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Jim Edgar waits in political wings Steve Neal Jim Edgar waits in political wings February 12, 2001BY STEVE NEAL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Will former Gov. Jim Edgar make a comeback? There is hopeful speculation among Republicans that he may run for the U.S. Senate. Another scenario is that he might seek to recapture his old job in the event Gov. Ryan announces this summer that he is stepping down after one term. Edgar, 54, won't shut the door. "I would never say never," he said when asked about a political future. "But it would have to be a draft, and ...

John Derbyshire on NRO ike you, I have been watching with fascination as our sleek, svelte, coiffed, poised, ever-smiling ex-First Lady turns into a grim-lipped, shapeless, stringy-haired old bag in a muu-muu. I am not even going to attempt to draw any inferences about Mrs. Clinton's state of mind. Even less am I going to try to deduce what this style collapse tells us about the inner dynamics of the Clinton marriage. Like everybody else, I have long since given up trying to figure out what that is all about. I just want to indulge in some personal nostalgia, ...

Chicago Tribune | News - Columnists - John Kass JACKSON'S ROLE AS KING OF BEERS: WHASSSUP? Discuss this column at John Kass' message board. February 6, 2001 The spokesman for Anheuser-Busch--the brewers of Budweiser--had an edge in his voice. At first, I couldn't tell why he was nervous. I thought maybe it was my phone personality. But I finally figured out what was aggravating the guy: My pointed questions about Jesse Jackson, the King of Beers. I wanted to know why Jackson's kids--who own the exclusive North Side Budweiser distributorship--wouldn't release the number of minorities who work for them. ...

By Ray Gibson, Tribune staff writer. Tribune staff writers Susan Kuczka, Jeff Zeleny and Joe Biesk contributed to... February 1, 2001 U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich, a Chicago Democrat who is a potential challenger to Gov. George Ryan, reported Wednesday that he has about $2 million in two political war chests that could be tapped for a gubernatorial bid. With the governor's contest less than two years away, Blagojevich has gone on a whirlwind fundraising campaign, reports filed Wednesday show. "It's no surprise. He has been raising lots of money," said Dennis Culloton, a Ryan spokesman. Despite Ryan's foundering in the ...

1/31/01 10:35 a.m. Scamelot Waiting in vain for the Clintons’ final insult. By Deroy Murdock, columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service On the eve of George W. Bush's inauguration, an otherwise pleasant lunch with Cato Institute scholar Ian Vasquez was befouled by breaking news. About 1:15 p.m., Dan Rather popped up on TV screens at the Capitol Brewery near Union Station to report that then-President Clinton would walk away from his legacy of perjury and malfeasance with a mere massage on his wrist. Special Prosecutor Robert Ray obligingly patted Clinton with a $25,000 fine and five-year suspension of ...

MUGGER There's a Kind of Hush in DC; America's Business Resumes The minutes ticked by last Saturday morning like a newsreel from the 1940s: Bill Clinton had orchestrated his final hours as president so that he’d hog 90 percent of an enabling media’s attention. There were time-killing weather reports on tv–as if the rain in Washington, DC, were going to stop–but most of the action centered on Clinton’s last-minute plea-bargain with Robert Ray, the bizarre list of men and women he pardoned and the record number of "farewell" speeches he’d deliver to anyone still listening. This wasn’t the standard ...

Empty-Barrel Gun Policies A legacy of nonsense from Clinton, Blair, and the Left. At a January 8, 2001 farewell tribute from the AFL-CIO, President Clinton offered advice to his party for regaining Congress in the next election. In doing so, he made a stunning revelation about the political clout of American gun owners. Union members who had been expected to vote Democrat in the presidential election, it seems, were frightened by the prospect of losing their guns should Al Gore win. That crucial swing vote cost Al Gore the election. According to the New York Daily News, Clinton "blamed himself ...

COMMONS VOTES TO BAN FOX HUNTS By Ray Moseley Britain's lower house of Parliament voted overwhelmingly Wednesday night to ban fox hunting, despite threats by thousands of rural residents to defy the ban and punish the Labor government at the polls for allowing it to pass. The vote in the House of Commons, where the Labor government has a 179-seat majority, was 387-174 in favor of a ban. The House of Lords, however, is expected to vote against the ban in the next few months and opt instead for a compromise in which hunting would continue under strict regulation by ...

Reworked gun law gets us out of '80s January 12, 2001 On the matter of guns, most Americans are positioned somewhere between the Rosie O'Donnell rantings at the Million Mom March and the theatrical musket-waving of National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston. Surveys show that most Americans believe in the right of citizens to own guns but they also see a role for government to regulate them. Both extremes of the gun argument offer reams of data to support their positions but the indisputable fact is that millions of good citizens own guns because they feel they need them for ...

Maureen Dowd needs to hang it up. By James Morrow, managing editor of Ironminds.com This Sunday, the New York Times announced that it was laying off about 70 employees working in its Internet division, confirming a rumor that had been going around town for over a week. Having once been pink-slipped from a cash-poor dot-com myself, I sympathize with the plight of these poor techies, especially considering how many of these junior workers’ salaries could have been covered had “Pinch” Sulzberger not needed to continue cutting checks for Maureen Dowd, whose once-amusing column has become one of the most ...

01/05/01 2:30 p.m. The Perils of Being John Ashcroft One more immersion in the recurrent pesthole of American politics. By William F. Buckley Jr., NR Editor-at-Large The hearings in the matter of John Ashcroft for attorney general will be, indeed have already been, one more immersion in the recurrent pesthole of American politics, the liberal gang bang of choice conservative figures. They did it to Barry Goldwater, and succeeded; tried to do it to Ronald Reagan, but were overwhelmed. They did it to Clarence Thomas, failed formally (he sits on the Supreme Court), but gave rise to an ongoing national ...

Even pooh-poohers would laud Bush's Cabinet choices Georgie Anne Geyer People are downright amazed! George W. Bush has put in his cabinet highly qualified people, leaving many Democrats aghast at the idea that he would not be threatened by strong men--and even women--around him. (One commentator on last Sunday's morning shows complained that the nominees were "overqualified," leaving a perfectly astonished Robert Novak to suggest that that was at least something new, particularly after the last eight years.) The president-elect has actually appointed to his Cabinet, not to speak of other high positions in the White House, more African-Americans, Hispanics ...

John Kass Jesse Jackson, Chicago's own "King of Beers," is upset with President-elect George W. Bush. Jackson doesn't like Bush's choice for attorney general, the conservative Missouri Republican and former U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft. So Jackson is blustering and playing the race card, and warning about protests during Martin Luther King Day ceremonies later this month. Jackson is threatening to embarrass Democratic U.S. senators who dare disagree with him and vote to confirm Ashcroft, their former colleague. Jackson says it's all about standards. Silly me. I thought it was all about Jackson helping out his ally, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, ...

Thursday, January 4 2:04 AM SGT Crowd crams Nigerian court to watch boozers being flogged KANO, Nigeria, Jan 3 (AFP) - A large crowd packed into an Islamic court in northern Nigeria Wednesday to watch as two men found guilty of drinking alcohol were given 80 lashes each. The crowd burst into chants of "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great") as the men, 22-year-old Nugu Abdullahi and 63-year-old Sa'adu Aminu, were given their punishment by Islamic court officials in Kano, the capital of the state bearing the same name. The sentence is the first handed out by Islamic officials in Kano ...

Taki Le Maitre Party Politics To a midtown gentlemen’s club for a lunch given every year by my close friend Chuck Pfeiffer, West Point graduate, Special Forces captain, Silver Star for valor in Vietnam, and some less honorable things, such as acting in Hollywood movies and having actors as friends. Chuck’s annual bash is for literary and military types, with a few television personalities thrown in for good measure. This year was no exception. I noticed the wonderful Peggy Noonan sitting between two roaring liberal gents, George Plimpton and David Halberstam. When I pulled her leg about being converted, ...

Crippled Inside: Gore’s Yellow-Bellied, Narrow-Minded Hypocrites A single extraordinary moment last Saturday afternoon crystallized the fraud that Al Gore is attempting to pull off in Florida. At a press conference held shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s sensible decision to halt the recounting of votes, Ron Klain, a key Gore lawyer/adviser, said: "[W]e’re disappointed for several reasons. First, and foremost, we were actually quite pleased with the progress being made at the counts under way here in a number of counties. Our latest information shows that 13 counties had completely or partially completed their recounts. And in those counties, ...

Sunday December 10 3:06 PM ET NASA: Satellite Odds of Hitting Someone 250-1 By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. space scientists put the odds at nearly 1 in 250 that debris from the proposed burn-up of the world's first global satellite telephone mesh would hit someone on Earth. The prospects of a casualty from the now-averted mass ''de-orbiting'' of the system known as Iridium were spelled out in a previously secret study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The analysis was done in April as a government task force weighed fears that a hurry-up, 14-month schedule for bringing ...

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR IN FLORIDA December 9, 2000 Making sense of the Florida Supreme Court's action Friday is difficult, because the justices' ruling by a 4-3 vote makes no sense at all. It was not enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to tell the Florida justices Monday they need a remedial lesson in how to write a legal decision. On Friday, a slim majority of the Florida court voted to resume the recounting of ballots, despite the failure of Al Gore's attorneys to supply any rationale for that. By contrast, the message from the Florida court's minority was crystal ...

We Don’t Say "Snippy" in Texas One nasty reality that George W. Bush has learned in this historic postelection campaign is never to take anything for granted. Al Gore’s unscrupulousness has been on public display for years. However, in the past month he–along with his crowd of lawyers and contributors and his coterie of 19th-century-style ballot thieves–has redefined the very meaning of the word "hypocrisy." I’m writing on Thursday for a noon deadline and, as usual, parts of this column will be instantly outdated, but only a fool would believe the media’s naive contention that the presidential outcome will ...

Who Is Al Gore? Ragged readers respond! Robert A. George is an editorial page writer for the New York What in the name of Granny Goodness could I have been thinking?!?!? In the "SM*A*S*HED" Ragged Thots last Thursday comparing Al Gore to M*A*S*H's Frank Burns, your humble columnist invited readers to suggest their own Al Gore "templates" — some character, real or fictional, of whom our soon-to-be-erstwhile vice president reminds them. Well, I should have known from the many times the esteemed Jonah Goldberg has asked for audience participation (polls and the like): NRO readers are smart, energetic, and witty. ...