Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2007

This just in… Denny Hastert to stay in Congress

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

CBS’s Mike Flannery has the scoop.

In an exclusive interview with CBS 2 Dennis Hastert said he can deal with the demotion, and that, contrary to many rumors, he will not quit Congress.

“I just think that was wishful thinking on the part of some people,” Hastert said. “Some even had me being an ambassador someplace, which had no founding at all.”

“I’ve made a commitment to run, and I’m going to stay here to get going here, and I can do some things on energy — I think energy is certainly important for Illinois,” he said.

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Lawsuit filed

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

The Better Government Association’s lawsuit that I told you about yesterday has been filed. The BGA is attempting to force the Blagojevich administration to release federal subpoenas it has received from January through July of last year. The time-stamped lawsuit can be downloaded here [pdf file]. The BGA’s press release can be found here [doc file].

The AP also has a story up:

Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said the office is following federal prosecutors’ wishes.

“We have been directed by the U.S. attorney’s office not to discuss or share information about their work in order to protect the integrity of their investigation,” Ottenhoff said.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office wrote in October that federal subpoenas are public records, despite requests from prosecutors to keep them under wraps.

“Prosecutors frequently make the request in the subpoena that they keep the document confidential,” Madigan spokeswoman Cara Smith said in an earlier interview. “Just because the subpoena makes a request for confidentiality doesn’t mean it trumps FOIA.”

Smith’s point is exactly correct. Fitzgerald is powerful, but he cannot overrule Illinois law with a request. Besides, the governor’s office won’t even share Fitzgerald’s exact language, so we don’t know what he really said.

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Kirk turns thumbs down on Durbin bid

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

I don’t know if he could have won a primary, but a lot of Republicans seemed hopeful that Mark Kirk would take a run at Dick Durbin in two years.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk said as firmly as possible Wednesday he won’t run for the Senate in 2008.

When pressed, Kirk chuckled and said he isn’t likely to change his mind “unless I run into a wall at high speed.”

“I’m entirely focused on the 10th Congressional District in Illinois,” said the Highland Park Republican, adding that he is “overwhelmingly likely to run again” for the House in 2008.

One big problem with a Kirk run for the GOPS would have been the likelihood that his district might go Democratic in ‘08. Kirk won with 53 percent last November and Lake County has been moving steadily Democratic for years.

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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - BGA; Fritchey; Cigs; Madigan; Freeze; Loans, Cross (Use all caps in password)

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

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Question of the day

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

As I noted in today’s “Morning Shorts,” the Lincoln Presidential Museum is closing in on its 1 millionth visitor.

As of Sunday, Dec. 31, the number of visitors that have toured the Museum since April, 2005 hit 997,410.

Have you been to the museum? How would you rate it? Would you go again?

24 Comments

Bureaucratic mentality rules IG office

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

This just gets goofier and goofier. A bunch of university professors ace the state’s ethics exam, prepared by a gubernatorial campaign contributor, but they finished it too fast and now they’re all in hot water.

The president of the school’s faculty association said 65 teachers and 190 other SIU employees are being scolded by state investigators for their performance on an online ethics training course required for all state workers.

The problem wasn’t their scores on the 10-question, multiple choice test. It was that they spent too little time reviewing the subject matter before taking the quiz, according to the Illinois Executive Inspector General’s Office. The “noncompliant” employees have until January 19 to sign a document that says they could lose their jobs if they fail to complete future ethics training.

On average, it took a little more than 30 minutes for about 160,000 state workers to finish the ethics training program. But some — including the SIU professors — plowed through it in less than 10 minutes.

“It’s not humanly possible” that they read and comprehended the information in such a short amount of time, said Deputy Inspector General Gilbert Jimenez. He added that “we’re wondering” if a cheat sheet helped some of the quick studies.

Oh, for crying out loud. We’ve been through this before, but let’s try again. If, as seems obvious, the questions are so easy that you can answer them all after a brief skim of the material, then make the questions more difficult. Don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by forcing them to carefully parse regurgitated crud from last year before breezing through a bunch of blow-off questions.

And the problem wasn’t just at SIU.

Of the 32,594 University of Illinois employees who completed the training, 2,341 were told that they finished too fast, said U. of I. spokesman Tom Hardy.

The Inspector General’s office has no way of knowing whether a state employee walked away from her desk while the test was running on her computer, so who’s to say that everybody who took 30 minutes to complete the exam actually studied the content?

Enough, already, with this phony pseudo ethics.

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Obamarama - Postponed? *** Updated ***

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

Obama was supposed to decide whether he would run for president over the holidays, but he has put off a final decision for a few weeks, according to ABC7’s Andy Shaw, who scored an exclusive interview with Obama yesterday.

Senator Barack Obama said that he has decided to take a few more weeks to make sure that all the i’s are dotted, t’s are crossed, his family is onboard and his gut still says go. Then, assuming all that stays as is, he will soon announce formation of an exploratory committee, which is the first step on the long presidential campaign road.

“We’re still taking a look at it. As soon as I have news to make, you’ll be the first to know,” Obama said.

Senator Obama is back in Washington, D.C., after a family vacation in Hawaii, to finalize his plan to run for president, which is tentatively set to begin with an announcement in the next month that he is forming an exploratory committee so he can start raising money and put a campaign together.

“Until you are actually out there and running, you’re not running. The rest of it is speculation and gossip,” said Obama.

Meanwhile, Washington Post staff reporter Lois Romano finally got around to reading Obama’s first book, published 11 years ago, and realized that he had (gasp!) admitted to drug use.

Obama’s revelations were not an issue during his Senate campaign two years ago. But now his open narrative of early, bad choices, including drug use starting in high school and ending in college, as well as his tortured search for racial identity, are sure to receive new scrutiny.

Lynn Sweet offers up some analysis.

Running for president puts Obama under a microscope. Just because he admitted using drugs does not put the subject off limits for revisiting. How he answers inevitable further questions could become grist for critics.

Because of the Post, Obama won’t be able to get away with dismissing questions about drugs as an “old story,” a common damage-control tactic.

Even a wisecrack could look different in this new light.

Obama, guesting last month on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” was asked by Leno about taking drugs.

“Remember, senator, you are under oath. Did you inhale?” Leno asked.

Replied Obama, “That was the point.”

Critics could ask why Obama did not add a cautionary “Just Say No” message for impressionable youths.

Also, for you “What about his record?” types who pervade the comment section of just about every blog, WaPo did a piece comparing the voting histories of Hillary Clinton and Obama

*** UPDATE *** Daley tossed in his two cents today.

Mayor Richard M. Daley says past drug use should not be an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. […]

Mayor Daley says drugs have been a problem in all segments of American society for years, and he’s seen many people who’ve recovered from drug use and rebuilt their lives.

Daley says people understand that and “it should not be an issue at all.”

31 Comments

Daley proposes more gun laws

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

Mayor Daley has had little luck with his annual gun control agenda at the Statehouse, but that doesn’t keep him from trying year after year.

Once again, Daley wants to ban assault weapons statewide, license gun dealers and limit handgun purchases to one a month per person. He also wants to mandate trigger locks in homes whose residents include anyone under 18, instead of 14 as now required. […]

The mayor’s plan would mandate a background check on every gun purchase and require that all transfers be conducted through licensed dealers. Reporting and record- keeping would be the same as required of gun shops. Dealers would be permitted to charge a small fee to cover processing costs. The only exceptions would be gun transfers between spouses, from parent to child or grandparent to grandchild.

The other new proposal would use driving privileges as a lever to punish a wider array of gun crimes. Instead of suspending or revoking drivers licenses only after a aggravated discharge of a firearm, the bill would add such offenses as unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm.

The larger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have some saying that at least a few of Daley’s ideas could pass, but the pro-gun groups beg to differ.

Todd Vandermyde, Illinois legislative liaison for the NRA, countered that only one of the five new Democratic senators is “definitively anti-gun.” He argued that requiring a firearm owners identification card makes it unnecessary to crack down on private gun sales.

“There’s gonna be a lot of hollering and screaming, but you’ll end up with the status quo,” without any gun control legislation, he said.

I haven’t had a chance to “officially” talk to all of the new legislators since the election, but I plan on doing an interview series for subscribers soon. This would probably be a good question to ask.

12 Comments

Morning shorts

Thursday, Jan 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Editorial: Judge Stroger by his budget

* Monitor: Cook County Hiring Needs Extensive Supervision

* Copley: After nearly two years of closed-door study, a privately funded task force is sending a proposed rewrite of the state’s criminal laws to Illinois legislators that would prune the massive code by about one-third.

* Mangieri gets circuit court nod

* World’s busiest title again eludes O’Hare - Operational errors for air controllers more than double

* Tickets available for governor’s inaugural ball

* Marin: Rezko already is 2007 man of the year

* Roads getting safer

* Trotter furious over lousy grade - Demands explanation from Department of Homeland Security

* Ruling OKs steering cases away from judge - Birkett sees bias against prosecutors

* Durbin set to step up in new Congress Veteran Illinois lawmaker called articulate, savvy and respected on the Hill

* Countdown to 1 millionth visitor at Lincoln museum

* Central Illinoisans cited for environmental work

* Candidate for ESL mayor tossed off ballot

* Elgin decision on race allegations expected soon

* Naperville mayor faces primary race

* Chicago Public Schools Attendance Down Slightly

* Hotline Blog: Obama right now gets applause because of who he is. Edwards get applause for what he says.

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