The compromisin’ court? Or should we think of them as do-nothings?

I thought for sure we’d hear the whining and screaming from people all upset that the Supreme Court of the United States, bogged down in a politically-partisan tie due to being a member short, failed to uphold a provision of the Affordable Care Act.

That the ideologues who don’t want President Barack Obama to have a political victory by providing access to health insurance for the masses would be upset that the 4-4 tie would result in a lower court being upheld in its decision to strike down parts of the act.

BUT THAT’S NOT what wound up happening. In fact, I could see how it would be the conservative ideologues who were counting on the court’s partisan split and shortfall of a member to result in a positive ruling by default.

Instead, the nation’s high court wound up issuing about as sensible a ruling as could be achieved. They unanimously issued an order saying the lower courts need to come up with a compromise situation. One that would appease all.

Although when it comes to Barack Obama and abortion, there probably is no such thing as something for everyone.

The issue at stake in this case was that certain entities don’t want to have to include medical coverage in the health insurance packages they offer their employees that would cover a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy.

THEY WANT TO think that if people work for them, then they somehow forfeit their access to what has been a fully legitimate and legal medical procedure since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling of 1973.

Appeals courts with a partisan leaning had ruled those companies could get away with such narrow-minded thinking.

Had the court given in to the 4-4 split caused by the death earlier this year of Justice Antonin Scalia, that ruling would have been upheld by default. The lower court’s ruling would have stood.

Instead, the high court came up with their idea of a compromise, which shows a willingness to not let partisan politics become the cause of creation of the rule of law.

IF ANYTHING, THIS court decision affirms my basic faith in government. Because I have come to believe that while our government officials are always capable of doing something incredible stupid, shallow and narrow-minded, every now and then they will be capable of doing the right thing.

If anything, it is the reason why people who talk about throwing out our government and issue penny-ante talk of revolution (including many of those how talking about backing Bernie Sanders for president) usually strike me as being fairly shallow thinkers.

It will be interesting to see how the appeals courts wind up resolving this issue.

Because they’re going to have to figure out what constitutes compromise. They’re going to have to come up with the way of letting religious organizations express their opposition to abortion without actually interfering with a woman’s right to decide for herself what she should do with her body.

BELIEVE IT OR not, that is a very radical thought for some of those religiously-motivated people. Then again, for many of them they just want to use “God” as an excuse to tell women (and all other people) what they can or cannot do.

I don’t know how this situation will resolve itself, or what the compromise will look like. For all I know, the appeals courts may wind up failing, and it will come down to a Supreme Court of the future ultimately having to make the decision.

If it does turn out that way, let’s hope the court shows as much responsibility in the future as it did on Monday.

Even though I’m sure if it does happen that way, the conservative ideologues of our society will wind up reviling such a decision the way the masses of our society still sneer at the way the high court resolved the 2000 election voter count.

  -30-

Out with the old on political scene, White and Carter keep busy into old age

Listening to a 90-year-old Jimmy Carter talk Thursday morning about the treatment he will start receiving for minuscule (but still deadly) cancerous spots on his brain couldn’t help but remind me of that election cycle nearly 40 years ago when the man from Plains (as in Georgia) became our president.

From 1976, when Mayor Daley gave Jimmy Carter a less-than-stellar election effort

To be honest, Carter prevailed because the stink of Watergate hovered over the nation – leaving a lot of people turned off to the political party of Richard Nixon.

ANYBODY WHO WON the Democratic primary was likely to win the general election in that Bicentennial year.

Amongst our own local political trivia, it ought to be noted that 1976 was one of the fluke years.

It was one of only two election cycles during the 20^th Century (1916 was the other) in which someone managed to win a presidential election WITHOUT taking Illinois.

In what was Cook County “Boss” Richard J. Daley’s last election cycle on the national stage (he died one month later), Illinois’ votes in the Electoral College went to then-incumbent President Gerald R. Ford.

MAKING THE LAND of Lincoln one of the few places that actually did vote to have Ford as our nation’s chief executive.

Carter took only 53 percent of the vote in Cook County, meaning all the rest of the state (outside of a few sparsely-populated Southern Illinois counties) was able to gang up on Chicago and put the state into the Republican column.

The reports back then indicated that Daley didn’t think much of the idea of a Southerner like Carter, and doubted he had much appeal to working-class Chicago. Which resulted in the lackluster effort by the political organization to turn out the vote.

There also were the reports about how Daley felt insulted at the Democratic National Convention that year when his big public moment was to attend a press conference with Miss Lillian – as in Jimmy Carter’s mother.

CONSIDERING SHE WAS the one with the sassy personality, it would have made the aging Daley come across like the grouchy ol’ man from Bridgeport – telling the kids to keep off his lawn.

Or perhaps to have the cops parked on the block to keep watch on his bungalow do it for him?

WHITE: Will he finally retire come '18?

But Carter went on to win his one term in office – one that still gives the conservative ideologues material for their rants and rages. So much that those who felt compelled to use Fox News Channel websites to read the story to make crude insults about the man!

Back in those days when Carter and Daley were at the top of the pecking order, one of the lower-rungs was Jesse White, who had just finished serving his first term representing a piece of Chicago in the Illinois House of Representatives.

AN OFFICE HE held through 1993 – when he got himself elected to what locally was a higher post; Cook County recorder of deeds.

Then, in the 1998 elections, White won the post that was supposed to allow him to retire on top – he became Illinois secretary of state at age 64. A term there, and he could go out in style.

Except that White has managed to keep that post through five terms. Although he said Thursday he has no intention of running for term number six come the 2018 election cycle. Retirement for White would come at age 84.

Although I found it interesting to learn he intends to remain active by continuing to operate the Jesse White Tumblers, the gymnastics group that tries to give inner-city youth something to do.

JUST AS HOW Carter told reporter-types he wants to be able to think he can carry on with his charitable works even while receiving his medical treatments.

Some people just seem to want to keep busy. Which may be why they are remembered long after most of us are forgotten?

  -30-

For what it is worth, following is a commentary I wrote for United Press International from Springfield, Ill., at the end of Jesse White’s first week in January 1999 of what could wind up being his 20-year return to the Illinois Statehouse scene.

Around the Statehouse

White’s Statehouse ‘return’ well-received

By GREGORY TEJEDA

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Jan. 18 (UPI) – When Jesse White gave up an Illinois House seat and a career in state government in 1992 to be a Cook County government official, he was following the Chicago rulebook about moving up in politics.

But the Cook County recorder of deeds return last week to the Statehouse scene made him one of Illinois’ most popular politicians these days.

“I’m glad to be home,” White, 64, says of his return to the state payroll when he was sworn in as Illinois secretary of state.

Democrats routinely gave him enthusiastic rounds of applause and cheers during his public appearances last week. Even Republicans are on the White bandwagon.

Part of the appeal is the bipartisan political rhetoric that flowed through Springfield last week. Once the General Assembly and state government has to start doing things for people, the blatant praise will pass.

White’s popularity from Democrats is due to the party’s lack of anyone holding a state constitutional office during the past four years.

Now, a Democrat controls the agency that has many jobs around Illinois and deals with licensing motorists – the function that brings most people into routine contact with state government.

“He’s looking mighty good up there,” state Rep. Art Turner, D-Chicago. Noted during legislative inauguration ceremonies where White presided. “It’s nice to have one of our own in a position of power.”

But White’s record of community service, including the nearly 40 years that he has headed the Jesse White Tumblers gymnastics team and other work he has done to benefit inner-city kids in Chicago, also is a factor.

It is hard for even the most cynical political observer to bad-mouth someone with White’s social work background. One Statehouse observer says White, “already was an American hero. Now, he’s an American hero with 1,000 patronage jobs.”

One should not doubt that White knows how to do politics. Already, he is arranging to put failed lieutenant governor nominee Mary Lou Kearns on his state payroll.

White also is playing the Chicago political game, trying to influence the choice of his successor as recorder of deeds.

White is backing Darlena Williams-Burnett, the wife of a Chicago alderman, even though Cook County Board President John Stroger and other officials prefer state Rep. Eugene Moore, D-Maywood.

White also became the first newly-elected pol to create a mini-scandal of sorts by offering a key financial post in the Illinois secretary of state’s office – and its $70,000 annual salary – to his daughter, Glenna.

But political observers are putting all that aside. Many are recalling White’s cooperation and willingness to support newly-elected colleagues during his 16 years in the Illinois House.

He’s close enough to them that state Rep. Joel Brunsvold, D-Milan, quips White can still be used by the Illinois House softball team, which has not been able to beat the state Senate team in years.

White played baseball in the Chicago Cubs minor league system in the 1960s, and remains athletic. But it is his Cubs connection that led to what was the closest to a hostile comment made about White all last week.

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan – speaking like the life-long Chicago Sout’ Sider that he is – says, “the only mistake (White) ever made in his life was to play with the Cubs, instead of the White Sox.”

  -0-

Copyright 1999 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Evolution flows; but are we there yet?

I recall a conversation I once had with a veteran reporter-type back when I was an Illinois Statehouse reporter back in the mid-1990s with regards to the way political people handled themselves whenever issues related to sexual orientation came up.

This conversation took place back at a time when Republicans had complete control of state government (both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office) and were willing to use it to bring up bills that were considered offensive to gay rights activists.

HECK, IT WAS an era when GOP officials felt compelled to use their influence to make sure that people understood that marriage between homosexual couples could NEVER be considered legitimate. Even though no one ever thought that Illinois law permitted it beforehand.

But my elder colleague – who has since gone on to mentor many new generations of reporters – said he noticed the difference from his early days at the Illinois Statehouse (back when the governor was named “Ogilvie”) whenever such issues came up.

Back then, he said, the opposition to anything considered sympathetic to gay people was vocal. He recalled how legislators felt compelled to speak out in as graphic of terms as they could.

Talk of how gay people “consumed human waste” and did all other sorts of perverted acts came out. Like it was a political battle to see who could be the most disgusting with their rhetoric.

BY THE TIME I was a reporter-type covering the daily activity of a Legislature, the tone had shifted.

DURKIN: A rare "yes" GOP vote?

There was still opposition. I’m sure there were some of the General Assembly members who really thought there was some act of perversion taking place.

But it always seemed that the only political people who felt compelled to speak were the ones who were determined to put themselves on the record as being in favor of issues of concern for gay people.

Which would make writing up stories about those legislative actions odd. Because you’d have stories filled up with quotations from political people who supported an issue that the majority opposed.

IT WOULD BECOME difficult to find people willing to speak out against the issue with anything other than the most dangerous action they could take – their vote.

DeLUCA: A rare Chicago-area "no."

Their majority of people willing to vote “no” so as to assuage those individuals in our society who are determined to think of anyone who isn’t exactly like themselves as being less than human.

Those people still remain. They’re more outspoken than ever. But it would seem the political evolution continues.

For I couldn’t help but notice an Associated Press dispatch on Tuesday from when the Illinois House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would outlaw programs that claim to be a medical way of converting people away from homosexuality.

AS THOUGH sexual orientation and identity were some sort of disease that could be eradicated from people if they would just go out and get cured. California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia already have such laws in place.

The bill actually got seven Republican legislators to vote “yes,” including House Minority Leader James Durkin of Western Springs. Also, there were six Democrats, including one local legislator (Anthony DeLuca of Chicago Heights) who voted “no.” So it’s not purely urban versus rural people on this issue.

But no one felt compelled to say anything publicly. Legislators, who are more than capable of bloviating beyond belief, just kept their mouths shut and voted. Do even the legislators who vehemently hate the idea of doing anything to support gay people realize that their rhetoric is pure nonsense?

Fewer political people feeling the need to say something stupid? A harmful notion to a reporter-type person in need of material to create intriguing copy. But perhaps a positive for our society as a whole!

  -30-

Life way too short for some people

My belated condolences to Illinois Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, who this week lost her daughter, Lisa – who suffered a massive pulmonary embolism.

RADOGNO: Our condolences

What makes her death particularly tragic was not because of who her mother was. Or even her boss – she worked on the D.C.-based staff of Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. It was her own age, or lack thereof.

SHE WAS ONLY 31. Lisa should have had a full life ahead of her.

Although the real question is to wonder what exactly constitutes a full life. It can be so short, or so long, or anywhere in the middle. And nobody knows exactly when their “end” will come. We truly have to appreciate every single minute.

Personally, I’m a little more sensitive to this issue these days on account of my brother, Chris. My younger brother has actually spent this week in an area hospital (we think he might wind up being released on Friday).

I had my own scare this week thinking there was a chance I could lose my little brother (he’s barely 44), even though every time I’ve seen and spoken with him this week, he’s claimed he felt fine – not at all out of the ordinary.

YET WHEN, BY pure chance, he had his blood pressure taken at a clinic on Monday (he was hoping to get some sort of medication for a sty that had developed on his eyelid), it registered way up around 240-something.

That’s hypertensive crisis territory. That’s where someone calls the ambulance and insists you go to the Emergency Room because they’re afraid you can’t drive yourself to the hospital.

He wound up spending a day in intensive care, and has since been put in a regular hospital room where he spends his days watching trashy television programs and reading the newspapers to keep up on happenings of the world.

While also complaining about how out-of-his-skull bored he has become, yet can’t go anywhere.

NOW DON’T GET the impression that I’m comparing my brother’s situation to that of Lisa Radogno. She died suddenly, while it seems my brother’s potential for a life-threatening situation was caught right at the exact moment before it became a stroke or a heart attack or something that could have caused me a lot more grief.

In fact, when I happened to be visiting him at the hospital on Thursday, I was present when a nurse took his blood pressure yet again, and it came out at a level that almost constitutes normal and healthy by American Heart Association standards.

 

Not ready to lose my brother yet

I’m fortunate. I’m likely getting my brother back – and suspect I have to be on call Friday to pick him up from the hospital when he’s finally discharged.

But if I think about it too closely, it becomes a near-miss. My brother isn’t ready to depart this realm of existence at age 44. Actually, I don’t think anybody is.

THEN AGAIN, LIFE isn’t fair. I know people I went to high school with who died at ages 19 and 22 – the former when his car was struck by a drunken driver and he went flying through the windshield because of the impact, and the latter because police said he was impaired while driving from having smoked too much marijuana.

It makes me think how they had too much still to do in life, just as my brother is in need of many more years of life to ensure he accomplishes all he wants to do.

Just as we’re going to wonder how much more Lisa Radogno would have accomplished with the extra 40 to 50 years that statistics indicate she might have had a chance to experience.

  -30-

Daley illness evidence of our cynicism?

I shouldn’t be shocked at the level of cynicism that crops up when our political people – or even ex-pols – become ill.

DALEY, M.: In recovery?

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley spent the past weekend at Northwestern Memorial Hospital suffering from what some are saying are stroke-like symptoms (although no one will come right out and say the 71-year-old suffered a stroke).

YET WHEN ONE turns to the Internet to see the ramblings of those people who insist on posting anonymous tidbits, there are more than those share of people who are convinced this is some sort of plot.

Daley is trying to avoid criminal prosecution in the future. For what, those people don’t specify. But I literally found one individual who says that this illness is fake – and is meant to provide cover in the form of him being able to testify under oath that he doesn’t remember anything about whatever it is that he is accused in the future of doing.

I’m not saying that there aren’t people professionally ambitious enough to try to prosecute a case that dredges up some past action of government during the Daley administration.

I’m sure there are people who would like Daley to suffer legal consequences for the mess that was made of our parking meters! There are times when I could be counted amongst them.

BUT PEOPLE WHO are taking Daley’s physical condition and trying to score politics are just striking me as being a bit too callous to take seriously.

Even though I’ll agree with those who think that there’s something funky about the amount of time it has taken to get a diagnosis – or that some of the details we have heard don’t seem to be fleshed out.

DALEY, J.: Died while in office

This is a story that is most definitely incomplete. While I comprehend that Daley is no longer a public official (he chose retirement in 2011, rather than dying as mayor like his father, Richard J., or at his desk like Harold Washington), there is still enough interest in him for people to want to know what happened when he supposedly became disoriented Friday while attending a legal conference in Arizona.

Because Daley is who he is, he got rushed back to Chicago – rather than trusting a Phoenix-area hospital to deal with his condition.

I WILL ADMIT to being amused by the fact that he was hospitalized the same day that his nephew, R.J. Vanecko, pleaded guilty and got that 60-day county jail sentence for his involvement in the death of a young man a decade ago.

WASHINGTON: Died literally in office

Mainly because Daley aides felt compelled to immediately say that word of his nephew’s legal predicament had nothing to do with his medical condition. Which is what many people would have presumed, had nothing been said.

It makes me wonder what statement is being concocted for dissemination on Tuesday – which is the day that both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers say will be when a 162-page special prosecutor’s report on Vanecko’s case will be made public.

Will somebody be a little too eager to find some physical downtown for Daley that occurs Tuesday, then try to make a connection?

OF COURSE, ALL of this brings back memories of Daley’s father, who himself suffered a stroke a couple of years before his death in December 1976. He recovered, and actually got re-elected to his final term in office as a result.

Daley, by comparison, is now an attorney who doesn’t have the stress of running for any office. His time in public policy is past.

Unless some people are determined to use this incident to somehow dredge him back into the public eye.

  -30-

EXTRA: Obama gives U.S. extension

President Barack Obama behaved Monday like the one-time college instructor that he once was – he gave the nation a day-long extension to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act to avoid Internal Revenue Service penalties.

Originally as crafted, the health care reform measure that is meant to give Obama his political legacy had a deadline of Monday.

ANYBODY WHO DIDN’T have a health insurance policy in place by now would face financial penalties when they file their tax returns come April 15. Not that they can’t still sign up for health insurance.

The deadline for that is the end of March. It’s just a matter of how much the IRS will ding them, and how quickly the new health insurance policy will actually take effect.

But Obama on Monday said he’s extending the deadline a day. People now have until the end of Christmas Eve in order to get themselves signed up AND make the initial payment. It makes me wonder how lenient he was with deadlines for students back when he was a University of Chicago Law School instructor.

Such leniency is still to be needed, even though federal officials say some 1 million people have used the health care reform provisions to get themselves some form of medical coverage for future incidents when they become ill.

THAT OUGHT TO be the focus of this particular issue – since those people who get hit with medical conditions that require even a short hospital stay can get a double-whammy of an unpayable bill that can drag them down financially.

And that winds up placing even more hits on an economy that may technically be improving, but for which there are still many people who haven’t yet felt a boost.

  -30-

How many will miss Monday deadline?

Monday is the deadline by which those of us who haven’t been able to afford adequate health insurance were supposed to use the benefits of a new federal law and sign up for coverage.

Some will get hit w/ penalties for lack of coverage

Of course, there are many of us (myself included) who have failed to meet the deadline – people must have signed up for a plan and made the initial payment by Monday – in order to have coverage come Jan. 1 AND avoid a potential penalty from the Internal Revenue Service when we fill out our income tax returns for 2013.

NOT THAT WE’VE failed to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which allows people to keep using either the federal website or the websites created by various states through March 31 in order to sign up with an insurance company for coverage.

In all likelihood, I will deal with this issue for myself (as a freelance writer, I don’t have anybody offering me an insurance policy as a benefit – even though the entities I do work for expect me at times to perform labor similar to that done by a full-time employee) in coming weeks.

As I suspect many others will do.

President Barack Obama said last week that in California alone, some 15,000 people per day are signing up for insurance coverage. And that some 2 million people will have health insurance Jan. 1 that would not have had it otherwise.

OF COURSE, THE fact that there were glitches in the process for signing up when it began Nov. 1 (and that political people with ideological hang-ups about the idea that all people ought to have some health care coverage were more than willing to enhance the confusion) means that many people still have not been able to get around to dealing with the issue.

Actually, I wonder how much of a rush there will be come Monday from people who hope to avoid those IRS penalties (I’m not sure exactly what they will be) by signing up AND making the initial payment.

Which will all have to be done by the end of business Monday. It could mean a rush of people similar to the mess we get every April 15 for people determined to get their tax returns filed on time to avoid penalties.

OBAMA: Easing 'frustration" in Hawaii

It also makes me think that many people will get frustrated because they will fall short and miss the Monday deadline.

IF I WERE a conspiracy-theorist type of person, I’d wonder if the IRS was determined to have people fail to meet the deadline. Because then there are penalties that will be charged to people that I’m sure some officials already are counting as revenue for the federal government.

As much as I hate the thought of having to pay the penalty, I’m accepting the fact that it will be much less stressful for me now to just deal with it come April.

Which is why I’m not going anywhere near the Illinois website for signing up for health coverage on Monday.

Obama last week said health care website problems were “a source of great frustration.” Of course, he made this comment just before he and the first family took off for their annual Hawaii holiday vacation.

WHILE THOSE OF us remaining in Chicago cope with the wet and snowy weather conditions that hit much of the nation this weekend and threaten to give us not so much a “white” Christmas as a wet-and-sloppy one!

Hoping and wishing that I can resolve my insurance situation sometime during the week between Christmas and the New Year holidays is my goal – one boosted in particular by the fact that for a freelance writer, this is usually the dead week where I struggle to cough up copy that someone will actually pay money for.

  -30-

Will medical marijuana be Quinn’s concession to ideological opposition?

Gov. Pat Quinn has made it clear he is eager to have the General Assembly send him legislation approving marriage for gay couples and limiting the size of ammunition magazines for firearms – both measures that will draw him the ire of the ideological right.

QUINN: Has yet to make up mind

But he is reluctant to say what he will do with the issue of medical marijuana – which the Illinois state Senate gave final legislative approval to last week.

WHICH MEANS IT is now in the hands of the Mighty Quinn to decide whether Illinois should become the 19^th state to let people use marijuana without hassle by police – IF they can get a doctor’s consent for a legitimate medical problem!

Those people who oppose the idea are the ones who have come to think of marijuana as some sort of “hippie freak” drug – and they’re the ones who can’t stand the idea of doing anything that might be interpreted as supporting something they consider “liberal.” Even though I have known people of all parts of the ideological spectrum who have gotten stoned during their lifetimes.

That is what makes this opposition a totally nonsensical way to view this issue. But that has never stopped the ideologues before.

The fact that marijuana might have a legitimate medical purpose is something they don’t want to consider. I guess they think that some ideological views are more important to uphold than anything science might say.

SO WHEN STATE Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, said last week during legislative debate that, “for every touching story that we have heard about the benefits of those in pain, I remind you today that there are a thousand times more parents who will never be relieved from the pain of losing a child due to addiction, which in many cases has started with the very illegal, FDA-unapproved, addiction-forming drug you are asking us to make a normal part of our communities,” I’d retort that he’s bringing up two, totally un-related issues.

McCARTER: Speaking out?

Anybody who actually gets a prescription from a doctor for marijuana use is going to have their use controlled, which makes the idea of someone’s overdose irrelevant. And as far as the “very illegal” part, that is an artificial status.

It’s only illegal because someone said it should be for ideological purposes. Illegal is whatever our government officials say it is.

Now having said all that, I do comprehend the argument made by police that the tests for sobriety that are used to determine if someone is driving while intoxicated by alcohol do not have a corresponding test for drug use.

Too many people associate pot with '60s counterculture

THERE IS NO real way to say someone is “legally” stoned. So the idea of punishing people for being impaired by pot is a dream. We’d be trusting the police and their judgment to figure out who has had “too much weed” to be out in public.

But somehow, I wonder if that argument will wind up carrying weight with the governor. Because a part of me wonders if rejecting this bill will be the governor’s attempt to appease the ideological critics who are going to be outraged by him for being so outspoken about wanting to back gay marriage and restrictions on firearms.

He hasn’t said he would do that. He’s not saying much of anything. “Open minded” is what he says he will be, which can mean just about anything.

So considering that anything could happen to this bill, we all have to keep in mind that people who want to view this as a matter of medicine and science might get their desires cast aside in the name of partisan politics.

WHICH MIGHT OFFEND people who don’t pay much attention to the workings of government and might think that all bills before the General Assembly and the governor are ruled on based on their merits.

But that ugly partisan factor always manages to creep its way into the process.

  -30-

Was that really so difficult?

It was encouraging to learn Tuesday that Sen. Mark Kirk’s recovery from a stroke he suffered earlier this year is progressing well.

The senator these days, in an image provided by his staff

I found it particularly interesting that Kirk will be participating in a research trial at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago during the next several weeks that is meant to improve his gait pattern (ie., the way he walks).

SOMEHOW, I SUSPECT the old Navy guy in Kirk will respond well to being challenged with a daily regimen of continuous walking over flat surfaces, on stairs and on a treadmill.

All of this is based off information provided by Kirk’s Senate staff, which provided an update to the Illinois Republican’s website on Tuesday to give us a three-paragraph statement from Dr. Richard L. Harvey, who is director of the Institute’s Center for Stroke Rehabilitation.

In that statement, we learn that Kirk has managed to walk just over 10 miles total since his stroke. Which is about as much as many of us manage to walk in a week.

But considering what Kirk endured, I’d say it’s a great accomplishment.

IF ANYTHING, SEEING this statement, along with a link providing more information about the research trial that Kirk will endure in the near future, was encouraging.

For his personal sake, he’s making progress toward recovery. For professional sake, we the people who elected him to a six-year term that runs through early 2017 have a right to know that only the most politically partisan amongst us should be thinking of trying to pick a replacement for him.

While I personally would be surprised to see him anywhere in Washington, D.C. anytime during the 2012 calendar year, it would seem for the long-run that we still have the senator whom a majority of the Illinois electorate picked two years ago.

And since he is in nearly daily contact with his staff, it would seem that they truly are acting on his behalf and with his instruction. We don’t have some rogue staffer playing “senator” with his boss’ title.

THE ONLY QUESTION I really have is, “Why did it have to take so much squabbling in order to get this kind of information.”

For it is pretty clear that the senator’s staff used their website to get this word out, largely to shut up that segment of the public that was starting to construct all kinds of conspiracy theories about the lack of health-related data concerning Kirk’s condition.

Considering that in the days right after Kirk suffered his stroke, he and his staff were very forthcoming about what was happening.

Then, we got week upon week of nothing. Which really did have some people starting to think that something was being covered up. (I’m sure some will still think these details from Tuesday are a lie, but some people are just determined to believe the worst, and should probably be disregarded by the masses).

LIKE I WROTE earlier, I expect Kirk to undergo a lengthy recovery process. We all realize that. I’m also fairly confident that to the degree it is possible for one man to do so, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is handling the interests of Illinois residents in the U.S. Senate.

I don’t think we’re being neglected that much – even though in recent days there have been news reports about how lacking in influence and charisma the Illinois congressional delegation is now, compared to past years.

I know some people have argued that Kirk should be allowed to recover in peace. Yet I’d argue that we elected Kirk to a public post on our behalf. I have no problem with him taking all the time he needs to recover. The political post will still be there when he’s ready to return.

He just needs to open up with the details so we know how long the wait is and so that the "conspiracy theory" types can find something else to obsess about. Just like he did on Tuesday, and hopefully will continue to do so while his recovery process continues.

  -30-