September 2003

Illinois Senate Central

While I’m not fully done, I have started a page for the Illinois Senate Race.

There won’t be many posts over there, but I will archive some Senate posts and most importantly–the Weekly Roll-Call for who is up and who is down–I know, I know this hasn’t been too sucessful, but I think I have it now.

So–in comments or in e-mail send me your take on the Democratic Candidates. Republicans will be later in the week. As soon as Daily Southtown is working correctly, I’ll link to Rich Miller’s recent columns on the candidates from both parties.

Hull News and Oops

Not been feeling very well, but this was passed on last week,

Blago is saying "let the best cnadidate win." (So what: that’s a page out of the much used Daley play-book.) But Blago’s father-in-law remains on Hull’s kitchen cabinet and he and Rush have begun already talking about how to use their respective operations to assist Hull in the City.

Rich Miller In Iraq

As I mentioned the other day, Rich Miller is reporting in Iraq currently. His reporting isn’t the big picture stories of the nightly news, but personal reporting of the daily lives of Iraqis and how the invasion and occupation affect them and then putting that into context of the larger context. While such reporting doesn’t get the cliched ‘whole story’, for those that have spent time in the Developing World, it is critical to understanding day to day life and how US actions are affecting the country. Both stories are quite moving. (hmmmm….far too nice–have to find something in Miller’s work to criticize soon)

Postwar Iraq Moves Dangerously Close to Civil Disaster

Disappearing? Iraqis

UP DATE: I received a complaint that Miller’s articles aren’t balanced and that a better article would be Max Boot’s.

First, I don’t think that all articles should be balanced–in fact, given that no single story catches the full picture, a well written story captures an important element of the story. I think those of us in the US need to hear very personal stories that tell of the problems. They are ultimately anecdotes and I expect intelligent readers to understand this. But more importantly, the Boot article has the same problem–Boot spent his time with US Soldiers giving him a skewed view–meaning neither should be taken as a single point of truth. There are two reasons to point out the Miller articles–one is that they are by a local journalist, and two, because Americans have a hard time imagining what life is like if you are an Iraqi right now. I think those articles capture some of the situations Iraqis are going through.

Taken together, I think the Boot and Miller articles provide a couple key points. First, civilian control is where we need to head. Abizaid’s report specifies this. Second, the tactics being used may be problematic at times–as noted in Miller’s piece, but also mentioned in Boot’s with the discussion of regular army unit tactics in keeping control.

Second, I think Boot is missing a key point. Him and the amorphous media reports he criticizes are wrong about this being analagous to Vietnam. This is an occupation of country with no sovereign not a limited war against insurgents in a country with a functioning government. We are the sovereign and producing civil order should have been the top priority–and while we need to move torwards civilian rule, we first have to establish civil order and then support it. It seems hard to argue that we didn’t and still don’t need more troops. First, to produce civil order and then to rotate them in and out. Those can be American or UN troops, but they have to create a climate of order. We didn’t do that at first, because our troops were busy finishing off the Iraqi army. More troops would have reduced this problem. More troops would reduce this problem now. But now we are prolonging the issues because we didn’t get it right at first.

Open Meetings Law, errr..enforced

Being a bit behind, I haven’t had time to link to Lisa Madigan’s shocking enforcement of the open meetings law.

Within the past week, both Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine have told the CTA board it violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act on Aug. 6.

Apparently she was serious,

Madigan, the daughter of state Democratic Party chief and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, fired the first shot across the CTA’s bow.

She announced last week that attorneys for her office had told the CTA board to either void the pension fund hikes or she would file a lawsuit to nullify its Aug. 6 action.

I asked Sean Denny, a former assistant Illinois attorney general, who for nearly two decades was in charge of enforcing the Open Meetings Act, if he could ever recall the attorney general filing a lawsuit against Chicago or one of its agencies.

His answer was, "No."

Lisa Madigan ran for the office of attorney general vowing to aggressively enforce the state’s sunshine laws, and eight months into her first term she’s been good to her word.

Who knew?

Kudes to Dick Devine too…

Rich Miller’s Photos from Iraq

For those not aware, Rich Miller is reporting from Iraq. I’ll post some links to the stories which are good when I see them appear in the papers. They capture a very basic level of what is going on in Iraq more than most of the mega picture diddling about the President’s, ahem, ‘plan’. He has some pics posted at the Capitol Fax.

In his weekly column, he has a good piece on the Republican Senate candidates. Most notably, he has nice things to say about Kathuria.

Sawicky on a Tear

First, he thanks Ted Kennedy for keeping Bork off the bench. Why?

Judge Bork’s last point is that the new rule of judges is international. "Judicial imperialists" made a crucial start at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders. The trials established a bad habit of confusing moral justification (Goering deserved what he got) with legal justification for retroactive lawmaking. It would have been better simply to execute the big Nazis, as Britain proposed at the time. Nuremberg established the idea that legal busy bodies can run the world according to their own notion of virtue, and it was only a few short steps to the World Court and the International Criminal Court. This argument is so sweeping as to sound paranoid — but paranoids are not always wrong . . . "

That’s just amazing.

Even more amazing, Sawicky even thinks the deficit is going to be too bigh. I now stand corrected if I teased him about never seeing a deficit he didn’t like.

What If My Dissent Is for More Troops

Rumsfeld pulls a hell of a number today, playing the dissent is emboldening our enemies.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not mention any of the domestic critics by name. But he suggested that those who have been critical of the administration?s handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

Ted (Thank God He’s Back) Barlow then gives us the appropriate reference to Peter Pan.

The problem I have is that I don’t know how I’d be emboldening our enemies when I’m calling on the Friggen’ President to actually go after them in both Afghanistan and Iraq with more troops–foreign or domestic. Funny, but it would seem that I’m calling for a stronger response, as are most of the Democratic candidates, and a real commitment. How does that criticism encourage our foes? By pointing out the twit in the White House is a paper tiger?