunct law teacher made friends around the University of Chicago from libertarian academics to radical organizer William Ayers. The young state senator designed a new district that included the Loop and the rich folk on the Near North Side.

Obama could not have risen so far so fast without a profound understanding of the Chicago Way. And he has brought the Chicago Way to the White House.

One prime assumption of the Chicago Way is that there will always be a bounteous private sector that politicians can plunder endlessly. Chicago was America’s boom town from 1860 to 1900, growing from nothing to the center of the nation’s railroad network, the key nexus between farm and factory, the headquarters of great retailers and national trade associations.

The Mayors Daley have maintained Chicago’s centrality in commerce by building and expanding O’Hare International Airport and by fostering a culture of crony capitalism with the city’s big employers and labor unions. Chicago survived the Depression and recessions to thrive once again. Sure, small businesses and some outfits lacking political connections fell by the wayside. But the system seems to go on forever.

So it’s natural for a Chicago Way president to assume that higher taxes and a hugely expensive health care regime will not make a perceptible dent in the nation’s private sector economy. There will always be plenty to plunder.

Crony capitalism also comes naturally to a Chicago Way president. Use some sweeteners to get the drug companies and the doctors to sign on to the health care plan. If the health insurers start bellyaching, whack them a few times in public to make them go along. Design a financial reform that Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase can live with even while you assail “Wall Street fat cats.”

The big guys will understand that you have to provide the voters with some political theater while you give them what they want. As for the little guys, well, hey, in Chicago we don’t back no loser. ...

To some it may seem anomalous that Obama, who began his Chicago career as a Saul Alinsky-type community organizer, should have taken to the Chicago Way. But Alinsky’s brand of community organizing is very Chicagocentric.

It assumes that there will always be a Machine that you can complain about and that if you make a big enough fuss it will have to respond. And that the Machine can always get more plunder from the private sector.

The problem with Obama’s Chicago Way is that Chicago isn’t America. The Chicago Way works locally because there is an America out there that ultimately pays for it. But who will pay for an America run the Chicago Way?

Mike Dumke, a reporter for the in-no-way-conservative Chicago Reader, brought up at the mayor’s recent press conference the obvious point that Chicago’s draconian gun laws have been ineffective in stopping the use of guns in crime, and hizonner (while brandishing a police-confiscated military rifle complete with bayonet) proposed a hypothetical including the reporter.

Guns are one of the mayor’s favorite soapbox topics—he regularly goes out of his way to point out that he despises gun manufacturers and “extremists” like the NRA. “It’s really amazing how powerful they are,” he said today, standing next to a table covered with handguns, rifles, and even a machine gun that police had seized. “They’re bigger than the oil industry, bigger than the gas industry, bigger than Google, bigger than President Obama and the rest of them.” ...

But even supporters of tough gun regulations—myself included—have to admit that it’s not clear how much they reduce violence. Despite having some of the most restrictive laws in the country, Chicago is a national leader in shootings and murders, and the mayor himself noted that “we’ve seen far too many instances in the last few weeks” of firearm violence, including the shooting that left a cop dead last night.

So I asked: since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it’s been effective? ...

“Oh!” Daley said. “It’s been very effective!”

He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

“If I put this up your—ha!—your butt—ha ha!—you’ll find out how effective this is!”

For a moment the room was very, very quiet. I took a good look at the weapon. It had a long bayonet. (Was it seized during the Civil War?)

“If I put a round up your—ha ha!”

The photographers snapped away. Suddenly everybody started cracking up.

Daley went on. “This gun saved many lives—it could save your life,” he said—meaning, I think, that getting that gun off the street might have saved many lives, including mine.

And he went on some more. “We save all these guns that the police department seizes, you know how many lives we’ve saved? You don’t realize it. First of all, they’re taking these guns out of someone’s hands. They save their own life and they save someone else’s. You cannot count how many times this gun can be used. Thirty, forty times in shooting people and discharging a weapon. I think it’s very important.

“Next will be hand grenades, right? We’ll say that hand grenades are OK. I mean, how far can you go in regards to mass weapons? To me, any gun taken off saves thousands of lives in America. I really believe that, I don’t care what people tell me. You have to thank the police officers for seizing all these weapons. We lead the country in seizing weapons. This is unbelievable.”

I had to agree.

0: 24 video

Mayor Daley’s understanding of firearms and America is pretty sad. The National Rifle Association has typically around 3-4 million members, its membership roll fluctuating and tending to rise significantly when major new gun control initiatives make the news. The NRA is an influential lobbying organization, but its strength is not really a matter of the size of its membership or annual budget, which is certainly small potatoes compared to the oil and gas industries or Google. The NRA is influential because it represents the views of many millions of American sportsmen and gun owners who have demonstrated their opinions by voting against liberal politicians who supported gun control. The gun control issue has cost the democrats a great any congressional seats and certainly the Presidential election of 2000, in which Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. Mayor Daley’s adversary on the gun control issue is not the NRA. It is the American people.

Mayor Daley then holds up the military rifle with fixed bayonet. He is holding it sideways, so we can only see the bottom. It is short, a carbine, and seems to have an extended magazine. I think it was probably an SKS with a a folding bayonet.

Did confiscating that SKS really save anybody’s life? It seems doubtful to me.

There is plenty of crime and many shootings take place in Chicago, but gangbangers and muggers tend to use pistols which are considerably easier to carry and conceal than a carbine. Mayor Daley’s “To me, any gun taken off saves thousands of lives in America.” is obviously craziness.

Chances are overwhelming that that SKS was never used in any crime whatsoever. (Anybody hear of any bayonetings in Chicago recently?) And guns actually fired in the commission of a crime tend to be used once, by and large, and then discarded. There are many, perhaps hundreds of, millions of guns in private hands in the United States. Some collectors own hundreds. The percentage of firearms actually ever used in crime is infinitesimal.

People like Mayor Daley want to focus law enforcement efforts on confiscating objects instead of apprehending criminals simply because taking weapons away from people not committing any crimes with them is so much easier than catching the bad guys.

Reading the tea leaves is not very hard, since Justice Anthony Kennedy these days casts the deciding vote.

[D]uring Tuesday’s arguments, the justices who formed the majority in the D.C. case said they had already decided that gun rights deserved national protection.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the individual right to bear arms is a “fundamental” right, like the other protections in the Bill of Rights. “If it’s not fundamental, then Heller is wrong,” he said, referring to the D.C. ruling, which he joined. Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. echoed the same theme.

At one point, Justice John Paul Stevens proposed a narrow ruling in favor of gun rights. Two years ago, he dissented and said the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect a state’s power to have a “well regulated militia.”

Now, however, Stevens said the court could rule that residents had a right to a gun at home, but not a right “to parade around the street with a gun.”

A lawyer representing the National Rifle Assn. scoffed at the idea and opposed a “watered-down version” of the 2nd Amendment.

Scalia also questioned the idea. In his opinion two years ago, he described the right to bear arms as a right to “carry” a weapon in cases of “confrontation.” Such a right would not be easily limited to having a gun at home.

The justices will meet behind closed doors to vote this week on the case of McDonald vs. Chicago. It may be late June before they issue a written ruling.

If you’re going to attack the press, you need a lightness of touch, not a ham-fisted crowbar such as the White House wielded Thursday, attempting to ban Fox from the pool interviews with the “pay czar.” Another bit of venerable Disraelian insouciance, on the scribblers of Fleet Street: “Today they blacken your character, tomorrow they blacken your boots.” For two years, the U.S. media have been polishing Obama’s boots, mostly with their drool, to a degree unprecedented in American public life. But now it’s time for the handful of holdouts to make with the Kiwi – or else.

At a superficial level, this looks tough. A famously fair-minded centrist told me the other day that he’d been taken aback by some of the near parodic examples of Leftie radicalism discovered in the White House in recent weeks. I don’t know why he’d be surprised. When a man has spent his entire adult life in the “community organized” precincts of Chicago, it should hardly be news that much of his Rolodex is made up of either loons or thugs. The trick is identifying who falls into which category. Anita Dunn, the Communications Director commending Mao Zedong as a role model to graduating high school students, would seem an obvious loon. But the point about Mao, as Charles Krauthammer noted, is that he was the most ruthless imposer of mass conformity in modern history: In Mao’s China, everyone wore the same clothes. So when Communications Commissar Mao Ze Dunn starts berating Fox News for not getting into the same Maosketeer costumes as the rest of the press corps, you begin to see why the Chairman might appeal to her as a favorite “political philosopher”.

So the troika of Dunn, Emanuel and Axelrod were dispatched to the Sunday talk shows to lay down the law. We all know the lines from “The Untouchables” – “the Chicago way,” don’t bring a knife to a gunfight – and, given the pay czar’s instant contract-gutting of executive compensation and the demonization of the health insurers and much else, it’s easy to look on the 44th president as an old-style Cook County operator: You wanna do business in this town, you gotta do it through me. You can take the community organizer out of Chicago, but you can’t take the Chicago out of the community organizer.

The trouble is it isn’t tough, not where toughness counts. Who are the real “Untouchables” here? In Moscow, it’s Putin and his gang, contemptuously mocking U.S. officials even when (as with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) they’re still on Russian soil. In Tehran, it’s Ahmadinejad and the mullahs openly nuclearizing as ever feebler warnings and woozier deadlines from the Great Powers come and go. Even Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle. We were told that Obama would use “soft power” and “smart diplomacy” to get his way. Russia and Iran are big players with global ambitions, but Obama’s soft power is so soft it doesn’t even work its magic on a client regime in Kabul whose leaders’ very lives are dependent on Western troops. If Obama’s “smart diplomacy” is so smart that even Hamid Karzai ignores it with impunity, why should anyone else pay attention?

The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie – like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.

The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.

But, if you’re doing the overnight show on WZZZ-AM, Mister Tough Guy’s got your number.

Last Sunday, the FBI conducted a mysterious large-scale raid on First World Management Meat Processing, an Islamic slaughterhouse, in Kinsman, Illinois, owned by Dr. Syed Hamid, a resident of Chicago. No one was arrested on Sunday, but apparently authorities were still searching the place on Monday.

Voz iz Neias?:

Federal agents conducted a raid Sunday afternoon at a goat meat processing plant near Morris, Illinois. The secretive operation was led by the Chicago FBI office, the Feds are being very tight-lipped on what they found and why they were even there.

Spokesman Ross Rice confirms agents were at 6260 Kinsman Road, in Kinsman, Illinois. The business is called First World Management. Rice would not say why agents were there but said nobody was taken into custody.

The FBI said the raid began Sunday morning and ended in the late afternoon. They were at the plant about nine hours total.

According to sources, the plant provides goat, beef and lamb meat which is prepared in the Halal way in accordance with Muslim custom.

The government workers inside First World Management meat packing plant in Kinsman Monday wouldn’t say why they were there or why scores of FBI agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were there Sunday.

The trouble is the FBI isn’t saying much about what happened at this rural Grundy County plant. A spokesman confirms that the plant, which has a Muslim prayer room, was raided as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Several witnesses reported that the Grundy County Sheriff’s office was involved, as well, saying sheriff dept. vehicles were visible at the scene. The Sheriff’s department denies it was present.

When asked if the raid had something to do with undocumented aliens, the person wouldn’t say. A neighbor suggested that undocumented immigrants live in a trailer behind the facility and work there.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the agency assisted in the raid, but had no further comment. According to sources, many of the FBI and ICE agents were armed.

Several USDA criminal investigators were on site at the plant on Monday, but they would not comment on the situation.

One man who was talking about the raid was Jim Cavaness. He’s a handyman who occasionally works at the plant where goats, sheep and cows are slaughtered. On Sunday, he witnessed the raid and says he was questioned by FBI agents.

Cavaness says the FBI asked him if he had seen anything unusual at the plant. He says he’s never seen anything unusual, but, he says, judging by the amount of firepower on the scene, the FBI wasn’t just working an immigration case.

“Way too much overkill for immigration,” Cavaness said.

Neighbors who saw the raid on Sunday told CBS 2 it was a huge operation, involving more than 100 agents, police officers and even what one believed to be National Guard troops.

Sources say during the raid, the driveway was filled with more than 50 government vehicles. There was a helicopter flying overhead and a command center set up. On top of it were government sharpshooters with rifles at the ready.

Channel 2 (Chicago) 2:29 video

The Chicago Tribune (Tuesday) says “a source” told them that Dr. Hamid had been taken into custody at his home in Chicago.

Also raided on Sunday was the owner’s home and two other locations in Chicago.

(Internet Viral Humor)

Hat tip to John C. Meyer.

Debra Moore reminds us:

After Barack Obama became an Illinois state legislator, his wife moved up as well, scoring a job as ‘vice president of community relations’ at the University Of Chicago Hospital for a very generous salary of $121,910. When Obama became a senator in 2005, her ‘salary’ leapfrogged to $$316,962 for the same job…and one of Senator Obama’s first acts in office was to see to it that the hospital received over a million dollars of your tax dollars as an earmark.

And Steve Gilbert notes Michelle Obama recently resigned her job to take on the role of First Lady, having been on a leave of absence since May of 2007 to participate in the presidential campaign.

Despite being on leave of absence, Michelle Obama received $62,709 in compensation from University of Chicago Hospitals last year. Less than her full salary, but not bad for a no-show job.

Now that Michelle has moved on to bigger things, the University of Chicago Hospitals has found that it doesn’t really need a vice president of community relations after all, and has simply eliminated the position.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have such noble and disinterested people rising to the top in American public life?

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the Chicago Tribune isn’t only financially bankrupt. It’s ethically bankrupt as well.

The Tribune’s selfish decision to break the Blagojevich corruption story early probably prevented the FBI from catching the actual sale of a Senate seat (to Jesse Jackson, Jr.) on tape, losing federal authorities half the bust.

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.

The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.

At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.

Gerould Kern, the Tribune’s editor, said in a statement last week that these requests are granted in what he called isolated instances. “In each case, we strive to make the right decision as reporters and as citizens,” he said.

But editors decided to publish the story on Friday, Dec. 5, ending the Tribune’s own cooperation deal with the prosecutor.

Read the whole thing.

There are so many things to love about the Rod Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

Wait. That’s not right. There are so many bleeping things to love about this bleeping-bleep Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin.

For starters, the folks at the Chicago Tribune are Christmas Pony Happy because Blago tried to strong-arm the Trib’s owners to fire members of the editorial board. Instead, Trib editors will get to have a big tailgate party outside Blago’s cell window.

Newspaper people love that sort of thing. ...

For partisans, there’s the schadenfreude that comes with watching the Democrats — self-proclaimed anti-corruption zealots in recent years — explain why Blagojevich shouldn’t be lumped in with Congressmen Charlie Rangel (cut himself sweetheart deals), William Jefferson ($90,000 in his freezer) and Tim Mahoney (tried to bribe an aide he was sleeping with not to sue him — and you thought romance was dead) as part of a new Democratic “culture of corruption” storyline.

There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls.

Read the whole thing.

According to Fox News, Obama’s future White House Chief of Staff, former congressman Rahm Emanuel, had several conversations with Blagojevich and his chief of staff related to the appointment of a replacement to Barack Obama’s forsaken Senate seat… and the FBI has those conversations on tape.

1:56 video

Ouch! No wonder Rahm Emanuel yesterday refused to take reporters’ questions.

Barack Obama has not even been sworn in yet, and the partisan dam that blocked media inquiry into his ties to corrupt Illinois politics has already started to burst. The signs of an imminent press feeding frenzy at Obama’s expense are visible.

Now that Gov. Dead Meat has been arrested at his home and charged with selling Illinois by the pound—and Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat by the slice—let’s just savor the aroma.

I love the smell of meat over coals in the morning.

It smells like . . . victory.

The people of Illinois needed some good news and they got it. Former Republican Gov. George Ryan is in prison, and the arrest of his successor, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, surely means that the Illinois Combine that runs this state can stop with the rumors that U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald will be leaving town.

And, as Blagojevich most likely prepares to be Ryan’s bunkmate, let’s not forget the scores of other politicos, of all parties, who’ve gone down on corruption charges—including some of Mayor Richard Daley’s guys who helped rebuild that Democratic machine the mayor says doesn’t exist.

At a news conference in the federal building in Chicago, authorities were asked about Illinois corruption.

“If it isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it’s certainly one hell of a competitor,” said Robert Grant, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago office. ...

Though Illinois isn’t surprised—this is after all the home of the Chicago Way—the national media must be shocked.

They’ve been clinging to the ridiculous notion that Chicago is Camelot for months now, cleaving to the idea with the willfulness of stubborn children. It must help them see Obama as some pristine creature, perhaps a gentle faun of a magic forest, unstained by our grubby politics, a bedtime story for grown-ups who insist upon fairy tales. But now the national media may finally be forced to confront reality.

Barack Obama, of course, is an intimate associate of Illinois’ current governor, shared the same political contributors (Antoin Rezko), and was, like him, a loyal servant of the Daley Machine.

Original story

Well, what do you know? It seems the side yard parcel purchased by Mrs. Rezko wouldn’t appraise, and the bank appraiser who rejected a $625,000 valuation was fired and a new reappraisal mysteriously substituted for his estimate of no more than $500,000.

They call that bank fraud.

The Washington Times has the story.

HillBuzz rumors that Fitzgerald is after the ultimate scalp for his personal collection: Barack Obama’s.

The Sun Times today gave a major clue that Barack Obama will indeed go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later. It looks as though Rezko is about to turn on Alexi Giannoulias, the 30-year old State Treasurer of Illinois (who was elected only because Obama backed him).

Here’s where all the clues are…and then we’ll walk you through the local Chicago politics on how today’s hint by the Sun Times has us convinced, for the first time ever, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could indeed send Barack Obama to jail.

Sounds too good to be true, but we are certainly going to be keeping an eye out for further developments.

Rezko’s trial this year laid bare a culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse. It even became fodder in the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, whose fundraising and personal ties to Rezko go back more than a decade.

Rezko has made no deal in the wake of his June corruption conviction, sources familiar with the situation said, but has had preliminary talks with prosecutors before an October sentencing that could put him in prison for years. Still, there are indications Rezko has already provided investigators with information.

Four attorneys have told the Tribune in recent days that federal prosecutors have telephoned them and other attorneys either with news Rezko is talking, or armed with details only Rezko could know. The lawyers speculated prosecutors are using the preliminary talks with Rezko to shake loose more cooperation from other witnesses.

“I had very recent a conversation with an assistant U.S. attorney that led me to believe they were getting specific information from either Mr. Rezko or Mr. Rezko’s lawyer,” said a defense attorney who said he represents a figure in the case. None of the attorneys interviewed would agree to be quoted by name, saying they didn’t want to hurt their clients.

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. Ayers was pictured in a 2001 article for Chicago magazine, stomping on an American flag, and told the New York Times just before 9/11 that the notion of the United States as a just and fair and decent place “makes me want to puke.” Although Obama actually launched his political career at an event at Ayers’s and Dohrn’s home, Obama has dismissed Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” For his part, Ayers refuses to discuss his relationship with Obama.

Although the press has been notably lax about pursuing the matter, the full story of the Obama-Ayers relationship calls the truth of Obama’s account seriously into question. When Obama made his first run for political office, articles in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald featured among his qualifications his position as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation where Ayers was a founder and guiding force. Obama assumed the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office, and almost certainly received the job at the behest of Bill Ayers. ...With a writ to aid Chicago’s public schools, the Annenberg challenge played a deeply political role in Chicago’s education wars, and as Annenberg board chairman, Obama clearly aligned himself with Ayers’s radical views on education issues. With Obama heading up the board and Ayers heading up the other key operating body of the Annenberg Challenge, the two would necessarily have had a close working relationship for years (therefore “exchanging ideas on a regular basis”). So when Ayers and Dorhn hosted that kickoff for the first Obama campaign, it was not a random happenstance, but merely further evidence of a close and ongoing political partnership. Of course, all of this clearly contradicts Obama’s dismissal of the significance of his relationship with Ayers. ...

A large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama’s leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Unfortunately, I don’t yet have access to the documents. The Special Collections section of the Richard J. Daley Library agreed to let me read them, but just before I boarded my flight to Chicago, the top library officials mysteriously intervened to bar access. Circumstances strongly suggest the likelihood that Bill Ayers himself may have played a pivotal role in this denial.

Chicago Tribune:

A cougar ran loose in Chicago on Monday for the first time since the city’s founding in the 19th Century. But by day’s end, the animal lay dead in a back alley on the North Side, shot by police who said they feared it was turning to attack.

No one knew where the 150-pound cat came from, though on Saturday Wilmette police had received four reports of a cougar roaming that suburb, roughly 15 miles from the site of Monday’s shooting.

Whatever its origin, the 5-foot-long cougar’s unlikely journey ended in the Roscoe Village neighborhood, where residents reported sightings throughout the day to the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Resident Ben Greene said police cornered the cougar shortly before 6 p.m. in his side yard on the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue.

Greene said he heard a volley of gunfire as he was bathing his 10-month-old son. His wife, Kate, ran upstairs screaming with their 3-year-old son, and they all took cover in a back room.

“At first, I’m thinking there’s a gun battle in the street,” said Greene, who owns a trucking company.

As the shots stopped, Greene heard the police yelling, “We got him! We got him!” He ventured downstairs and moved on his knees to the front door, where he saw police on his lawn. The officers had shot holes in an air conditioning unit on the side of Greene’s house while aiming for the tan cougar, which died in the alley near Greene’s garage.

Chicago Police Capt. Mike Ryan said the cougar tried to attack the officers when they tried to contain it. Police said they could not tranquilize the animal because police officers typically do not carry tranquilizer guns. Police said no one, including officers, was hurt and they did not know the cougar’s gender.

“It was turning on the officers,” Ryan said. “There was no way to take it into custody.”

2:13 video

Sun Times

Dave’s Urban Legends notes that the shooting occurred two months after the the Illinois Department of Natural Resources issued a statement debunking false Internet rumors about cougar sightings in the state.

“While it is not completely impossible for a cougar to be found in Illinois,” Acting IDNR Director Sam Flood said at the time, “sighting of a wild one is highly unlikely. Wild cougars have been found in neighboring states but again, very, very rarely.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

with the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, who finds himself unable to take a leap of faith.

Barack Obama looked me straight in the eye. I heard him speak. Yet unlike some other pundits, I felt no thrill going up my leg.

I did feel a twinge of Rezko, though, and figured Obama could feel it, too, like when the bottom of your foot cramps up inside your shoe and you can’t dance.

That’s “hardball” the Chicago way, as Barack visited the Tribune on Friday to discuss his old friend, fundraiser and real estate fairy, indicted political fixer Tony Rezko. Rezko himself was quite busy, in federal custody, preparing for this week’s testimony in his corruption trial. ...

Obama asks us to believe he can swim in the sewers of Illinois politics without catching a cold. He tells us that Rezko helped him scope out his dream house, yet Obama never thought he’d get a call from Tony saying his back was itchy.

“No,” Obama said. “Because I had known him for a long time, and so I would have assumed I would have seen a pattern [of Rezko asking for favors] over the course of 15 years.”

I’m too old to believe in fairy tales.

At issue is the purchase of the Obama dream house on the South Side in 2005. The Rezkos bought the lot next door from the same owners on the same day, even as Tony was leprous with federal subpoenas. The Obamas paid $300,000 less than the asking price. The Rezkos paid the full list for the lot. Everybody was happy until Tony got indicted.

Was it a favor, with a bigger payout intended for later?

“No,” Obama said again, reiterating that I was wrong for writing that he needed Rezko’s help to buy his home.

Obama said he asked Rezko about the federal investigations, if Rezko had any problems, and Tony said no, and Barack believed it.

What will he say when Vladimir Putin of Russia asks President Obama to believe him? President Bush has already looked into Putin’s eyes, thought he saw a soul in there, and was greatly mistaken.

Rick Moran explains that B. Hussein Obama secured the support of the Daley Machine for his presidential run by making a deal, and that Machine tactics, deals, and political corruption are really the standard operating procedure for the supposed “candidate of Change.”

1. His very first race for state senate, he used the time honored Machine tactic of challenging the nominating petitions of every other candidate, getting all 4 of them removed from the ballot.

2. He cultivated a relationship with the ancient President of the Illinois State Senate Emil Jones who told a colleague in 2002 after the Democrats swept into office “I’m gonna make me a senator.” Jones then proceeded to give Obama credit on the passage of 26 key legislative measures – almost all of which had been pushed by other state senators for years – thus giving Obama a record of sorts to go with all that charisma. Obama calls Jones his “political godfather.”

3. While in the Senate, Obama has had numerous opportunities to live up to his promised “post partisan” reforms and has never – repeat never – participated in any bi-partisan agreement reached by Democrats and Republicans on any issue. He has gone so far as to reject the outcomes of those compromises on immigration reform and an agreement on confirming federal judges.

4. When faced with a choice between supporting a mayoral candidate who stood for clean government and the corruption of the Chicago Machine, Obama chose old fashioned power politics.

Obama’s political career is replete with examples of opportunism, cynical deal making, hack politics, and business as usual relationships with crooks and scam artists like Tony Rezko. His entire presidential campaign is built on a lie; that he is a different kind of politician and will be able to change the way business is done in Washington.

When given the opportunity in the past, Obama has usually chosen doing things the old fashioned way. Why in God’s name should we believe him now? Did he try and “reform” Chicago politics? Did he try and “reform” the Senate while his colleagues worked on bi-partisan agreements on vital issues?

You can support the man’s policies without holding him up (and throwing in our faces) the idea he is some kind of “new” politician who will change everyone’s lives. And if he keeps pushing that meme, he will look like the emperor with no clothes as facts about his relationships with various shady Chicago characters come to light, giving the lie to his grandiose claims like “We are the change that we are seeking.”

When there is a serious possibility that Barack Obama could be the next President of the United States, it seems desirable to look closely at his background, and it is impossible to understand the real character and background of Barack Obama without understanding Chicago, and The Chicago Way

John Kass, in the Chicago Tribune, opines that The Chicago Way isn’t the tough-guy creed of outdoing your opponent in aggression proposed by the Sean Connery-played cop in The Untouchables (1987):

He [ Al Capone] puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue…” says Connery’s cop. “That’s the Chicago Way.”

and suggests a very different definition.

The Chicago Way.

What is it? Is it easily abused? Is it dangerous in the wrong hands?

This is critical, as the nation’s eyes turn toward Chicago’s federal building, where Barack Obama’s personal real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, stands trial on federal corruption charges.

The phrase must be put in context, something the national media fails to do when they portray Obama as the boy king drawing the sword from the stone, ready to change America’s politics of influence and lobbyists, ignoring the fact that Chicago ain’t Camelot. ...

In the past, a few reporters have applied “The Chicago Way” to our pizza, theater and opera, thereby embarrassing themselves beyond redemption. ...

Chicago’s mob—we call it the Outfit—was slapped last summer by federal prosecutors in the Operation Family Secrets trial that convicted Outfit bosses, and cops and put political figures in with them. We’ve had our chief of detectives sent to prison for running the Outfit’s jewelry-heist ring. And we’ve had white guys with Outfit connections get $100 million in affirmative action contracts from their drinking buddy, Mayor Richard Daley, who must have seen them pink and white and male at some point.

That’s the Chicago Way.

“This country was built on taxes,” said a Democratic machine hack, Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, as she and other Democrats prepared to slap Chicago with the highest sales tax of any major city in the country.

Her belief, that America was built on taxes, is one of the unique features of our own city’s history, which reportedly began in 1776, when the Daleys boldly declared our independence from the English king.

“There’s not that many political hacks in Cook County,” Sims insisted after the tax hike.

Not that many hacks? The only one reporters need to bother about is also involved at the same federal building: the mayor’s own Duke of Patronage, Robert Sorich.

Sorich has been found guilty by a jury, but the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals above the Rezko courtroom is still deciding whether to redeem the jury or redeem the mayor, who’d much rather have Sorich happy than Obama in the White House.

Sorich was convicted two years ago of running the mayor’s massive and illegal patronage operation, and he’s still not in prison. Thugs, morons, idiots, and convicts were put on the city payroll to work the precincts so that Daley could keep getting elected. Obama’s spokesman, David Axelrod, defended Daley patronage in a Tribune op-ed piece.

The Daley family’s parish priest in Bridgeport, Rev. Dan Brandt, lovingly compared Sorich to Jesus Christ as both had troubles with the law.

“People often say, what would Jesus do?” he said, loyal not only to his faith but to the 11th Ward’s place at the head of Chicago Way. “I put a twist on it and say, ‘What would I do for Jesus?’ With whom Robert has a lot in common as far as legal problems … [The Lord] was a convicted felon. And Robert was convicted, and so he may have a lot in common with Jesus.”

When the parish priest does right by the patronage boss to protect the mayor who gets endorsed by that great reformer Sir Barack of O’bama, that’s the Chicago Way.

Naturally, there are some squares who don’t think taxpayers should pave the Chicago Way to make it easy for Rezko to help purchase the senator’s dream house in a kinky deal exposed by the Tribune and still not fully explained.

“It’s really the Old Chicago Way,” said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association. “In the old days they would pretty much admit it up front, and now they deny it. It’s essentially about power, access to government jobs, government contracts and taking care of your own.”

Don’t miss his 2:49 video
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Corrected: I had mistakenly spoken of Jack Ryan as an incumbent, one of our commenters was kind enough to refresh my memory.

The great director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) actually started his career as a freelance photographer.

The Chicago Tribune serves up 8 Kubrick photos taken in Chicago in the summer of 1949, which demonstrate that Kubrick could handle lighting and compose a shot. Interesting stuff for the cinéaste.
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Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

Chicago’s oldest restaurant is closing after more than 100 years in business. The Berghoff will serve its last meal February 28.

The federal government is in the process of acquiring a lot of the buildings in the block around Berghoff’s using meant (sic: should be “eminent”) domain, but they say they wouldn’t dare to touch this restaurant, because it’s too much an important institution in Chicago.

Mayor Daley issued a statement Wednesday saying the Berghoff family has been a very important part of Chicago history, and he says he speaks for many Chicagoans in saying he is sad to see the restaurant close.

The Berghoff is more than just a restaurant, it’s part of Chicago history. The news comes three months after the announcement that Marshall Field’s stores will be renamed Macy’s. Some Chicagoans are worried the city is losing some of the character that makes it so unique…

Chicago author and historian Studs Terkel calls it an important link to Chicago’s past.

“Berghoff seems to be one of the connecting links to the early Chicago that still (sic: ?) healthy good and meant what it said—good food and service,” said Terkel.

The history of Berghoff’s began in 1898 when founder Herman Joseph Berghoff opened the place looking for a way to showcase his authentic Dortmunder-style beer. It went for a nickel a glass back then.

Berghoff survived the prohibition by selling food, and when it was over Berghoff got the city’s first liquor license. It hangs in the restaurant to this day