Will Ed Burke be ultimate beneficiary of Solis “snitching” to the G-men?

Perhaps it’s the ultimate evidence of how superficial some people can be when they determine just who to cast a ballot for, but there’s a part of me that wonders if the recent reports of 25^th Ward Alderman Dan Solis will ultimately work (at least in the short term) to the benefit of Edward M. Burke.

SOLIS: Cooperating to cover own tracks

Burke, of course, is the half-a-century member of the City Council who now is the target of federal investigators who are digging into all sorts of political corruption. It seems much of the evidence they’ve accumulated against Burke comes from Solis.

IN THE FORM of Solis wearing wiretaps for the FBI so that he could get close to Burke and allow “G-men” to catch him on tape in the act of saying something self-incriminating.

Reports of Solis engaging in such activity with the FBI (as part of a deal by which they’ll agree to lesser criminal charges for things that Danny has done) came out this past week, and the reaction of many aldermen was shock, if not outright contempt, that one of their own would try to cover up his behind at the expense of a council colleague.

I’ve seen a lot of people quoting the ideals of organized crime, as expressed in films such as “Goodfellas” or “The Godfather” – the ideal of omerta and keeping silent about what one really knows.

Which to my mindset almost sounds like the real comparison ought to be to street gang culture and the idea of “don’t snitch,” particularly to law enforcement.

ALL OF WHICH means I can easily envision people wanting to think of Danny Solis or anybody like him as somehow worthy of retribution. How can “we” act in a way to make it up to Ed Burke?

Which makes me wonder if Solis’ Mexican-American ethnic origins will wind up coming into factor. Because Burke is the guy who’s facing all these allegations of his own alleged corrupt behavior at a time when he’s facing a re-election challenge.

With his challengers being people of Mexican ethnic origins themselves who are basing their campaigns against Burke on the idea that it’s time to dump the Irish guy whose ward is now an overwhelming (nearly 80 percent) Latino majority population.

BURKE: Could he become sympathetic figure?

I have no doubt that the non-Latino voters in that district will be motivated by the idea of keeping things the way they are. Will there also now be added an angry overtone of turning out in force on Election Day to keep those Latino voters from gaining any influence?

IT’S A STUPID, shallow and completely superficial line of logic. But it’s also something that would totally be in character with Chicago’s neighborhood mindset.

A Latino like Solis gets fingered as a significant part of FBI investigators and their case against the all-powerful, long-time alderman who had the influence to tell mayors what they ought to do within city government.

So now, the voters will think it somehow just to take it out on the three aldermanic candidates of Latino origins themselves who (as they probably see it) have the nerve to think they can run against Burke for his City Council post.

Combine it with the mindset of those such as the Fraternal Order of Police, which recently voted to endorse Burke’s re-election bid in the Feb. 26 municipal elections, and the significant campaign stash that Burke has accumulated for his own benefit – and I can easily see how Burke’s legal predicament can be overcome.

THAT IS, FOR now. Because it’s very likely that any effort to get an indictment against Burke with criminal charges more serious than the current allegations that he tried to shake down a Burger King franchise owner in his neighborhood will come up following the election process.

Burke could easily get re-elected, then indicted, before we reach the peak of the baseball season this summer.

So while I personally have an interest in the growth of Latino political empowerment and would be intrigued by changing ethnic demographics playing a role in Burke’s political downfall, I’m skeptical.

It’s more likely that ethnicity will somehow benefit Burke in the short-term – and that fact could wind up being most embarrassing to Chicago.

  -30-

So who wins if the activists interfere with O’Hare access – the CTA?

Monday is the day that activists upset with the problems of urban violence in predominantly-black neighborhoods of Chicago say they want to impact O’Hare International Airport.

Activists want to ruin postcard-perfect image of O'Hare -- for a day

Figuring that such an act will get themselves national attention in ways that clogging up the Dan Ryan Expressway or the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field earlier this summer could not.

THE ACTIVISTS SAY they want to make it difficult for motorists to drive to O’Hare on Monday, which is Labor Day (a holiday weekend with a significant boost in travel traffic). They hope that such an act will offend the sensibilities of people whose economic well-being relies upon the airport that they will then pressure Mayor Rahm Emanuel to do something to address the problem of urban violence within parts of Chicago.

There may be some people who have that reaction. Although I also wouldn’t doubt there will be many others whose reaction will be to order Emanuel about to have the Chicago police do an encore, of sorts, of their behavior during the 1968 Democratic Convention protests.

What with all the attention the activity of 50 years ago has received in recent weeks, I wouldn’t doubt the idea would crop up into at least a few heads.

I do find it interesting that these activists at least have the sense not to try to interfere with airport operations proper. That, after all, would constitute a federal offense. Which would mean the federal courts and prosecutors getting involved.

Could this be O'Hare's easiest access on Monday?

IT ALSO WOULD put them in the bullseye of the officials in charge of this Age of Trump our society is now in. Not exactly a crowd that cares much about urban problems – except to the degree they can score cheap rhetorical points off of them for themselves.

So what should we think of the activity, where protesters say they’re going to gather around Noon to try to interfere with traffic using the Kennedy Expressway westbound from Cumberland Avenue to East River Road.

Which is the path that takes motorists into the airport grounds.

Is offending these peoples' sensibilities the goal of Monday activity?

Some activists have told the Chicago Sun-Times they are considering having some people jump over the median to try to interfere with eastbound traffic taking people out of the airport and back into the city proper.

REGARDLESS, IT WILL be interesting to see just how law enforcement behaves on Monday – a day that I’m sure they will wish they could focus on the usual inanity that tends to take place during holiday travel weekends.

Because they’re going to venture onto the Kennedy, this becomes an Illinois State Police matter – rather than one for the Chicago Police Department to address. Just think if they ventured a little farther west onto airport property and all of a sudden it became an issue for the FAA, the FBI and any other federal agency that could be dragged into the alphabet soup.

It would be a jurisdictional nightmare.

Although I couldn’t help but notice reports in recent weeks urging people who have to travel to O’Hare on Monday to consider using the Chicago Transit Authority to get there.

SPECIFICALLY, THE BLUE Line trains that run from downtown through the Northwest Side and wind up all the way at the airport.

Or is it all about embarrassing Rahm?

In theory, you can ride your train in to the airport, and wave bye-bye to all the protesters who think they’re causing chaos and bringing our society to a shutdown. I suppose activists could try blocking train tracks, but that would be insane on account of the legendary “third rail” (the electrified one that feeds power to the rail cars).

I’d hate to think there are people determined to die for this cause, which is supposed to be about reducing the level of people who are killed in Chicago.

Because they’d learn pretty quick just how apathetic many Chicagoans can be about this particular issue, which really reeks of a strong overtone of “It’s not my problem” for those who don’t live in the neighborhoods where the violence tends to focus upon.

  -30-

It’s truly sad our ‘tweeting twit’ of a president thinks he can govern this way

Donald J. Trump is the Twit who Tweets, using the social medium that values insipidity (only 140 characters, really?) as his way of getting his limited thoughts out to the public; unchallenged.
 

TRUMP: Wants to go unchallenged in public eye!

It’s also becoming more and more clear this would be a presidency conducted by Twitter, if there were any way that Trump could get away with it.

TRUMP HAS BEEN in the news on a daily basis for the past six or so months, ever since he got himself elected president, with a barrage of nonsense and half-truths that make it clear the man has no respect for truth.

Of course, he doesn’t want to be called out for having this attitude – he wants to be able to lambast everybody else for thinking that a president ought to be truthful!

So it gets ugly, particularly with the activity surrounding the dismissal of James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump probably committed the ultimate gaffe of his lifetime when he tossed out hints that there were recordings of meetings he and Comey held just before his professional termination.

As stated by Trump, it is Comey who ought to be fearful because the Trumpster could easily pull out a recording and use it to denounce anything that Comey tried claiming.

BUT THE PROBLEM is that the public at large (except for the minority of our electorate who actually voted for Trump and will desperately want to believe anything he says no matter how ridiculous it proves to be) is now going to want to know if there was a taping system in place at the White House these days.

And if so, we’re going to want to hear those tapes so we can have historical evidence of how irrational Trump himself is during his presidential conduct.

If it turns out there are no recordings, some of us are likely to believe that Trump somehow tampered with the system to destroy them. He created circumstances that will lead many of us to never again trust a word he publicly says.

Worse yet, he brings to mind the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, which eventually was taken down by the existence of recordings in the White House of the president talking with his top aides.

IT MADE IT impossible for anybody to believe anything Nixon said for the public record to the point where the only Nixon believers these days are those hard-core ideologues who are determined to ignore truth.

Which, when you come down to it, probably means some of them are the same people desperate to side with Trump. Or more likely, are the grandparents of the modern-day followers of the Age of Trump!

What should we think of anything Trump says? Personally, I found some of his Tweets from the past couple of days to be particularly telling.

Especially that one about how he’s so “active” that, “it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Actually, that is exactly what we should expect from someone working on behalf of a government official – that we can count on every word they speak being truthful.

GOVERNMENT AIDES AT so many levels have lost their jobs and gone into professional disgrace for this very thing. Any reporter-type person who ever tried to justify less than “perfect accuracy” for their work would find themselves terminated “for cause” in an instant.

And that’s the way it should be!

There also was that Tweet about “cancel(ling)” future press briefings “and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy.”

My experience in dealing with government operatives is that the ones who refuse to answer questions and insist on doing everything in writing is usually because they’re such control freaks and they’re most concerned with making sure they don’t offer up any relevant information by mistake. A 600-word statement may fill newspaper space or broadcast airtime without serving a purpose.

AH, WHO AM I kidding! We have a president who probably thinks his 140-character Tweet (about a single sentence – this commentary, by comparison, is 4,356 characters) would be sufficient.

All I know is that there are people who argue Trump makes a wonderful president because of his business background, and I don’t doubt he ran the Trump Organization and its subsidiaries in a similar manner.

The only question I have is how he managed to avoid running his company into the ground amidst financial ruin the way he seems to be intent on doing with our country these days – not because it makes sense, but just because he can!

  -30-

Does Trump yearn for old Everly Brothers tune; “When will I be loved?”

I’m sure the people in our society who gave us Donald J. Trump as our president (the 46 percent who actually voted for him) are wondering right about now what it would take to appease the rest of us.
 

COMEY: Trump got to fire somebody

For many of us are disgusted with the conduct of now-former FBI Director James Comey. Some of us believe it was his handling of an investigation into those “dreaded” e-mail messages by Hillary Clinton that gave a last-minute momentum push to the Trump campaign to put it over the top on Election Day.

THE POINT BEING that many of those who are saddened that we’re not now experiencing the deep spiritual experience of our nation having its first female as a chief executive aren’t going to feel much sympathy for the fact that Comey is now among the ranks of the unemployed.

Although it will be interesting to see how quickly somebody manages to put him on their payroll as an adviser or consultant or some other make-work post that enables them to provide him with something resembling an income.

The ideologues probably want to believe that all of us (the majority of the electorate that wanted Clinton or someone other than Trump to be president) have now got our way, and we ought to just “Shut up!” about our Trump criticisms or anything else we have to say.

Of course, the conservative ideologue type usually just wants everybody to “Shut up!” and do what the ideologues tell us to do. So there’s nothing new there.

BUT THE TERMINATION of Comey’s employment did manage to catch the nation off-guard, what with its timing Tuesday night. I’m sure there were conversations taking place across the country during the evening hours by people speculating on how erratic the behavior of our president truly is.

There is the speculation that Trump fired Comey so as to thwart any investigation the FBI might be doing into whether or not Russia government officials or operatives in any way committed any acts that might have influenced the election outcome.

Did the thought of a woman as U.S. president so bother the thought process of Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he felt compelled to get involved?

 

TRUMP: Wants our admiration, even if by force

Other people are bringing up the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973 when then-President Richard M. Nixon wanted to fire a special prosecutor so as to try to knock down investigations into the Watergate burglary, and wound up having to fire several levels of officials in the attorney general's office before he could find someone (William Bork, remember him?) who was willing to do the presidential “dirty work.”

BUT A PART of me wonders if it is something more basic, in that Comey in recent weeks has continued to talk about his actions with regards to Hillary Clinton and e-mails and why he was bothered enough by what he learned to keep the issue alive in the public eye.

He recently made statements indicating he was bothered by Clinton spouse (and former president in his own right) Bill having that private meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which he said created the perception that HE was trying to tamper with FBI investigations into his wife’s behavior.

The point being that by continually bringing the issue up, Comey was reminding the public that it was NOT a majority of people who wanted Trump to be president. Although supposedly being the factor that made Trump president, he was becoming the reason some of us will NEVER regard this Age of Trump as being a legitimate expression of the sentiments of our society.

Whereas if Comey could have kept his “trap shut” and let the issue wither away, the reality is that most of us would have forgotten the details. Then Trump with his knack for “alternative facts” could have come up with a version of reality that would make us think we “like me, you really like me” as much as Sally Field felt at that Academy Awards ceremony of long-ago.

BUT THAT IS likely never to happen, although it is also true that we’re likely to never know the truth of what really happened, or how Russian operatives could have tampered with our electoral process or if it was more our own incompetence that could let something happen.

Yet this is Donald Trump, the real estate developer from Manhattan who likes to build gaudy structures around the globe and brand them all with his name – thinking that it means we associate the mention of himself with class, elegance and sophistication.

Instead of just tacky trash that comes in overpriced.

Which is why I often get the image in my brain of our president in some secluded room, singing to himself that 1960 hit by the Everly Brothers – “When will I be loved?”

  -30-

Conservative conspiracy? Or prevalence of common sense in society?

I’m sure those people of a mental preponderance to want to favor social conservative ideologue thought are thinking that society is somehow ganging up on them when it comes to electoral matters.

CLINTON: No longer facing inductment

Here in Illinois, a lawsuit filed against the woman who is now seeking the U.S. Senate seat as a Democrat is not going to go to trial just as the electoral cycle heats up.

THERE WON’T BE all kinds of political tidbits that can be used against candidate Tammy Duckworth in her bid to challenge Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. – that lawsuit got settled out of court.

As if that wasn’t devastating enough for conservative political chances of taking down people who would challenge their way of thought, now we have the FBI coming right out and saying that Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton didn’t do a thing that would warrant the filing of criminal charges against her.

Their investigation into her use of a private e-mail system while serving as Secretary of State did not produce the evidence of classified information being disseminated improperly; as ideologues for months have been implying it did.

The Democratic Party is not on the verge of nominating a person facing criminal indictment when they have their presidential convention in coming weeks in Philadelphia.

THAT REALLY WAS the electoral strategy of Republican partisans in Illinois – make sure that the trial that could have occurred in late August produces bits that can be used against Duckworth.

Meanwhile, let Clinton get bogged down in a mass of legal issues that would spill over to all candidates seeking office on the Democratic ticket. Which was the only way that Illinois with its modern-day leanings toward Democrats and the urban thoughts they carry would even consider picking Republican candidates in any great number.

 

DUCKWORTH: No longer facing trial

Instead, no trial. No criminal indictment. Nothing to produce bits of “fact” (more likely trivia) that could be used during the election cycle. Making it all the more likely that the two-thirds of Illinois’ population that lives in the six-county Chicago area will overcome the remaining parts of Illinois that are rural in character and will be relied upon to back GOP picks for government positions.

Personally, I think it is sad that the modern-day Republican Party would be so reliant on criminal proceedings to bolster its chances of winning a damn thing come the Nov. 8 Election Day.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to be honest and admit that Democratic political operatives would be just as inclined to use criminal proceedings to gain an advantage for their political candidates if it were at all possible.

For all the high-minded talk some people spew about wanting to pick quality people to serve in our government, we’re really more inclined to delve in the dirt and spew the muck to filthy-up each other – to the point where our modern-day elections truly become a matter of deciding “Who do I hate the least?”

Which is why we have a likely presidential election coming up between a Democrat who has long been despised by a certain ideological segment of our society and a business executive whose behavior on the campaign trail is so garish and gross that his Republican bid for president is achieving record-high levels of unpopularity.

Libertarian candidates may actually wind up taking more than their usual 1 percent of the ballots cast just because we find everybody else so contemptible.

WE’RE NOT GOING to get the dirt. Or at least we won’t get it put straight-forward. I have no doubt that GOP operatives will figure out ways of bringing up the allegations against Duckworth and Clinton that they would have used anyway. They just won’t be able to say that some nasty tidbit came out of trial proceedings.

 

TRUMP: Are his chances withering away?

It will be pure rumor and trash being spewed about by political people with no sense of shame.

All of which makes me want to take a shower now to get myself extra clean, on account of all the muck my mind will be cluttered up with during the next four months.

As I wonder how long it will take following Election Day to totally cleanse me mentally?

  -30-

Lynch had better follow FBI findings

I must admit to being shocked by all the attention being paid to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s comments Friday that she “fully expect(s) to accept” the findings of FBI investigators looking into whether would-be presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton violated the law with rega the findings of FBI investigators looking into whether would-be presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton violated the law.

 

LYNCH: Doing her job

Because as I read her comment, all Lynch is saying is that she’s not about to interfere with a criminal investigation being conducted by federal authorities.

CONSIDERING THAT LYNCH herself is the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official, it would be a crime in and of itself if she were to try to interfere.

All she has really said is that she’s going to let officials go about their jobs and let the process go where it may.

Nothing more!!!!!

But then again, the level of political partisanship that our nation has risen to is so intense that it is no wonder some people But then again, the level of political partisanship that our nation has risen to is so intense that it is no wonder some people are desperate to believe anything they hear.

IF THESE KIND of people had truly had their way, Barack Obama would be rotting in a maximum-security prison cell for the crime oIf these kind of people had truly had their way, Barack Obama would be rotting in a maximum-security prison cell for the crime of having the nerve to think he could serve as U.S. president!

Just as Bill Clinton endured his share of investigations, most of which turned out to be nothing whatsoever (remember Whitewater?). And as for his fling with an intern, we will forevermore be debating whether Bill was a felon worthy of incarceration?

Or just a pig whose wife ought to be entitled to punish him any way she sees fit?

 

CLINTON: Campaigning amidst the nonsense

But because the name is “Clinton,” we’re now going to have these same people concocting schemes that they say warrant prison time for Hillary. If they couldn’t get Bill, they’ll now go after her.

IN FACT, THESE kind of people are the ones who probably view the world as one that deprived them of a chance to incarcerate both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, so now they feel like they’re “owed one” by going after Hillary.

Particularly amongst those who feel like the real problem with Bill Clinton was that he was weak and let his wife lead him astray.

A sexist thought, to be sure. But then again, these are the kind of people who rant and rage that “political correctness” keeps them from speaking the truth – or at least that version of the truth often included in the babblings of presidential dreamer Donald Trump (whose only chances of victory could literally be if something were to come about with these "charges")!

Now I’m not sure what to think of the allegations that are being spewed with regards to the one-time Secretary of State, whom they claim got careless with her use of personal e-mail accounts and wound up disclosing matters of national security.

A PART OF me thinks these allegations are as overhyped as any claim ever made against Bill Clinton. In fact, it was Bill who met with Lynch recently to discuss the matter.

Which is what led to Lynch feeling compelled to say publicly she plans to let the investigators do their thing, and nothing more.

 

TRUMP: Who else would benefit?

This is likely to become an issue where we’ll probably learn the truth long after the details can be used as ammunition in an Election Day campaign. And we’re likely to learn many years from now just how incredibly stupid and trivial the whole affair was.

Which will make our generation’s children wonder just how vacuous we could be in letting such trivia dominate our thoughts?

  -30-

Somebody’s a film buff in FBI

I couldn’t help but be amused when I learned of the latest attempt at a cutesy nickname given to a criminal suspect, or in this case, suspects, by federal agents.

For we now have the “Nuns on the Run” robbers – two men who apparently wore masks and nun’s habits to try to disguise their identities when they robbed banks, including one in suburban Palos Heights.

NOT THAT IT did them much good. Two men are now in custody. One was arrested last year, and in theory is scheduled to go on trial next month.

But the other man, a resident of south suburban Markham, was not arrested until this week. He had his first appearance in U.S. District Court on Wednesday for the charges of bank robbery, and conspiracy to commit bank robbery that both men face.

Federal officials say that both suspects had previously worked for banks, and the man who was arrested last year had also been accused of embezzlement at his previous place of employment – a bank in suburban Country Club Hills.

For the record, federal officials dubbed them “Nuns on the Run” because they thought the masks used by the robbers looked just like costumes used in the 2010 film “The Town.”

NOT THAT I recall this particular film, which was directed by Ben Affleck and is adapted from the novel “Prince of Thieves.” Actor Jeremy Renner was actually nominated for an academy award (“best supporting actor”) for his performance.

Yes, I had to look those details up.

I’m sure someone out there will think I’ve been living in a cave for not knowing this right off the top of my head. But I wonder about the agent who made the connection between the bank surveillance camera footage of the robberies and this film?

Although I have to admit that my initial reaction was to think that some agent somewhere was really digging into obscure films to come up with a nickname.

BECAUSE MY FIRST thought would have been to think that somebody was remembering the 1990 film “Nuns on the Run.” That starred British actors Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane as a pair of low-level gangsters who have millions of pounds of another gangster’s money and are trying to rip him off.

To cover themselves up and escape an attempt on their lives, they take cover in the first building they see – which turns out to be a convent.

Hence, we get the sight of Idle and Coltrane in nuns’ habits throughout much of the film (along with a final shot of them in flight attendant uniforms). Much of the “humor” of this film is based on how absurd the characters act and look while trying to pretend to be women – particularly Coltrane, who makes actors like John Belushi or Jack Black look like fine specimens of physical fitness.

Then again, I suppose expecting someone to remember back two decades for an obscure reference would be a bit much to ask – particularly since I’m starting to wonder about myself for being able to remember this particular film.

PERHAPS MY OWN brain would be better off if it weren’t clogged with so much trivial detail? Sometimes, I wonder if these nicknames they come up with are so obscure that real people aren’t meant to “get” them. They’re just supposed to sound off-the-wall, while making the suspects sound more bizarre than they truly are.

Because this particular bank robbery wasn’t all that eventful – insofar as armed robberies are concerned. As a reporter-type person, I have written about stranger stuff on many occasions.

And as for the men who now face federal charges? They’ll have quite a bit of time on their hands awaiting trial. Perhaps they ought to try watching Idle and Coltrane’s performance as criminals-turned-nuns.

They managed to escape, albeit without the money – which church officials found and decided to use to put toward charitable works.

  -30-

Why can’t they all just get along?

It is a long-standing sentiment that likely will always exist within our local law enforcement – federal officials based in Chicago and the local cops and prosecutors don’t have much use for each other.

It was on display throughout the political corruption trial this summer of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – whose attorney was a criminal law veteran of the scene at the Cook County Criminal Courts building. Many pundits and observers tried to make a point of how his crude, hard-hitting ways didn’t fit in with the more refined (in a sense) atmosphere of the courts at the Dirksen Building.

BUT BEFORE ANYONE presumes that this means federal law enforcement types are somehow superior to their local legal types (even though one could argue that Sam Adams Jr. managed to avoid conviction for Blagojevich on so many charges that he beat the feds), keep in mind that the ill-will really does run both ways.

Local cops and prosecutors can be just as arrogant when viewing their federal counterparts. Which has always been behind the fact that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis doesn’t have the support of the cops working the streets – and has many police officers counting down the days until next spring when they expect him to be fired.

It was with that goal in mind that the Fraternal Order of Police local representing Chicago police officers held a protest march, picketing the police headquarters on 35th Street and Michigan Avenue on Wednesday to let it be known they want their boss fired.

So now, when Weis is replaced by whoever does manage to win the mayoral election next spring, it will be the more politically motivated of cops who will take credit for personally getting him dumped. Maybe the real problem is that these FOP-types spent the past two years resisting Weis, instead of trying to work for the betterment of the public. All that jazz about "serving and protecting" that cops claim they're there to uphold?

I DON’T THINK the local police deserve that credit for Weis' departure. I view political appointments like police superintendent as being similar to a baseball team manager – you get hired to get fired. Weis will be replaced, just as some day White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will be fired. It won’t mean that his stint running the ballclub was a failure.

Just as we shouldn’t be too quick to write off the Weis era of the Chicago Police Department, just because the rank-and-file of cops never took to him because he is a former “G-man.”

Weis’ law enforcement career was within the FBI and included posts in several cities, including a stint as Special Agent In Charge of the Chicago office. That is what appealed to Daley when he picked Weis for the top local police post back in 2008.

An outsider with no ties to anybody who wouldn’t particularly feel beholden to anybody and would be willing to make changes, regardless of whose feelings are hurt. What we learned on Wednesday by watching this protest is whose feelings were hurt, and remain hurt, and are now determined to craft the circumstances in such a way that they can claim to have run Weis out of town.

NOW I’M NOT necessarily a Weis defender. Nor am I particularly a critic of his. Personally, I think he has done as competent a job as anybody could in that position – particularly when one considers that the economic struggles that have impacted our society in recent years have also caused government entities to have to make cuts in areas they would have preferred to avoid.

That includes law enforcement.

At a time when the Chicago Police Department could use more staff, it is getting less. Weis has tried to compensate for it by shifting officers about on special assignments so as to put more people into critical situations.

But that has the police types whose focus is purely on their own district all upset when it is their officers who get shifted away to somewhere else.

I KNOW SOME people are going to complain about the crime rate in Chicago. They’re going to claim that Weis hasn’t caused it to reduce dramatically. Perhaps it is because my days as a full-time police reporter-type person were two decades ago when Chicago would see nearly 1,000 murders per year (a day without a killing was rare, and the weekends with multiple slayings were all too common), but I look at the current situation as an improvement.

Even though President Barack Obama this week in Philadelphia cited his adopted home town’s violence – particularly the 40 Chicago Public School students who were killed the last school year – as an example of the challenges facing teenagers today.

I see improvement. I also realize that the outlandish incidents (such as children being killed) will always draw more attention and will make the entire situation appear more severe.

But this is what Weis’ critics don’t want to have to acknowledge. They’re more interested in propagating the schism between the federal and the local law enforcement types (which is a true sentiment, I still remember the choice obscenities I heard two decades ago when I was a court reporter and I heard various assistant state’s attorneys use whenever they talked about their encounters with the FBI or the U.S. attorney’s office).

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if part of the real problem when it comes to crime in our society is that our law enforcement types seem so hung up on their jurisdictions and can’t work together more easily.

Perhaps we have a police department that needed the shakeup, instead of a superintendent who would make the rank-and-file feel more comfortable? In short, will the perception next spring be that Weis got fired because he was doing what he should have been doing?

Which also makes me think that perhaps Rodney King’ quotable moment during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 was a line that ought to be recycled these days toward our local cops and their federal counterparts.

-30-

What does '4/14' really mean?

It appears that the men’s room of Regina Hall, a freshman dormitory at St. Xavier University, is NOT a harbinger of doom – as some people had feared.

It was in one particular stall of the men’s rest room of the co-ed dorm that three different menacing messages were found – the last of which implied that some sort of carnage could be expected on campus on Monday.

OFFICIALS AT THE college in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood – noting the bloodshed that gave DeKalb, Ill., its own version of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre earlier this year – decided to play it safe. Students at the main campus, along with a secondary campus in suburban Orland Park and classroom space used in downtown Chicago, were all evacuated.

Four other schools in the area, including a Catholic high school located across the street from St. Xavier, all had classes cancelled on Monday.

Students at the schools are not sure just how (if at all) the time will be made up, or whether they will be expected to cram the same amount of studies into a shorter time period – commencement ceremonies at St. Xavier had been scheduled for May 17.

Now some people might think that bathroom graffiti is not a sufficient reason to shut down a college campus, even if in the final instance on Thursday, a scrawled note warned people to, “be prepared to die 4/14.”

I’D BE INCLINED to think it is just someone with a warped sense of humor, except that there are at least two other colleges in this country – Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., and Malcolm X College on the West Side – where graffiti also implied threats of violence in conjunction with Monday’s date.

Law enforcement officials who are monitoring the incidents at all the campuses say they believe the significance of the date is that it comes exactly two months after Steven Kasmierczak, a former Northern Illinois University student, walked into an auditorium with firearms and began shooting – killing five students and wounding several others.

What exactly the connection would be, they can’t say. They really don’t know.

Is there someone out there who is angry about the way in which police and college officials handled the Northern Illinois incident, thereby provoking them to cause another violent incident at another college campus out of some sort of revenge?

IT WOULD NOT be the most ridiculous concept.

People unstable enough to wreck vengeance with violence often time their incidents to specific dates that carry significance in their minds – even if, to the rest of the world, the connection seems ridiculous.

Let’s not forget the April 19, 1993 incident near Waco, Texas, where federal agents trying to raid a religious compound where a stash of firearms was being held illegally wound up causing a fire that killed the people inside.

It was two years later to the date that Timothy McVeigh triggered an explosion that demolished the federal government building in Oklahoma City, and he saw his actions as payback to the federal government for killing “innocents.” He also noted the original fighting in the American Revolution began April 19, 1775, and saw his own conservative viewpoint as being the equivalent of the original revolutionaries.

IT COULD TURN out to be that the April 14 date has a completely different significance. I would guess that because it keeps turning up on bathroom stalls of so many college campuses. If it were just the two Chicago schools, then an NIU connection might be relevant.

But a Michigan college, where I would guess most of the student body had never heard of DeKalb, Ill., until two months ago?

These college closings have me wracking my brain for any historic incidents that may have taken place on April 14 – although nothing of significance comes to my mind.

I also wonder if perhaps it is the digits themselves (4 – 1 – 4) that have some significance. Perhaps they add up to a different date or statistic, or perhaps they should be read in a different order, in order to figure out their true meaning.

OR COULD IT be just that one person came up with the date, and other losers are copying it as some sort of a twisted gag – almost like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

Does all this sound irrational? It is.

But then again, that’s the kind of mindset we’re dealing with in incidents like this. Someone has a convoluted logic that is meant to justify either committing an act of violence on a college campus, or just trying to terrify student bodies across the United States into thinking that something bad could happen.

And if any law enforcement personnel are reading this, let me emphasize that all this is a guess on my part. I don’t have any understanding of what 4/14 means, or why we ought to think that college kids will be safe on Tuesday even though they were at risk on Monday.

I HOPE THEY are safe. Personally, I think they will be as safe Tuesday, or any other day this week, as they would have been on Monday. Ultimately, the college campuses will just have to take a chance and re-open, although it was uncertain just when that would happen.

As of late Monday, St. Xavier campuses (which sit in a heavily residential neighborhood on the edge of Chicago and in one of the lowest of low-crime suburbs in the Chicago area) remain closed, although Malcolm X officials reopened their school for Monday night classes.

Students, however, are having to submit to searches by security before being allowed to enter school buildings.

This could wind up being the norm, at least for the rest of this year, as university officials around the country would rather not provide the next dateline to gain national infamy, even though on a certain level they realize there’s nothing they can do to guarantee beyond a doubt that an act of violence will not occur on their campuses.

STUDENTS ARE REALLY going to have to start justifying their existence, and the concept of a college campus as some sort of forum for public expression may just be a quaint remnant of the past.

Also a part of the past, it seems, is the day when we can think of bathroom graffiti as just the mindless rambling of people with too much free time on their minds while they are supposed to be doing their business.

No more do we get such “gems” as this graffiti ditty that I recall from one day while sitting on a stall during my own college days.

“JESUS SAVES,” READ the graffito, to which someone else had felt the need to add the line, “at Corn Belt Bank.”

The reaction then, as I recall, was for other people to add more lines of graffiti, turning the stall into a debate on whether speculation about where Jesus does his banking is disrespectful to the Lord, or whether some people take bathroom graffiti too seriously.

Now, we’d have ministers wanting to exorcise the bathroom stall and the FBI coming in to investigate whether the threat is legitimate, while also weeding their way through countless telephone numbers belonging to guys, only with girls’ names attached as a junior-high level joke.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: These are the latest updates (http://update.sxu.edu/) provided by St. Xavier University about their closing and when they think they may re-open.

Students got an unexpected ‘spring break’ this week (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/04/14/threat_prompts_closing_of_schools/2481/), due to an outbreak of graffiti.

My alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Ill., increased its own security measures (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/02/not-even-my-alma-mater-is-safe-these.html) in the days following the Northern Illinois University incident.