Foundations the new news trend -- for now

On the surface, Chicago-area news junkies ought to be celebrating these days.

At a time when some people are getting all worked up over the expected demise of newspapers and wondering where the information will come from (since most other mediums for distributing information rely heavily on newspapers to do the actual work of reporting information), there are two new organizations getting involved in the local news business.

ONE IS THE Chicago News Cooperative, which has gained a visible position for itself by producing two pages worth of stories twice a week for the New York Times. It gives the "Grey Lady" a way of claiming it is offering more local news in the editions of the Times that are sold in the Chicago area -- without having to produce it themselves.

Just a couple of weeks later, we got our introduction to Illinois Statehouse News, which is offering up coverage of activity at the Statehouse in Springpatch, along with state government activity in Chicago.

Both of these outfits have websites that they plan to use eventually to disseminate the stories they are reporting. For the time being, they're using the old medium of the printed page -- the news coop turning up in the Times and the statehouse news offering its stories to any newspaper that wants to publish them.

Their website literally tells publishers to "steal our stuff," so long as credit is given to the Illinois Statehouse News. Thus far, I have seen their stories published in Chicago's Southwest News-Herald and in the Times of Northwest Indiana (a Munster, Ind.-based publication whose circulation area spills over into Illinois -- including Chicago's 10th Ward).

BOTH OF THESE outfits are receiving financial support from foundations to help them cover the cost of paying a few reporter-types to actually dig up stories that don't rely on rewriting what is already in the newspapers (which is what most weblogs that claim to be news oriented actually amount to).

The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity is funding the statehouse news project, and some critics already are accusing the outfit of being created to put some sort of conservative spin on the information coming out of the Statehouse - although the group itself claims to be non-partisan and the people whom they have hired to work for them thus far have been experienced Statehouse reporters who aren't going to be inclined to go along with writing political propaganda passing for news.

The news cooperative is working, for now, as a partnership with WTTW-TV, Chicago's PBS affiliate, and is one of the many worthwhile causes receiving funds from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

They even have received some pro bono legal assistance from the prominent law firm of Winston & Strawn (which also provided downtown Chicago office space for the news coop in its early days of existence). These aren't exactly outfits being run off of a laptop computer set up on someone's kitchen table).

THE TWO OUTFITS thus far have done competent work. The statehouse news project has produced daily stories that adequately fill the space in newspapers around the ads, while the news coop drew some attention to itself by getting an interview with Cook County Board President Todd Stroger that helps illustrate how weak a grasp the man has these days on political reality.

Now as someone who has worked in the newsgathering business for the past couple of decades and who hopes to remain as a reporter-type in some fashion for the remainder of my working life, I find it encouraging that someone is willing to get involved in the funding of a news organization or two.

The reality is that the whole appeal of advertising on the Internet is that the ads are dirt cheap. It is highly unlikely that a website devoted to offering up serious news reporting would ever be able to survive on the income from ads (particularly if they are of the pop-up variety that most readers go out of their way to ignore).

I just wish the funding sources were a little bit more long-term than these charitable or ideological foundations.

FOR THE REALITY is that these are the kind of groups that are likely to offer up money for a year or two before deciding to move on to other projects.

Which means that the people who gave up jobs elsewhere (in particularm, the news coop is staffed with many people who gave up Chicago Tribune gigs to work there) had better hope that someone is developing a plan for financing in future years, or else they run the risk of seeing their "revolutionary" news organizations go down the toilet -- and unemployment in their future a couple of years from now.

Then again, sticking with their respective newspapers might also have been a risk if the printed publications continue to lose advertising revenue due to the struggling economy and the papers' websites remain incapable of replacing the revenue with its own advertising.

Either way, it's a crap shoot -- although I found it interesting in recent days that the Chicago Sun-Times stole a sports columnist from the Chicago Tribune, only to have the Trib sports section snatch away a beat writer who was covering the Chicago Bears.,

SOME PEOPLE HAVEN'T given up on the print product, which in some ways is a superior medium for the presentation of news. Seriously, reading a long story on a single printed page is much easier than scrolling through copy on a computer screen and having to jump from file to file to get to the end.

I don't know wht the future will hold, particularly after learning that the long-time trade journal of the newspaper industry (Editor & Publisher) is going out of business. I only find it encouraging that some people are trying to figure out the solution, rather than just assuming that something will naturally replace the printed word.

Otherwise, there will be a lot of empty websites in the future for those people who are determined to read their news off a screen rather than paper. That would mean a lot of seriously uninformed people.

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What warrants the Peace Prize, and what do the next three years hold for Obama?

Two years ago, Barack Obama was an obscure Illinois official who some people argued should not be considered a legitimate candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Now, he's the president who has escalated a war in Afghanistan who some people argue should not be considered a legitimate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

THE SAME PARTISAN criticism that came up a few months ago when the Nobel recipients were announced is going to recur Thursday, as this is the day that Obama is in Oslo to receive the gold medal and the prize worth about $1,400 in U.S. currency (he says he's giving the money to charity).

To people who don't like to have to think very much, Obama's circumstances make him an oddity to receive a peace prize -- even though Obama himself has justified his recently announced increase of troops by 30,000 in Afghanistan as part of an effort to end U.S. involvement in that conflict against extremists who claim to be motivated by Islam by the year 2011.

If Obama truly can pull off the idea of a brief increase followed up by a withdrawal of troops within two years, then perhaps we'd have to acknowledge that he really did bring an end to the war triggered by George W. Bush's desire to be a "wartime" president.

But as I have written before, I don't think this conflict is going to end so quick. I wouldn't be surprised if troops remain on Inauguration Day 2013,.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of Obama as we listen to him give a speech acknowledging receipt of the medal with the image of Alfred Nobel engraved on it?

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Obama fully intends to use his speech to address the so-called paradox of a man who escalates a war effort receiving a prize meant to reward world peace.

Obama's press secretary, Joe Gibbs, told the newspaper that he will address the issue head on, although he wouldn't say what would be said by Obama -- in large part because those words may very well be worked on and polished literally up to the moment Obama gives the speech in Oslo.

I'm wondering if Obama's address is going to amount to some sort of explanation that war and conflict are occasionally necessary in order to bring under control some force that threatens the peace of people at-large on Planet Earth.

IN SHORT, DEFEATING the Taliban, Al Qaida, or any force that believes the Koran justifies the violent means often employed by these groups to try to bring some sort of Islamic image to their society could be some sort of higher moral concept that should be supported.

I don't know how much I agree with that idea, although I will be the first to admit that if such forces ever did gain support or control within the United States, I'd probably be one of the first people to want to oppose them in large part because of the extent to which they try to control public thought (and rein in opposition).

But we have to keep in mind the fact that the people who voted to give Obama the Peace Prize did so in large part because they want to give him the moral high ground as he tries to impose his "vision" of a better society.

Could it be that that gives Republicans and Al Qaida something in common? Both have their qualms about what Obama would like to accomplish, and would gain politically if Obama were to fail.

A FUTURE OBAMA success would wind up making those Nobel people look like geniuses. And if he were to fail, it would set the stage for his opponents to get much of the blame for shooting down a vision that could have brought about a better society for all.

I will be waiting for word Thursday of what Obama has to say to justify his prize in part because it wouldn't be his only success of recent days.

Just this week, Democrats in the Senate made it known that they think they have reached a deal on a bill related to health care reform that they could vote on and approve in coming days.

That would then set the stage for the "conference committee," the process by which a House of Representatives' version of health care reform that was approved last month would be matched up with the Senate version, and the differences between the two would be ironed out.

THAT WOULD THEN result in a final version of health care reform being approved by Congress, and sent to Obama for his final approval.

In short, the partisan tactics of the Republicans would have failed to prevent Obama from getting something enacted into law that would try to significantly reduce the number of people living in our country without some form of health insurance.

When combined with the fact that he got a Supreme Court nominee of his choice approved by the Senate, and also received that Nobel Prize, it could turn out that the first year of an Obama presidency was somewhat successful.

So much for those whose ideological beliefs are such that they want us to believe that Obama has been a failure as a president.

IT MUST ALSO seem like quite a hectic year for Obama, considering that just two years ago he was the Illinois legislator who some people thought couldn't win a single primary -- considering that he was going up against names such as "Clinton," "Edwards" and "Richardson." Even I must confess to wondering in those days before the Iowa caucuses whether the Obama campaign was merely the 21st Century equivalent of Paul Simon's bid for the presidency in 1988 (taken seriously nowhere except Illinois).

It makes me wonder how chaotic the next three years will be -- and if things will be crazed enough to make this first year seem downright tame.

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Reforming reapportionment not easy task

I have no doubt they're well intentioned, but the proposals being put forth by the League of Women Voters and other activist groups to reform the way in which legislative and congressional district boundaries are drawn isn't going to change a thing.

The problem isn't with procedures. It's with people. And in the end, partisan greed will overcome many people who get involved in any way with the political process.

THE ACTIVISTS, WHO have the support of former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins (the guy who has George Ryan as a notch on his prosecutorial belt), are pushing for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution.

They're going the route of bypassing the Legislature. If they can get a substantial number of valid signatures on petitions, they can put a question on the ballot for the Nov. 2, 2010 elections on whether their proposed reform should become the new way in which districts are drawn.

To use the good government rhetoric, the drawing of political boundaries would be put in the hands of "independents" (a.k.a., those people to wishy washy to just admit their ideological leanings make them a Democrat or Republican).

These people would work together in a bipartisan manner to draw districts that would not be obsessed with clumping together voters sympathetic to the interests of the incumbent legislators.

THAT ULTIMATELY IS their motivation. They look at the statistic saying that 98 percent of incumbent legislators win on Election Day, and see something abhorrent. I see so many other advantages incumbents have that I doubt this one point would make much of a difference.

The only real way we could ensure significant turnover would be if our legislatures and Congress were to follow the lead of Mexico when it comes to picking presidents -- one six-year term, and you're out. No re-election possible.

I don't think any sane person in our country would want to go that route, because there is some benefit to experience -- particularly when it comes to weaving one's way through the legislative process.

My real problem with this so-called reform is because is relies supposedly on political "independents." Like I hinted earlier, I have always been wary of people who go out of their way to attach an "I" to their name, rather than a "D," an "R," a "G" or any other "third-party" label.

IT USUALLY TURNS out that these people have some pet issue that they want to put above all else, and the candidates they pick in various elections are usually of the same political party. The number of people who truly are independent of the current two-party political set-up we have in this country is so small as to be insignificant.

So the reform consists of putting reapportionment of political districts into the hands of people who are likely to favor officials supportive of their pet causes. It's only human nature. I don't think this panel would be any more worthy of putting together political maps than the current people -- the Illinois General Assembly, under the guidance of the Illinois Constitution.

Under the current set-up, the Legislature every decade redoes the map for Congressional districts and their own districts. They get to decide what boundaries will look like, and legislative leaders are known for trying to protect the interests of their own partisan bases.

The idea is that Democrats come from Chicago, with Republicans from the rural area. It used to be thought that suburban areas also were the province of the GOP, but in recent years Democratic legislators have been able to win in those areas.

WHICH IS WHY Republican officials like to draw districts that isolate the suburbs as much as possible from the city so as to protect their interests, while Democratic officials like to stretch the city influence into the suburbs as far as possible out of the theory that it's all one metropolitan area.

The issue that seems to irritate the reformers the most is the "lottery" that takes place in cases where the Legislature is unable to come up with a map and their own bipartisan commission makes no progress.

That is when both parties get put into a bowl (or once, a hat once worn by Abraham Lincoln himself), and the one that gets picked by the Illinois secretary of state gets to stack the commission to draw a map in accordance with its political wishes.

That is why the 1980s were a good decade for Democrats, while Republicans were able to gain influence in the 1990s, only to lose it in this decade.

BY 2012, WE'RE going to go through this process again, if there is no change as a result of next year's electinos.

The problem is human nature. Remember that when the drawing was written into the Illinois Constitution in the 1970s, it was seen as a "reform" measure. It was thought that political people would be so fearful of an all-or-nothing drawing that could leave their political party with "nothing" that they would break down and work together to draw a "fair" map.

Instead, what we have is a situation where our political people have partisan greed -- they see they have a chance to get "everything" and leave their political opponents with "nothing." It's too much of an opportunity to pass up to waste time on "bipartisan cooperation."

Like I wrote earlier, I wonder if the so-called independents would wind up bringing their own special concerns to the table. I don't trust them on this issue any more than I trust the political people.

IT ALSO INTRIGUED me to read a commentary published elsewhere earlier this week denouncing this proposal on the grounds that it really is a Democratic plot to seize control of the Legislature while under the disguise of "good government."

This conspiracy theory is based on the idea that the state Supreme Court would break a tie if an eight-member bipartisan board of independents truly couldn't come up with a map. As things stand now, the state's high court is majority Democratic and the chief justice is the former chief judge of the Cook County criminal court.

I don't know that I buy that, because the court goes out of its way to rotate its leadership around its members, meaning that the GOP also gets its moments of influence.

But it does reinforce the idea (accurately, I think) that the concept of "independent" can be deceptive.

IN THE END, there may not be any way to seriously overcome the influences that people have in their lives if they were asked to draw the political boundaries. Some of you may go so far as to suggest that computers be programmed to draw maps that spit out legislative districts of equal population without regard to who would represent those people.

As far as I'm concerned, forget that idea. Because then we have to get into the ideological pinnings of the people programming the computers.

What may sound harmless to some is downright radical to others.

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Feds want a conviction, any conviction

It was with interest that I read the news item published Monday by the Chicago Tribune's website -- federal prosecutors are likely to come up with a new indictment against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to try to ensure that the "guilty" verdict they are desperately seeking will not result in a case that the Supreme Court of the United States has to reject.

Blagojevich and his fans (they are few, but I must admit I am not as negative about his behavior the way that some in our society seem to be these days) have encouraged talk of "honest services" crimes that they say unjustly crinminalizes government behavior.

THEY WANT TO create the perception that any conviction against Blagojevich that might arise from his trial (likely to occur during the late summer and early autumn of 2010 -- right before Election Day) is inherently unjust.

I'm not sure how much this idea should be applied to Blagojevich's actions, but I must admit to seeing cases in recent years where government activity that didn't seem to meet someone's ideological beliefs wound up being criminalized when a prosecutor was willing to get involved.

At worst, people are being punished for not living up to a criminal prosecutor's ideological beliefs. At best, people are being punished for having their government incompetence classified as criminal.

It was along this very issue that federal prosecutors on Monday said they plan to file a written explanation of how they plan to address the "honest services" issue in Blagojevich's case.

THAT NEW FILING could result in a new indictment. In short, different charges that Blagojevich must go on trial for.

Some people might say that this is merely a prosecutor clarifying the criminal charges against a defendant -- which isn't unusual. Charges whose substance was weak might be tossed out, or reduced to charges for which the evidence more clearly justifies a vote to convict by whichever dozen citizens ultimately wind up losing a couple months of their lives in order to determine whether or not former Gov. "Milorod" is "guilty" as charged.

What caught my attention, though, was the claim by prosecutors that this change in charges, should it occur, will not throw off their schedule one bit.

They still say they want to begin the process of picking a jury for Blagojevich by June, even though the former governor has tried legal maneuvers (unsuccessfull, thus far) to get any trial delayed a few months.

PERHAPS UNTIL AFTER Nov. 2?

Could it be that Blagojevich isn't in the mood to have his life's legacy become that he was the guy whose name got used as a campaign tactic by Republicans across Illinois to try to snatch votes away from Democratic opponents?

I would think any change in charges would be reason enbough to cause a delay in trial. But prosecutors seem determined to get this process going. They want to be able to ratchet up another conviction onto their prosecutorial records.

For those who think I'm being cynical about their motives, all I can say is that I have encountered enough prosecutors at both the state and federal levels to know that the ones who aren't serving a couple of years as an "ASA" or "A-USA" to give themselves a line on the resume to bolster their future campaigns for elective office are doing so because they have the "fighter pilot" mentality -- they like compiling a list of convictions.

IT'S ALMOST LIKE a batting average for prosecutors -- "Prosecutor A" has XX convictions on his record, just like a fighter pilot would tell you how many "enemy" airplanes he has shot down.

I'm sure someone within the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago will gain professionally from a Blagojevich conviction. Just look at what the conviction of former Gov. Otto Kerner did for his prosecutor -- James R. Thompson went on to become Illinois governor himself, kicking off a string of 26 straight years of GOP governors in Illinois that didn't end until Milorod came along in 2002.

What also makes this intriguing in the timing.

For the Supreme Court of the United States is going to hear arguments related to the "honest services" issue on Tuesday in Washington.

THERE ARE SEVERAL cases pending before the nation's high cvourt (including the appeal of the conviction of former Chicago Sun-Times owner Conrad Black) where someone is arguing that the idea of criminal punishmenbt for someone because their business venture was not successful is unjust.

This possible restructuring of Milorod's criminal charges amounts to trying to keep a serious substantive issue from interfering with a prosecutor's ability to get a criminal conviction due to Blagojevich's boorish behavior.

Ultimately, the minds of many people are going to be satisfied only by a conviction against Blagojevich -- not that it matters much to them what the conviction is for. So long as Blagojevich has several more years of legal appeals in his future filedd from within a prison somewhere, they will be happy.

And if the tone of that statement comes across like I think Blagojevich's critics are a little too tightly wound for their own good, you'd be correct.

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We're back!

The technological glitches that managed to knock my laptop computer out of whack and make filing copy for the Chicago Argus and its sister weblog, The South Chicagoan, such a difficulty appear to have been resolved.

In short, I dug into my wallet and coughed up the cash for a new laptop (my first in over seven years).

SO NOW, I mourn the death of my Toshiba Satellite model 1405, which served its purpose well in terms of my being able to grind out readable copy for many different news outlets and publications. I'm still trying to adapt to my new machine (a Gateway).

But the bottom line is that I should now be able to resume my daily schedule of commentary and analysis of the events of the world, as perceived from the shores of Lake Michigan between Whiting, Ind., and Evanston, Ill.

Thank you for your patience in putting up with my erratic posting schedule of recent weeks, although as best I can tell the readership at this site was not significantly impacted. For that, I am grateful.

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What constitutes corruption?

At what point is a government official guilty of criminal behavior, rather than just stupidity or laziness?

To me, it is apparent that many people have no problem considering “laziness” and “criminality” to be the same, although what I really suspect is that some people are willing to use the criminal justice system to benefit their partisan political beliefs.

THERE ARE SOME Republicans who would love it if they could somehow declare the Democratic Party to be a criminal enterprise, and that somehow anyone not agreeing in full with their beliefs is somehow worthy of a few years of incarceration.

I also have no doubt there are some Democrats who are nitwit enough to think just the opposite situation should be true.

Then, there may very well be those people whose knowledge (or lack thereof) about the workings of government make them distrust it to the point where they want to automatically believe that somehow, it all has to be a scam.

I have always found such an attitude to be a sad commentary about our own society that we have otherwise rational people who want to start locking political people up for what amounts to no rational reason.

THIS KIND OF attitude is going to arouse the suspicions of all those people who are ever so eager to have Rod Blagojevich sent to prison.

The man was not popular amongst his government colleagues during his six years as Illinois governor in large part because he tried to treat those colleagues as though they were cretins who somehow ought to be irrelevant to the process.

So when federal prosecutors came up with a case they think severe enough to warrant a criminal trial some time during 2010, political people were more than willing to pile on – to the point that they become so obsessed with the “I” word that Blagojevich got a last laugh on his now-former colleagues by saddling the people of Illinois with Roland Burris as a U.S. senator.

A part of me has also wondered for years how much of the ill will that is still felt toward former Gov. George Ryan is due to the fact that on issues ranging from the death penalty to U.S./Cuba relations to government spending (remember “Illinois First”), he was willing to ignore the desires and beliefs of the conservative ideologue portion of the Republican Party that theoretically should have been among his allies.

THAT DISGUST WAS so intense that it caused people to overstate the role that Ryan personally had in the deaths of the six Willis children in a 1994 automobile accident, and still causes them to become irate at the recently-expressed thought by his attorneys that he might be entitled to a portion of his pension earned from serving in government for more than three decades.

I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Tribune this week ran a significant story detailing about a potential “threat” to the upcoming Blagojevich trial – one that might seriously put a crimp in the ability of federal prosecutors to imply that Blagojevich’s egomaniacal behavior as governor is worthy of being labeled criminal.

The Supreme Court (in D.C., not Springpatch) is considering cases that could require more detailed explanations of what constitutes “honest services fraud,” which in some ways amounts to a political equivalent of the RICO statute so often used to fight organized crime.

“Honest service fraud” charges often amount to saying that a government official’s bad behavior hurt the public so badly that the result ought to be criminal. Behavior by politicians involving contributions, gifts and donations often don’t literally qualify as bribery.

SO PROSECUTORS USE the more vaguely worded statute to justify a trial. Some legal minds (including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – it’s not often that I agree with him) have gone so far to say that prosecutors are misusing such vague statutes to bolster their own criminal prosecution records.

Now I’m not about to predict how the Supreme Court of the United States is going to come down on this issue, although a part of me would get a laugh if the efforts of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago to prosecute Blagojevich gets hampered (if not outright fowled up) by having to more clearly define why the former governor’s activity ought to be illegal.

And I know there are people in this state who would want to riot if the high court ruled in such a manner that Ryan were suddenly given a legitimate issue upon which to try to appeal his criminal convictions.

Not that the issue is connected to just these two former governors. Ultimately, covering a trial involving government corruption involves having to define what constitutes a bribe – because rarely is the matter so clearly defined.

I STILL REMEMBER a case from the summer of 1997 when I was a reporter-type in Springfield and officials with Management Services of Illinois were on trial in U.S. District Court in central Illinois for the contract they had with the Illinois Department of Public Aid.

Prosecutors said the private company’s work was worth little to the state, particularly the millions the agency received. They also cited the fact that MSI’s executives were friendly with Public Aid officials to the point of offering up gifts ranging from steaks and lobsters to trips to gambling casinos.

There was nothing resembling a direct connection between any single gift and any single payment on the state contract. Yet a jury went along with prosecutors and came back with convictions on many (but not all) of the charges. There is a part of me that thought then, and still thinks today whenever I recall the case, that what these officials were guilty of was little more than being too generous with their gifts.

In short, they acted a little too stupidly in public. Which may also be the very act that Blagojevich is guilty of, nothing more.

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He can’t please anybody

President Barack Obama is expected Tuesday to inform the world that the United States is sending another 30,000 troops (that figure comes from the Associated Press) to Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the military forces already there in the war against extremist elements of Islam.

Which means shortly thereafter, we’re going to hear all the pundits from all the different factions lambasting Obama for his foolish/halfhearted/immoral act. Take your pick which term you want to use.

THEY’RE ALL GOING to be spewed out at various times.

In theory, Obama is giving the military what it wants in terms of trying to put together an effort that could “win” the war that has been taking place there for some nine years now. This conflict has easily become the longest war the U.S. military has ever been involved with.

Yet Obama was the man who was chosen as president in part because of a significant faction of voters who believed that he would do everything possible to get U.S. forces out of the Middle East (as in Afghanistan and Iraq).

There will be people who say that if we wanted an increased effort, we might as well have put Sarah Palin in the role of being the woman who took John McCain’s pulse every morning.

NOW I VOTED for Obama in the ’08 elections and by and large, I don’t regret it. I also am one of those people who thought it admirable that Obama could claim during the presidential campaign season that he had always been opposed to the United States getting involved in full-scale war when it comes to the Middle East.

Yet all I can say is that if there really are people who are disillusioned with Obama now because of his actions that will become official Tuesday night, I’d have to say they are incredibly naïve.

I never operated under the thought that a vote for Obama was a vote for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces.

Personally, I believe that even if Obama takes every possible chance to get troops out bit by bit, there still will be a military presence in the area come January 2013 – the scheduled end of his first term.

MAYBE IF HE gets two full terms, he can say troops will be out by the end of his presidency. Then again, considering the ongoing tensions of the Middle East with conflicts whose underlying reasons go back thousands of years, maybe he can’t.

I don’t know how this situation will turn out, other than to say there is so much potential for things to go wrong no matter what actions are taken by U.S. officials.

So when I sit back and listen to the various commentators spew their rhetoric (be honest, the conservatives aren’t going to support this added military effort because they don’t want history to record that Obama settled the war that was started by George W. Bush), I’m going to have to try hard to restrain myself from chuckling.

So much of the trash talk from all sides will be pure nonsense.

IT WILL BE pure partisan politics, which is the element that I always have thought gets in the way of the ability of government officials to accomplish much of anything for the public good.

The truth is that this is an inherited mess, and there’s a good chance the Obama administration will not be capable of coming to a swift resolution. If they could, then perhaps Obama would be worthy of that Nobel Prize he received earlier this year.

Wait and see is all we can do.

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