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Last week, the body of Chicago school board president Michael Scott was found in the Chicago River with a single bullet wound in his head. The big story was that this powerful, well-connected public official had, according to the county medical examiner, committed suicide. The less-noticed story was that he did it with an illegal weapon. After all, handgun ownership is not allowed in the city of Chicago, which has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and Scott killed himself with a .380-caliber sidearm. Unlike most Chicagoans, Scott could have been a legal handgun owner. Because...

As a journalist covering Chicago politics, verifying information is like climbing a mountain of sand. With each step you take, the deeper you sink. Last week while researching claims from a local Tea Party activist, I found myself asking a family for proof that they had lost an unborn grandchild. The family, Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn. Their daughter-in-law, Jenny, and an unborn grandchild died recently due in part, they believe, to a...

Chicago, Ill. -- The president of the Chicago Police Sergeants' Association has been caught stealing over $600,000 in union funds, authorities say. Sgt. John Pallohusky, 53, spent the stolen funds on gambling trips, lavish dinners, and online stock trading. He spent more than $163,000 on Ameritrade and $75,000 at restaurants including Ruth’s Chris, Smith & Wollensky, Kinzie Chophouse, Petterino’s, Gibson’s and Lawry’s, the arrest warrant said. This is just another example of the illegitimacy of unions, really. This guy has been doing this for two years. Did no one miss all that cash for two years? Were there no other...

The Chicago Park District is wasting millions more of the taxpayer's money by hiring a New York landscaping firm to redesign portions of Grant Park and Northerly Island just as it recently announced plans for employee lay offs to try and balance its $400 million budget. Chicago residents will recall that in the dead of night in the Summer of 2003 Mayor Daley sent bulldozers onto Northerly Island to destroy the Meigs Field airport runways so that he could reclaim the property as another one of his vaunted park space projects. In 2003, Daley made the silly excuse that Meigs...

Grief and anger, like clouds of a coming storm, moved back and forth across the landscape of Mayor Daley's face in public appearances last week. And why not? Michael Scott, his longtime, loyal friend, was dead. Suddenly. Violently. By his own hand, according to the Cook County medical examiner. When we lose someone we love, particularly like that, don't we ask ourselves what it was we failed to see? Or failed to do? Our own helplessness adds rage to sorrow. It's understandable. It's human. That's the best explanation I can come up with for what happened Wednesday at the mayor's...

Last week, the body of Chicago school board president Michael Scott was found in the Chicago River with a single bullet wound in his head. The big story was that this powerful, well-connected public official had, according to the Cook County medical examiner, committed suicide. The less-noticed story was that he did it with an illegal weapon. After all, handgun ownership is not allowed in Chicago, which has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and Scott killed himself with a .380-caliber sidearm. Unlike most Chicagoans, Scott could have been a legal handgun owner. Because he had...

The trip from a strict Pakistani boarding school to a bohemian bar in Philadelphia has defined David Headley’s life, according to those who know the middle-age man at the center of a global terrorism investigation. Raised by his father in Pakistan as a devout Muslim, Mr. Headley arrived back here at 17 to live with his American mother, a former socialite who ran a bar called the Khyber Pass. Today, Mr. Headley is an Islamic fundamentalist who once liked to get high. He has a traditional Pakistani wife, who lives with their children in Chicago, but also an American girlfriend...

Alice Palmer is a Chicago based academic, activist and former friend, employer and political ally of Barack Obama. In the mid 1990s Alice Palmer, then an Illinois State Senator, employed Obama has her chief of staff, when she attempted an ill-fated run for the US Congress. Obama was part of Friends of Alice Palmer, alongside controversial property developer Tony Rezko and Democratic Socialists of America members Danny Davis, Betty Wilhoitte and Timuel Black-also a member of Committees of Correspondence). Later Palmer introduced Obama as designated successor to her Illinois State Senate seat, in the living room of former Weather Underground...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today announced his selection of Douglas Guthrie to become the new general manager of the city’s Housing Department. Guthrie, a former top official at the Chicago Housing Authority, most recently worked with private ventures focused on affordable urban development and the redevelopment of old public housing into mixed-use city centers. Guthrie served for six years as president of Kimball Hill Urban Centers in Chicago, which built mixed-income affordable housing in many depressed city centers that most traditional developers would avoid, including a project with former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, one of...

While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president. In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. During those two years, the Joyce Foundation gave nearly...

Why the Greg Craig debacle matters By: Elizabeth Drew November 19, 2009 11:58 AM EST President Barack Obama is returning from his trek to Asia Thursday to a capital that is a considerably more dangerous place for him than when he departed. While he was abroad, there was a palpable sense at home of something gone wrong. A critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man. Most significant, these doubters now find themselves with a new reluctance to defend Obama at a phase of his presidency...

Army veteran William "Bill" Burtner survived Vietnam and dedicated his life to helping other veterans. On Monday, Burtner was about to enter a Midlothian bank to deposit money the south suburb's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2580 had raised during a benefit. He never made it inside. Burtner, 65, was assaulted and robbed outside the bank. He died Wednesday night at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. An autopsy today concluded Burtner died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease and fractured ribs from the assault, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. It ruled the death a homicide. ... The...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Oprah Winfrey's expected announcement that she'll end her show -- and the prospect that she'll say goodbye to Chicago – has Mayor Daley placing some blame on the media. Daley said Thursday evening he's going to call Oprah to get the real story. But he's obviously concerned that if she says farewell to this city it'll be a blow to Chicago's image. "I think she was the most successful woman that we will ever know in the history of this country," Daley said at a fundraising event for United Negro College Fund. The mayor says it was...

Englewood saw two homicides this week, bringing its 2009 murder toll to 17 victims. On Sunday, a 20-year-old man was found shot to death in the 500 block of West 58th Street, according to police information. The next day, a 21-year-old man was shot and killed about four blocks away. This year, Englewood has seen 16 shooting deaths and one fatal beating, a RedEye analysis of preliminary police data found. Fourteen of the 17 victims were male, 14 were under the age of 30 when they died and all victims were black, according to data from the Cook County Medical...

The U.S. Army plans to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg, fearing the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama, officials said Thursday

Army officials plan to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday, saying they fear the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama. Fort Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum told The Associated Press on Thursday that Army officials had decided to keep media away from Palin's book promotion at the North Carolina base. SNIP McCollum said the Army did not want the event to become a platform for Palin supporters to express political opinions "directed against the commander in chief."

The plastics industry trade show on Tuesday said it is moving to Orlando, Fla., for 2012 and 2015 after nearly four decades in Chicago. The announcement follows a decision by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society last week to move its 2012 annual meeting to Las Vegas. Both shows cited the high cost of doing business in Chicago. The plastic show's decision to leave is "a very serious loss," Mayor Richard Daley said, calling on unions and others working at the convention center to change fee structures and onerous work rules so Chicago can better compete for major shows....

Suicide? Yes? Yes? No? Press Conference with the Mayor.

War On Terror: Sen. Dick Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois "a dream come true." It would paint a bull's-eye on America's heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled as we speak, with liberal Democrats in the very blue state of Illinois welcoming them with open arms and outstretched hands for the federal dollars that will come with them. Federal officials last Friday inspected the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a town of 500 on the Iowa border,...

A judge on Wednesday handed a six-year jail sentence to a man accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and allegedly swearing allegiance to Al-Qaeda.

I never thought I’d find as big a fraud, phony, faker, fibber and hypocrite in high places as President Barack Hussein Obama. But I found one. The president is married to her. Of course, I know that if you criticize the First Lady, the Obamas immediately go into their standard mode, claiming victimhood and racism. Recall when Mrs. Obama made her infamous remark about being proud of America but did so only after her husband was running for president. After getting hit with criticism, the Obamas went on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to denounce “low class” and “detestable” criticism. Mr....

A Pittsburgh Steelers fan says he was left blind and is living with brain damage after he was apparently poisoned at a Chicago bar following a game in September, according to a report from WTAE Channel 4 in Pittsburgh. Zack Heddinger says he and a few friends went to a bar after the Steelers' 17-14 loss to the Bears at Soldier Field on Sept. 20. After trash talking with Bears fans inside Kitty O'Shea's, he says he accepted a drink from them and passed out and was rushed to a hospital. Heddinger said he thought the drink might be "antifreeze...

Michael Scott made his living in Chicago politics as one of Mayor Richard Daley's guys out front. The mayor put him on a series of public boards, from the Park District to the Chicago Board of Education. He made a decent living in real estate, and for 30 years he did what all front guys do: Talk to reporters, sit in front of news cameras and lend his face to the mayor's policies and enterprise. What's strange is that this very public man found an extremely private place to die. The place where Scott was found early Monday, with a...

A body tentatively identified as Michael Scott, president of the Chicago Board of Education, was found in the Chicago River near the Merchandise Mart this morning, police sources said. A blue Cadillac registered to Scott, 60, was found parked next to a trash bin yards away from the river. A police spokesman said the identification was preliminary. The Cook County medical examiner's office has not yet positively identified the body. Scott's family, concerned about his whereabouts, had contacted police Sunday night, reporting he was missing.

The death of Chicago School Board President Michael Scott was ruled a suicide this afternoon by the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. He died of a gunshot wound to the head, officials said. When police found his body early this morning, Scott was face down in a foot of water along the Chicago River downtown, a .380-caliber handgun under his body, a source said. The 60-year-old Scott, Mayor Daley’s go-to-guy for years, had a gunshot wound to his left temple. He left behind his cell phone on a ledge overlooking the river on the west side of the Apparel Center,...

A body pulled from the Chicago River early Monday is that of Michael Scott, president of the Chicago School Board, who apparently shot himself in the head, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The Chicago police would say only that authorities had found the body of an adult male about 3:15 a.m. in the area of 350 N. Orleans St., a road near a waterway in Chicago. CNN affiliate WGN-TV, citing unnamed police sources, said Scott's family had reported him missing Sunday evening. WLS-TV also reported that it was Scott's body that emergency crews recovered from the water. A report on the station's Web site did not cite a source but noted that Scott's wife, Diana Palomar, is the station's vice president of community affairs. Scott had been appointed to the Chicago Board...

A body discovered floating in the Chicago River near Merchandise Mart this morning is believed to be that of Chicago Public Schools Board President Michael Scott, police said. Police have not positively identified the man, but Scott’s Cadillac was found nearby and Scott’s family had reported him missing earlier in the day....

SNIPPET: "Mumbai, Nov. 14: David Coleman Headley personally visited every target site of the 26/11 terror strikes last year, carrying out a recce on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a police source said today. Posing as a Jew, he even visited Nariman House, the Jewish Chabad centre, in July 2008. The Mumbai police today carried out raids in Bandra, its adjoining suburb Khar and BPO hub Goregaon in search of Headley’s local acquaintances and contacts. “He (Headley) mapped the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Taj and Trident hotels and Nariman House. We are interrogating (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son) Rahul to find out when...

Mayhem spreads throughout city overnight after meetings to end violence November 15, 2009 7:51 AM After community activists pleaded Saturday for a day without killing, violence erupted throughout the city after the stroke of midnight on Sunday, leaving at least two people dead and several injured. At about 12:06 a.m., Frederick Evans, 20, of the 6800 block of South Ada Street was found shot to death in an alley in the 500 block of West 58th Street. He was shot in his back and chest. Witnesses told police Evans was involved in a dice game shortly before midnight, according to...

Glenview resident Phil Collins is running for the 17th District's State Rep seat (District Map) and he's racked up some great endorsements so far for a first time run for office. Collins has been endorsed by Tony Castrogiovanni, the vice chairman of the Cook Co. Republican Party; Eric Wallace, a co-chairman of the Cook Co. Republican Party; Ken Arnold, a former 3rd vice chairman of the Lake Co. Republican Central Committee and 8th Dist. congressional candidate in 2006 and '08; Peter Karlovics, a former chairman of the Warren Township, Lake Co. Republican Party; Liz Eilers, the secretary of the Illinois...

Another trade show is leaving Chicago this time for Atlanta, Georgia. The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting which has been held in Chicago's McCormick Convention Center for quite some time is leaving the city due to the high costs that unions force upon its exhibitors. In October we posted that the Plastics Industry Trade Association is also contemplating fleeing Chicago for southern hospitality for the same reason. The HIMSS reports that 2009 attendance in Chicago's McCormick Center was down by 5 percent compared to 2008. Attendance also dropped from 29,100 in 2008...

Eighth-graders Cassandra and Aliyah Russell of Chicago never imagined they'd be arrested in their school cafeteria, much less for throwing food. Share Police arrest two dozen children at a Chicago school for reckless conduct. But that's just what happened following lunchtime mayhem last Thursday at the Perspectives Charter Middle School, south of Chicago. More than two dozen students, ages 11 to 15, were rounded up by police, arrested and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct. "They took us to jail, fingerprinted us, mugshotted us, or whatever, all because of a food fight...I was arrested. Handcuffs on," 13-year-old Cassandra told ABC News....

Illinois’s 7th Congressional District has long been represented by an African-American, but there’s now widespread worry in Chicago’s black community that that could soon change. With Democratic Rep. Danny Davis signaling he’s ready to step down from the House after seven terms to run for president of the Cook County Board next year, there’s a real possibility that a non-African-American candidate could win the seat. “I think there is always that concern,” said Richard Boykin, a former Davis chief of staff who is mentioned as a possible contender. “It’s a fear that a lot of people have.” “There’s great concern,”...

At a meeting last month, LGBT and immigration activists urged U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez to include protections for same-sex partners in immigration reform legislation he plans to introduce in the House of Representatives. Although no promises were made at the meeting, according to Association of Latino Men for Action ( ALMA ) President Julio Rodriguez, community members plan to "continue to dialogue" with the congressman regarding the issue. Gutierrez represents Illinois' 4th District, which includes portions of Chicago's North and South sides. President Barack Obama signaled his intention to tackle major immigration reform as part of his first-term agenda; as...

Just like an unprincipled, self-interested, tin-eared politician, Mayor Richard Daley decided to use the massacre at Fort Hood to flog his prosaic anti-gun message in Chicago. When asked if Islam had anything at all to do with the Fort Hood massacre and if Muslims might expect some sort of backlash or anti-Islamic movement because of Nidal Hasan's evil act of terror, Daley replied: "Every day in society people are getting killed, unfortunately. America loves guns, we love guns to a point that we see the devastation on a daily basis. You don't blame a group, you don't blame a society......

How can we best honor the judge who granted a $50,000 yearly firefighter's pension to a convicted serial arsonist? Hear ye, hear ye, Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. You've just been inducted into the judicial wing of the Chicago Way Hall of Fame. Martin's ruling, handed down late Friday afternoon -- when all bad political news oozes out -- involves the strange case of former Chicago Fire Department Lt. Jeffrey "Matches" Boyle, a prolific arsonist. On Tuesday, I visited Martin in his Daley Center courtroom, to inform him of his prestigious honor. "You know very well that a judge...

The Mayor of Chicago, whose our city is dealing day in and day out with violent crime, and not long ago lost the 2016 summer olympics bid, says that the recent Fort Hood masacre is to be blamed on guns. Does the Mayor honestly believe that a civilian ban on guns would have stopped this crazy Jihadist. Does the Mayor honestly think that a ban on possession would stop AQ from instructing and recruiting extremists to their cause in this country? It hasn’t stopped the drug lords from tearing up his city. Before you watch the video, read this from...

My favorite Chicago political photo of all time wasn't even shot in Chicago. It was shot in Paris in 2007. It depicts Mayor Richard Daley riding a bike outside Paris City Hall, wearing a suit and tie, squeezing the handlebars while steering a wobbly little circle, an impish grin on his face. Happy days. The bike was part of a unique program in which the mayor of Paris provided bikes to the people to make his city more "green." For a small fee, Parisians could pedal whimsically for hours through the city of light. And what did the bikes cost?...

On Monday, Chicago Mayor Daley blamed the Ft. Hood Jihad Massacre on America’s love of guns! “Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.” The Mayor is using a straw-man argument that conveniently provides him with an opportunity to politicize the terrorist attack as part and parcel with America’s love of guns. Mayor Daley, and other politicians, like to blame gun violence on the guns themselves because that is so much easier than admitting any inconvenient (politically incorrect) truths which might be revealed...

Former president George W. Bush hits town Nov. 19 for a private speaking engagement sponsored by the Turnaround Management Association. Ironic, given all the criticism he took during his presidency for not turning things around on certain issues -- not that the current president has, either. Turnaround Management members are consultants who help "troubled companies in the recovery process." (Crain's Chicago Business is also a sponsor of the event.) The 43rd president is stepping in at the last minute for former GE CEO Jack Welch, who recently was hospitalized with a staph infection. Chicago organizers are thrilled with the turn...

"U.S. cites al-Qaida DVDs in pressing for suspect's detainment Chicago man allegedly plotted to attack Danish newspaper, target in India" SNIPPET: "A federal judge could decide on Nov. 19 whether to release Rana, owner of a Chicago Immigration business and a Grundy County meat processing plant, on bond pending trial." SNIPPET: "Last week prosecutors alleged that Rana and Headley, also of Chicago, had discussed targeting the National Defense College in India, a military school. Rana also allegedly told an associate of the Pakistani terror organization Lashkar-e-Taiba how to use loopholes in U.S. Immigration procedures to get others into the country...

Arabic classes coming to three more Chicago schools Mayor Daley announces grant, says he doesn't see Fort Hood shooting stoking anti-Muslim sentiment November 9, 2009 By FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter The Chicago public schools will expand its Arabic-language program to three more high schools, thanks to a three-year, $888,000 federal grant announced this morning. Mayor Daley accepted the grant at Durkin Park Elementary School, 8445 S. Kolin, as he rejected suggestions that the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre could lead to an outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment. “I don’t think so,” Daley said. “Every day, in society, someone’s being killed ....

This bit is hard to start ... because there are so many things to say and so many people to thank. I'll keep it mercifully brief... Then there was the Hall of Fame dinner and ceremony Saturday night. I was just too nervous to eat ... which was probably a good thing. First up was Rush Limbaugh to deliver my induction speech...

A 21-year-old pregnant soldier who was due to come home within weeks is the second Chicago-area victim from the shooting at Fort Hood. Francesca Velez had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and was due to be temporarily released from the military on maternity leave, according to her family and friends.

It was January 28th 2009 a mire 8 days after Obama was inaugurated. With a stroke of the pen he landed a commanding blow to the bio-fuel companies of America. What a surprise!! Everyone thought Obama was going to be a green president;

Workers asked to back fund-raiser WATER DEPT. | 'Charitable equivalent of pay-to play': watchdog Chicago Sun-Times suntimes.com Member of Sun-Times Media November 5, 2009 BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter Employees in the Water Management Department at the center of the Hired Truck and city hiring scandals are being pressured to sell and purchase $50 tickets to the Nov. 19 benefit reception Mayor Daley is hosting on behalf of the United Negro College Fund. Although the cause is laudable, the tactic is questionable. The solicitation is being made on city stationery with employees referred to a city telephone number to...

SNIPPET: "The third article, titled "Al-Shabaab Recruiting in the West," takes a comprehensive look at what we know about the group's efforts to recruit fighters in the United States, and in other Western countries. The final article concerns the efficacy of the Somali president's recent diplomatic efforts in Minneapolis, Columbus, OH, and Chicago."

HINSDALE, Illinois, November 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A congregation of US Dominican nuns has publicly apologized for the scandal caused by one of its members acting as a volunteer escort at a Chicago area abortion facility, who now faces severe canonical penalties including excommunication and the possibility of dismissal.    LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) first broke the story about Sr. Donna Quinn, O.P., a Dominican nun who is outspokenly in favor of legalized abortion, who had been identified by pro-life witnesses as an escort for the ACU Health Clinic.Sr. Quinn's religious community, the Wisconsin-based Sinsinawa Dominican Congregation, admitted in a press release posted...

A Chicago suburb could not get anyone to fork over $1 for a home, the Belleville News-Democrat reported. The village of Barrington, Illinois put three older homes up for sale for just $1 each, but was not able to get any interested buyers. The suburb hopes to sell and relocate the homes in order to make way for redevelopment in the downtown area, according to the paper. If no buyers come forward, the village will demolish the houses, which many residents say hold an historic value.