Events

Two examples of totally ineffective security responses in today's news. First, in suburban Chicago, a commuter-rail ticket agent called police about a man with a gun boarding a train, causing a two-hour delay as heavily-armed cops evacuated and searched the train. They found the man with the gun when the man in question saw the commotion and identified himself as a Secret Service agent, not realizing he was himself the target of the search: Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said the incident began when a...

Developers generally don't like third-party UI controls because they're generally frustrating to use. Case in point: in the Infragistics Windows Forms controls package, the UltraGridColumn has sucked a substantial portion of my day away. If you don't write software, you still appreciate it when it works simply and intuitively. You want to search for something, you go to Google and type in a search term. Brilliant. When you go to some company's website because you want to call the company, you look for...

It's official: Roland Burris will sit his ass in the U.S. Senate seat previously occupied by Barack Obama's ass tomorrow, restoring the Illinois tradition Obama interrupted of having seriously flawed junior senators. Seriously. The seat was previously sat in by Peter Fitzgerald, Carol Moseley-Braun, Alan Dixon...despite Adlai Stevenson III being in the seat as well, you kind of have to go back to Everett Dirksen to find another person we can actually be proud of in there. I recommed a quick perusal of...

The frigid weather in Alaska (ten consecutive days below -40°C) has apparently broken. Yesterday, for the first time since December 27th, Fairbanks got above -20°C. Right now it's a balmy -17°C, in fact, which is out of the realm of truly-dangerous cold and into just-plain-annoying cold.

MSNBC reports President-Elect Obama will order our detention facility at Guantánamo Bay closed next week. However, "[i]t's still unlikely the prison would be closed any time soon. Obama last weekend said it would be 'a challenge' to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration," MSNBC reports. In related news, outgoing President Bush still can't fathom how he damaged our standing in the world: "I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he...

Dawn Turner Rice, like a lot of people, found the 1960s-style race-baiting of Roland Burris' supporters disturbing: Perhaps the real architect of this fiasco is Blagojevich who, although ham-fisted in almost every other regard, handled this skillfully. He knows his way around racial politics. He was the one who gave Rush the platform at the news conference announcing Burris' appointment. Blagojevich knew he couldn't, with any great effect, warn reporters not to "hang" or "lynch" his appointee. In...

On a flight this evening I read the actual Illinois Supreme Court opinion in the matter of Burris v. White, and found, at the end, this helpful bit of advice for His Royal Ego the Appointee: The registration of the appointment of Mr. Burris made by the Secretary of State is a "record of paper" within the meaning of [15 ILCS 305/5(4)]. A copy of it is available from the Secretary of State to anyone who requests it. For payment of the normal fee...Petitioners could obtain a certified copy bearing the...

The Illinois Supreme Court denied Roland Burris' motion to compel Secretary of State Jesse White to sign Burris' appointment to the U.S. Senate. The court said, in essence, we can't compel him to perform a ceremonial function: "Because the secretary of state had no duty ... to sign and affix the state seal to the document issued by the governor appointing Roland Burris to the United States Senate, petitioners are not entitled to an order from this court requiring the secretary to perform those acts,"...

Despite Illinois' remarkable record of political corruption, today is the first time we've actually impeached the governor: The vote by the House was 114-1.... Rep. Milt Patterson (D-Chicago) was the lone vote against impeachment. A spokesman for the governor said he won't resign. (I assume the spokesman meant the governor won't resign and the reporter was just being sloppy.) The GOP once again fails to grasp the magnitude of impeachment as a last resort, and also the limitations of the legislature's...

...just left $153 million on the table: Chicago and CTA officials have only themselves to blame for forfeiting a $153 million federal grant pegged to help ease traffic gridlock, U.S. transportation officials said Thursday. The fumble marks a major setback in efforts to improve mobility in the nation's second most congested region. It means Chicago will be forced to put on hold a promising plan that would use bus-only lanes, special quick-boarding stations and high-tech traffic signals until city...