Not even my alma mater is safe these days

I have often heard my mother say she is thankful both my brother and I have completed our college educations.

It’s not that she’s pleased we went to college (although she is). It is that she is grateful neither of us is still hanging around college campuses, which in recent years she has come to see as places that attract too many strange people.

HER MOST RECENT round of worrying came last week after she first learned of the quintuple slayings at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. The thought of a former student (and one who actually graduated with honors) losing control of himself and opening fire on a hall full of students has her creeped out.

It also has my aunt (her sister) upset, because my cousin is an NIU alum. The two of them have speculated how much worse things could have been, if we had had family on that rural Illinois campus last week.

Now it is easy for me to dismiss these concerns as just the nitpicking of a couple of people who are over-reacting. But apparently, they aren’t alone.

Northern Illinois University police officials have gone out of their way to make it clear that nothing they could have done could have prevented the incident from occurring.
Not even my alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, is as secure as we students liked to think of it, or as it appears in this wintry illustration. University officials recently tried to reassure students, parents and alumni that they have security measures in place, but cannot guarantee that such incidents would not occur there. Photograph provided by Illinois Wesleyan University.

OFFICIALS AT OTHER universities are feeling the need these days to assure their students, parents and alumni that their campuses are as safe as any place could possibly be.

How else to explain the e-mail I received Friday from officials at Illinois Wesleyan University – the Bloomington-based college from which I graduated some 21 years ago.

University President Richard Wilson (whom I have never met because he was not at IWU back when I was a student there) and university officials felt the need to include me on their list of e-mail recipients who received a message telling me how the Northern Illinois University incident impacts colleges everywhere.

Now I’m sure the current student body and parents of those students were the primary recipients, since I am not a significant financial contributor to my alma mater (why I don’t is another subject altogether) and I have not even set foot on the campus for even a brief visit in nearly nine years.

SO IT IS nice that I could contact the university chaplain if I feel the need for spiritual support in coping with the news out of DeKalb. But I doubt I will take them up on the offer.

What caught my attention about Wilson’s mass e-mailing was the portion that basically told me Illinois Wesleyan could not have prevented a similar incident from occurring there.

The key, Wilson wrote, was that university officials in Bloomington and on other college campuses, “remain vigilant in our efforts to attend to the welfare of our campus community.” He also pointed out the portion of the university website that provided a summary of the IWU emergency response plan, and just how students, faculty and staff would be notified in the event of an actual traumatic experience.

The place we students used to mockingly call “Wesley-land” and think of as our own little academic island in the cornfields of central Illinois could just as easily have a former student wander in off the streets and pull a similar incident.

I HONESTLY DO not know how I would have handled such an incident happening in my proximity when I was a college student. I’d like to think the level headed demeanor I developed as a reporter for dealing with coverage of crime and violence would have kicked in a few years sooner than it did.

But nothing of the magnitude of what happened at Northern Illinois University, or last year at Virginia Tech, occurred at the IWU of my memories.

The closest thing to a violent crime during my college years was during my first year when David Hendricks was arrested in 1983 and charged with the brutal slayings of his wife and three kids. He was convicted, spent a couple of years in prison before the conviction was overturned, then acquitted on re-trial.

The slayings of the Hendricks family officially remain an unsolved crime for the Bloomington police department.

BUT IT WAS easy for us students to ignore that because it happened in town, and to our college-kid arrogance, it just didn’t matter. We envisioned some sort of magical force field at campus’ edge to keep us safe.

And insofar as the one student-oriented act that got national attention, it wasn’t even us. I remember sitting in a college dormitory trying to study when I heard the word that at Illinois State University, the Normal, Ill.-based college whose campus was about a five-minute drive from ours, students were protesting what they perceived as excessive force being used against them by local police.

That protest turned from a totally legal march through Normal into a rampage where students committed vandalism against public buildings and caused several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.

That one was too easy for us IWU kids to laugh off as a bunch of goofs run amok.

I REALLY DON’T want to believe that times and people have changed that much during the past two decades since I was in Bloomington and my brother did a stint in Urbana at the University of Illinois.

I honestly find it most comforting to just acknowledge that bad things can happen, and there’s no way to absolutely protect oneself from harm.

After all, if there is truly no safe place, then there is no point to worrying. Precautions can make it less likely that someone will put themselves in harm’s way. But, personally, I’d rather not have to go through life with extra worries on my mind. I’d rather just try to live life to the fullest, without having to restrict myself out of fear of what could happen.

Also, a part of me thinks it is probably the height of arrogance for anyone to seriously think they can find somewhere to go where they can be absolutely free of violence or harm.

IT ALMOST SOUNDS like those people think they are too good to be hurt, while people on the college campuses where traumatic events did occur somehow deserve what they got because of where they happened to be at the time.

College campuses officials and security are not alone in having feelings of insecurity. In the normally tranquil southwest suburb of Tinley Park, there was a quintuple slaying earlier this month at the shopping center located just blocks from my mother’s residence.

Residents there are still going through their own grief. In fact, a prayer service Sunday at the Christian Life Center gave locals their chance to try to overcome their feelings of forboding.
Nobody deserves to have to go through what happened in DeKalb or Tinley Park, not the students or faculty on campus or suburban shoppers who are going to have to wonder when (not if) such an incident will again occur in their lives.

THE FAMILIES OF the five students or the five women shopping at the Lane Bryant store who were killed shouldn’t have had to be put through the grief of losing a loved one just at the point when they were starting to get near the prime of their lives and potentially go on to make something of themselves. Those families are going to spend the rest of their lives wondering what could have been.

I even feel sympathy for Robert Kazmierczak, the father of Steven, whose emotional demons got the best of him and caused him to build up the small arsenal of pistols and a shotgun that resulted in last week’s shooting rampage.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Steven Kazmierczak these days, we have to concede that Robert (who is not in the best of health these days) lost his son, and in a way that will prevent him from doing much in the way of public mourning.

Just as much as anyone else affected by the DeKalb shootings, Robert’s emotional and physical well-being deserves to be in our prayers.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: My alma mater went out of its way to reassure me that they were doing (http://www2.iwu.edu/CurrentNews/newsreleases08/news_niu_208.shtml) everything possible to prevent a similar occurrence from getting out of control at the Bloomington campus. I guess the alumni association hasn’t given up on getting a sizable donation from me someday.

Here’s a semi-competent analysis (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/15/illinois-shooting-tragedy_n_86851.html) of the news coverage generated of the Northern Illinois University slayings. While no one has seriously offended me with their approach, I also haven’t seen anything that makes me think somebody will win their Pulitzer Prize for their work the last few days.

"Hispanic Hoosiers" who will visit New York are also representing Chicago Latinos

When Puerto Rican officials in New York City honor Indiana this summer, they are going to expose what has always been the state’s paradox.

In theory, Indiana’s primary city is also its capital city – Indianapolis ought to be the mecca of that rare breed of human being that willingly calls itself, “Hoosiers.” Yet the engine that in some ways provides what little significance Indiana offers comes from the northwest counties.

YOU KNOW, THE area on the South Side surrounding the Calumet River in Illinois that swings east across State Line Road to encompass a bi-state section known locally as the Calumet Region (the Region, for short).

The cynic in me would say the only part of Indiana that matters is the portion of the Chicago area that spills over the state line into Lake and Porter counties. With nearly 20 percent of the state’s overall population of 6.31 million, the area would be a hefty city in and of itself – if only the people of those counties had ever incorporated themselves into one municipality, rather than splitting themselves up into several small cities and towns.

The fact that Lake and Porter counties (Hammond, Gary and Valparaiso, for those who are more comfortable referring to cities instead of counties) are an extension of the Chicago area means, among other things, that the bulk of any Latino population in Indiana is to be found there.

Scenes like this woman wearing a dress in a Puerto Rican flag motif during the 2005 parade in New York are likely to be repeated in this year's parade June 8. Photograph provided by Puerto Rican Day Parade.

So when officials organizing the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York (it’s actually a several-days long series of events honoring Boricuan culture) decided to pay tribute to the state of Indiana as part of this year’s festivities, it turns out that the bulk of the delegation that will represent the state is really a batch of Chicago-area people.

THE PUERTO RICAN Parade and Cultural Organization of Northwest Indiana is taking the lead in organizing the state’s delegation, which will participate in the New York parade on June 8, then return to Indiana for their own parade this summer on July 20.

In a sense, New York gets to be a rehearsal for the Indiana version.

Personally, my first reaction to learning of the heavy Chicago-area presence to the Hoosier delegation for a Puerto Rican parade was to wonder why any Mexicans would be willing to participate.

Northwest Indiana’s Hispanic community is still predominantly Mexican-oriented and centered around East Chicago, Ind., where Mexican immigrants who decades ago worked in Chicago South Side and Gary, Ind., steel mills turned to the Illinois-Indiana border town for a place to find affordable housing.

THE TOWN REMAINS a hotbed for Latinos because it is a place where both Español y English are spoken. These days, 51.6 percent of the town’s total population of 31,366 people identify themselves as Hispanic.

Like many other aspects of life, Hispanic Hoosiers are becoming both larger and more diverse. One can no longer presume that the Spanish-speaking person who maintains an address in Indiana comes from places like Jalisco or Michoacan.

He could just as easily have his ties to San Juan and have concerns about whether his native island should someday be a state or remain a commonwealth (only the most delusional of Puerto Ricans seriously believe independence is the way to go).

In the Calumet Region, the Puerto Rican community became big enough to warrant its own group in 1996, and the local parade became an annual summer event shortly thereafter.

OTHER TOWNS IN Lake County, Ind., also have some Spanish-speaking populations, and the total is 13.9 percent Latino of the 494,202 total people who live there (almost 10 percent of the state’s population is in one county).

The state tribute is a regular part of the annual parade in New York. Although this is the first time Indiana was chosen, each year a state is singled out by parade organizers as a way of showing that Puerto Rican people are not restricted purely to a Spanish-speaking barrio in New York.

They’re everywhere.

That’s a good thing. All people need to realize the Latino population is going to be a significant part of the United States. Instead of trying to figure out how to deport it (that wouldn’t work for Puerto Ricans, since they are U.S. citizens by birth), we need to celebrate its contributions to the American Way of life.

AND IT IS not just inner city neighborhoods where Spanish is becoming an accepted second language. Even places like Indiana (which was once a hotbed for Ku Klux Klan activity outside of the South) are seeing increases in Latino populations.

Although the Latino populations in Indiana made up only 4.8 percent of the overall state as of 2006, that figure likely is obsolete. Between 1999 and 2004, the number of Hispanic people living in Marion County (Indianapolis and its suburbs) more than tripled from just over 13,500 to 47,000.

How accurate that figure is remains uncertain. Part of the problem is the fact that Latino populations can be hard to count in that some elements of the society aren’t particularly interested in being accounted for (in the past, many European ethnicities experienced the same dilemma). Indiana officials themselves concede that the official U.S. Census Bureau count of 214,000 Hispanic Hoosiers in 2000 is too low. They say 242,518 is probably a more honest figure.

But despite the growth (a nearly 350 percent boost in five years is tremendous), there’s no denying that the heart of the Hoosier Hispanic community is in the Calumet Region, where officials estimate there are just under 68,700 Latinos in Lake County, Ind., alone – about 30 percent of the state’s total.

THAT IS WHY it will be largely a Chicago-area contingent of people representing the Land of Quayle come parade time in New York City.

It will be interesting to see the Boricuan community as they represent both their home state and their regional home. Just because they live on the “wrong” side of State Line Road does not mean we should deny them their place among the areas that, when put together, comprise the Chicago metropolitan area.

State borders are not always absolute demarcations. Consider Illinois, where the St. Louis area crosses the Mississippi River to include Madison and St. Clair counties. Even outside of municipalities like Alton, Belleville and Brooklyn (the Illinois town, not the New York borough), there are life-long Illinois residents who associate themselves with the Missouri city rather than our own glorious metropolis.

Places like Gary, Ind., and East St. Louis, Ill., have always struck me as carbon copies of each other, and not just because both have seen better days in decades past. Both are small cities that have to look across a state line (in the case of Gary, they also have to squint through pollution caused by still-operating steel mills) to see the focal point of their metro existence.

IT ALSO WILL be good to see a Chicago-area presence in the New York Puerto Rican parade, which should not be thought of as just a day for the hired help to inconvenience the rest of us with their partying.

It is a day to celebrate yet another culture that is merging into the overall picture that makes up the modern-day American Way of life.

In that sense, the Puerto Rican Parade in New York (and similar events held across the country, including June 14 in Chicago) is a day when we can all be honorary Puerto Ricans.

It’s just like St. Patrick’s Day, only we don’t have to slosh our way through all that disgusting green-dyed beer.

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What point would there be to a parade if there weren't a few pretty ladies wearing sashes, tiaras and form-fitting gowns, such as these girls who participated in the 2006 parade. Photograph provided by Puerto Rican Day Parade.

EDITOR’S NOTES: Puerto Rican activists in the Indiana portion of the Chicago area have their own cultural festivities (http://www.officialpuertoricanparade.com/) scheduled for this summer.

“Hoosier” and “Hispanic” are not mutually exclusive terms anymore. The Latino population (http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?id=16567) in Indiana is rapidly rising.

Indiana state officials concede (http://www.in.gov/ichla/conference/population.html/) their Latino count is off by a few tens of thousands of people.

For those whose only knowledge of the Puerto Rican Day parade is the “Seinfeld” episode where Kramer wound up stomping all over a Puerto Rican flag to try to put out a fire, the event (http://www.nationalpuertoricandayparade.org/index.html) is much more involved than a single parade.

NOTES FOR INK-STAINED WRETCHES: Sun-Times Co. newspapers ought to split

The parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times has hired a firm to help determine just what is a reasonable price to ask when it puts itself up for sale later this year. Hopefully, this means we’re another step towards the breakup of the Sun-Times from all the suburban newspapers it has acquired in the past two decades.

For the record, Lazard Ltd. is studying ways to make the company more profitable. But stockholders of the Sun-Times Media Group have made no secret of the fact they want to be bought out – thereby ending their 14-year-long stewardship of the Sun-Times and imposing the fifth sale of the newspaper in the past quarter century.

THE COMPANY THAT once was an international media conglomerate known as Hollinger and run by now-convicted Conrad Black would love it if someone would come along and buy the whole package intact. My understanding is that the federal government will hit someone with a large tax bill if the company is sold off piecemeal.

That tax hit is the reason why the Chicago newspapers were held on to for so long, while other pieces like the London Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post were sold off years ago.

But I’m skeptical that anyone is going to want to take on the nearly dozen daily newspapers along with Pioneer Press, a Glenview-based company that publishes nearly 70 editions of a weekly newspaper.

Is this attitude the future for the Chicago Sun-Times? Illustration provided by Radar.

FOR THE INDIVIDUAL newspapers and the people who still read them, a break-up would be a good move. The concept that the Sun-Times will no longer be a sister newspaper to the SouthtownStar, the Herald-News of Joliet or the Naperville Sun (just to name a few titles) makes so much sense because the idea that these papers were considered all one unit with the Sun-Times was always an awkward fit.

Those newspapers often circulate in distinct portions of the Chicago area with little overlap. Yet the story-sharing measures that Sun-Times management has tried to impose on its papers has often resulted in newspapers that are filled with junk that is not directly relevant to the people actually reading any one edition.

They also often produce newspapers that look too similar to each other. There are times when the only difference between the Sun-Times and the SouthtownStar (both of which I read daily – I still miss the Star Newspapers, which I wrote for some twenty-something years ago) is the page size. Story selection is virtually identical.

THE LAST THING a newspaper should ever be is generic, and that is what has happened to the newspapers owned by Sun-Times company. If sold off, newspapers like the News Sun of Waukegan and the old Gary Post-Tribune (which now is headquartered in Merrillville, Ind.) will get back a sense of freedom and likely will come to view their ownership under Sun-Times as an aberration – if not an outright absurd era.

Splitting up the company makes sense from a business standpoint because the smaller circulation titles are likely to attract more attention from buyers. Smaller newspapers are often preferred because they are less expensive to publish and require less gross income in order to achieve a profit.

That’s why the Sun-Times itself has an uncertain fate. Anybody who buys it will have to go into head-to-head competition with the Chicago Tribune. Unlike a small market newspaper where there is no direct competition and one does not have to pay as much attention to editorial quality, anybody who buys the Sun-Times is going to have to come up with a serious plan to improve its quality.

Quality means money being spent. Most newspaper companies these days are run by corporate drones who don’t have a clue how to boost quality or increase circulation. The Sun-Times is not a challenge for the weak-hearted.

NEVERTHELESS, I CAN’T help but think there will be a buyer.

Somebody with a desire to try to influence Chicago’s economy, culture and politics is bound to be willing to take on ownership of the Bright One. After all, buying the Sun-Times is going to be significantly cheaper than trying to buy the Tribune if (and when) real estate developer Sam Zell ever decides to put that newspaper on the auction block.

Some people remember Yusef Jackson, the Chicago businessman whose father is a prominent civil rights leader and whose older brother is a member of Congress. His business partners made an effort years ago to place a bid to try to purchase the Sun-Times.

IN MANY WAYS, he is exactly the kind of person who would be likely to purchase the Sun-Times. Getting the newspaper now (possibly at a “bargain” price due to the business trauma it underwent from Black and his ilk) would give Jackson and his business partners a sense of Chicago clout apart from what he gets from family ties to his father and brother.

What kind of newspaper would Jackson and his business partners publish?

They own one other media property – the pop culture magazine “Radar.” That publication lists Yusef D. Jackson on its masthead as the “chairman” of Integrity Multimedia Co.

THE MAGAZINE OCCASIONALLY does political reporting and media criticism. It has a harder edge than the now-defunct “George,” the political fluff magazine published by John F. Kennedy Jr., before his death in an airplane crash.

But celebrity coverage seems to be its purpose for existing. The one time I plunked down $3.99 for a copy, I got a magazine whose lead story was about Hollywood stars who have had cosmetic surgery.

The cover for that issue? It was a picture of movie actress (and former Mrs. Tom Cruise) Nicole Kidman, altered in ways to make her appear to be more well endowed than either Dolly Parton or Barbie.

What other stories are taking place these days in the realm of news media in Chicago and the Midwestern U.S.?

THE WHOLE (media) WORLD IS WATCHING (Madison, Wis.): I have never been to Madison, Wis. I’m not a fan of the University of Wisconsin. Something about the Wisconsin Legislature seems too “goo-goo” for it to be taken seriously.

But I have always been a fan of the Capital Times newspaper, in part because it is one of the few newspapers in this country that deserves to be called “liberal” media. I mean that as a positive.

Now, everybody in the news racket is going to be rooting for the news types in Madison, who in mid-April are going to quit publishing as a daily newspaper. They will continue to publish weekly supplements in the competing Wisconsin State Journal (similar to how the now-defunct Star Newspapers still publishes a twice-weekly tabloid section in the paper formerly known as the Daily Southtown).

BUT THE IDENTITY of the Capital Times will continue to exist as a website. The company is putting its efforts into maintaining an Internet presence that will provide detailed news coverage of the Wisconsin capital city/college town.

Success in Madison could be the light at the end of the dark tunnel that many newspaper companies are staring into these days. If they fail to be profitable enough, then we have to hope that the folks at Google accept the fact they’re going to have to start paying people to generate quality content.

After all, what good is a search engine if the web sites they’re searching are filled with nothing but junk?

‘WORLD’S GREATEST WEEKLY’ RESURRECTED: The Chicago Defender this week officially began its new publishing schedule. It now comes out only on Wednesdays.

The paper has a similar look and feel – even though at 48 pages it was 20 pages thicker than the final “Daily” Defender published Feb. 8. At first read, the paper has significantly less syndicated junk. I only noticed a couple of Associated Press features and photographs.

Of course, it is still the same small staff. It looks like their reporters are going to be worked until they drop – unless a serious hiring binge upgrades the newspaper’s talent pool.

One plus. The headline of the first weekly paper was “World’s Greatest Weekly,” which was the newspaper’s motto back in the old days when it could legitimately claim to be one of the best weekly newspapers in existence. Despite the fact that it doesn’t literally fulfill that slogan, I’d like the Defender to keep it. It is a throwback to the paper’s glory days and could be a motto to inspire the staff to achieve greater things.

NOT EVIL, JUST LAZY: Reporters who fabricate stories or make up quotes are not evil, just lazy. I have never made up a story because reality gives me stories far more bizarre and interesting than anything my mind could imagine.

But I’m not terribly offended by the Medill School dean (that’s Northwestern U.’s over-priced and over-rated journalism school) who is facing accusations these days that he made up anonymous student quotes for a column he wrote for an alumni magazine. The quotes themselves were innocuous. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn Dean John Lavine was trying to clean up some quotes to make it more clear what the students meant to say.

In reality, there are times when that is proper. Face it, many people talk in a semi-literate manner (and write even worse). I have always believed the nastiest thing I could ever do to somebody was to literally quote what came out of their mouth.

If Lavine should have done anything different, it would have been to lose the quotation marks altogether and just paraphrase the quotes in his own words. The student journalist who wrote the column in the “Daily Northwestern” newspaper that exposed the questionable quotes thinks he has a story of a journalism dean acting unethnically. Actually, all he has is a piece about a writer who wrote a dull puff piece.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The process of selling off the Chicago Sun-Times to a fifth owner in the past quarter century (http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=28222) is proceeding. Whether it will remain connected to various suburban newspaper properties is less certain.

“Editor Emeritus” sounds like it ought to be an academic position. But the Capital Times could lead (http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/271540) the way for many newspaper companies to continue to exist long into the future.

The “World’s Greatest Weekly” is back (http://chicagodefender.com/view.php?I=439) in Chicago.

Here’s the student columnist who started the whole debate about the journalism professor (http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=fef115ac-93d3-4f9e-b4d5-f8b8f0176809) who may have made up quotes for a column.

Ghoulish pols want this face to scare people into ending death penalty moratorium in Illinois

This is a preliminary sketch of the suspect in the recent quintuple murder at a suburban Chicago shopping center. Police indicate they may make more details public soon in hopes of catching him. Illustration provided by Tinley Park police department.

For fear of sounding ghoulish, I was glad when I first learned that the mass shooting that took place on the Northern Illinois University campus ended with the “perpetrator” turning the gun on himself.

I’m not pleased that someone is dead. But those people who are just so determined to say they live in a state that executes people are not going to get another criminal suspect to use in a pathetic attempt to arouse the anger of the public.

HAD THE INCIDENT that left five students dead and more than a dozen wounded (some critically) ended with a live suspect, it would have given the truly ghoulish people of our society yet another face to try to put on their argument that we need an active capital punishment statute in Illinois – rather than the system we have now where 11 people are on “Death Row,” but their sentences are indefinitely on hold due to the moratorium put in place by former Gov. George Ryan and maintained by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

It’s bad enough that the death penalty fanatics are using the quintuple murder earlier this month at a Lane Bryant store in southwest suburban Tinley Park, distorting it to the point where it becomes an argument for “Homicide, in the name of Justice.”

Earlier this week, a DuPage County state representative introduced a measure asking Blagojevich to put an end to Illinois’ moratorium – which was one of the few times in recent years that an Illinois government official showed any guts on an issue.

For what it is worth, the resolution by state Rep. Dennis Reboletti, R-Elmhurst, is non-binding. Even if passed by the General Assembly, Blagojevich is under no legal obligation to pay it any mind. In fact, his aides say he has no intention of ending the death penalty moratorium.

BEFORE ANYONE STARTS sending me hostile messages telling me to get off my death penalty opposition kick, keep in mind that I deliberately held off a few days on this issue – just to see if the passage of time allowed my disgust with Reboletti’s resolution to cool.

It didn’t.

The status quo of the death penalty in Illinois is this. In 2003, Ryan ended his term as governor by commuting the sentences of 157 death row inmates, using his authority as Illinois’ chief executive to change the sentences to life in prison without parole.

His action came after the General Assembly showed a lack of concern about evidence that death penalty procedures in use in Illinois were so flawed that the legitimacy of convictions was questionable.

RYAN DID NOT have the authority to abolish the death penalty outright (only the Legislature, with gubernatorial approval can do that), so people convicted of violent crimes continue to be sentenced to death – although the moratorium prevents an actual death date from being scheduled.

To Reboletti and those of his ilk, that is a contradiction that can only be resolved by resuming the procedures that in the 1990s saw one or two inmates per year (12 in all during the decade) actually put to death by lethal injection.

The real solution is to accept that there is very little likelihood our society will ever be able to come up with a capital crimes statute that is not biased against some segment of the population.

When combined with the fact that a death penalty’s errors cannot be undone, we need to accept the fact that the death penalty is an embarrassing relic of the past and should be done away with.

IT WOULD BE easy to dismiss Reboletti and his supporters as crackpots, but they are getting support from people of some authority. Reboletti’s resolution got coverage this week primarily because he has the backing of DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett.

You remember Joe. He’s the Republican who ran unsuccessful statewide campaigns for attorney general and lieutenant governor. His political influence is strong enough that he’s bound to be tabbed to run for something in the future.

Considering how weak the Republican Party in Illinois is these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up being the GOP nominee for governor in 2010. Knowing that a past, and future, prominent politico is willing to use this issue is appalling.

It was Birkett who dragged the Tinley Park suffering into the mix when he told the Chicago Tribune, “with the recent slaughter of five innocent women in Tinley Park and similar cases, we, as a society, must ask ourselves, ‘Does a person who commits such a horrible and atrocious crime deserve to live, even in a penitentiary’?”

MY RESPONSE IS, “Yes.”

This is one issue where I can accept the Catholic Church’s stance. The church regards capital punishment as an anachronism from the days when the most dangerous of people could only be kept away from the general public by killing them.

The same church that opposes the notion of women terminating pregnancies on the grounds that the potential life is precious also realizes that the life of a person convicted of a violent crime is still a life, and just as precious.

If life is really that sacred (and I know the “anti-abortion” Birkett always tries to use the “pro-life” label to describe himself), then he should not be making such statements about people “not deserving” to live.

HE MAY BE a criminal prosecutor, but his comments reek too much of playing God.

The religious portion of me actually believes that the good lord, however you may conceive of him, has his own ways of dealing with those wayward souls who commit violent acts. I actually have faith that the soul of the person on the loose who killed the five women in Tinley Park will get his just punishment some day.

And that punishment will have nothing to do with what any judge imposes.

IN FACT, I have always thought the problem with our criminal justice system today lies with judges who think they are supposed to favor the prosecution and prosecutors who think their purpose is to rack up lengthy lists of convicted criminals – rather than protect the general public.

At least we won’t have to put up with the gunman in DeKalb being demonized in the same manner.

Now I can already hear the critics who (after using several choice obscenities) will tell me I am not taking the pain of the surviving families of the women who died in Tinley Park and the parents of the students killed at Northern Illinois University.

ACTUALLY, I AM. My mother lives just a few blocks from the suburban shopping center where the women died, and I have a stepbrother and cousins who attended the college in DeKalb. I have no problem identifying with those peoples’ thoughts.

But that doesn’t mean we give in to raw emotion. What makes us a superior society is that we keep our emotions in check, and we regard those moments when we give in to a “lynch mob” mentality as an embarrassment.

Making ridiculous statements that try to use the tragedy at the Brookside Marketplace to stir the wrath of the general public into an angry mob that demands vengeance by needle is nothing but sick.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Student news media (http://www.northernstar.info/) at the DeKalb campus are most likely to get close to the details of the bizarre shooting incident that took place Thursday.

Law enforcement officials have come up with more details about who they are looking for (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-tinley_park_killings_15feb15,1,4213055.story) in the quintuple slayings in Tinley Park.

Former Gov. George Ryan’s actions to restrict the death penalty were controversial (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2003/01/10/ill_governor_pardons_four_on_death_row/2150/) at the time they occurred, and a segment of the Illinois population (http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2003/01/11/ill_gov_clears_death_row/5453/) still hates them.

Opposition to the death penalty (http://www.icadp.org/2007%20Annual%20Report.pdf) is on the rise in Illinois.

What's wrong with "Super Delegates?"

Perhaps it is because I am a political junkie who finds fascinating the mechanics of government, but I really don’t understand why people are getting all bent out of shape about the concept of un-pledged delegates making the final decision for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

“It’s unfair.” “It ignores the will of the people.” “It sounds like a Communist/Fascist/(insert immoral political philosophy of your choice here) plot.”

“IT’S UN-AMERICAN.”

Those are the thoughts being expressed by the Professional Political Pontificators these days about the “super-delegates” who may wind up casting the final votes and deciding whether Barack Obama or Hillary R. Clinton will be the Democrat who gets to tangle with likely GOP nominee John McCain come the Nov. 4 general election.

Those people (many of whom are professional pundits who prostitute their viewpoints for money) want to think it is wrong for several classifications of delegates to be included this year in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

While most of those delegates were either allocated to supporters of whichever candidate won the popular vote in each congressional district or which candidate took the popular vote across the state, some delegates have a different status.

Followers of Hillary R. Clinton are hoping that Barack Obama fills the same niche that Lyndon Johnson filled at the 1956 Democratic National Convention held in Chicago. LBJ tried to put himself forward as a presidential candidate, but his time in the White House didn’t come for another seven years. Photograph provided by Chicago History Museum.

THE DELEGATES WHO were allocated based on elections results are obligated to go to the nominating convention and support (at least initially) the candidate for whom they declared support early on.

When former Illinois Attorney General and state Comptroller Roland Burris (one of the delegates I voted for in a district that solidly went for Obama) travels to Denver, he is required to remain true to Barack. Only if the convention turns into a free-for-all with no candidate being able to take a majority would he be allowed to consider changing his mind.

Then, there are the un-pledged delegates, also known as the “super-delegates.” They do not have to declare a preference, and they can vote at the nominating convention for whichever candidate they choose.

The triple-P’s of the world would have you think that all these “super-delegates” are craven individuals who are going to ignore the will of the people in their respective states and pick a presidential nominee based on which one is willing to offer them personally the best perks.

THEY ALSO STATE these “super-delegates” are, “elected by no one” and are, “accountable to nobody.” They want to believe this is the equivalent of the days of old when Tammany Hall and Chicago Machine politicos would cut political deals that did not have the interests of the public in mind.

I don’t buy it.

For one thing, it is not true that the “super delegates” are un-elected. In reality, they are elected government officials – they just weren’t elected specifically to be “super-delegates.”

In each of the 50 states, the “super-delegates” include every member of Congress (including the two senators). Also included are the governors and other high-ranking state officials. There also are a few slots in each state that are filled at the last minute, and party officials usually pick people who are reliable when it comes to voting along with the mood of the political party.

IN ILLINOIS, THERE are 35 super-delegate slots among the delegates at the convention. Of those, 32 are set and the other three will be filled some time in May.

Some choices are likely to be made based on the desires of the Democratic Party to have a convention of presidential nominators that bears some resemblance to the overall racial and ethnic makeup of the United States of America. There also are party rules that require the delegations from each state to consist of an equal number of women and men.

The bottom line is that for those of us from Illinois, the Democratic “super-delegates” are going to be people like Sen. Richard Durbin, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.

I expect Mayor Richard M. Daley also will be a “super-delegate,” unless Rich decides he doesn’t feel like spending a week in Denver this summer. In which case, he will probably arrange for one of his brothers (former Commerce Secretary William or Cook County Board member John) to fill the slot.

THESE PEOPLE WERE elected to their positions of influence in large part because they know how to reflect the moods of the people who live in their respective districts. If they really behave in a manner as reprehensible as the triple-P commentators would have us believe, we can always take it out on them come Election Day.

Would Sen. Durbin (who probably is a shoo-in for re-election to his third term in the U.S. Senate) really be willing to risk the wrath of the voter and give his token Republican opponent a legitimate campaign issue to use against him? Does Blagojevich want to stir up the wrath of Democrats even more than he already has by cutting a sleazy presidential deal?

There is another factor to consider.

The “super-delegate” issue only comes into play if the regularly chosen delegates who are publicly bound to a specific candidate cannot reach a decision on their own as to who the presidential nominee should be.

THE CRITICS WOULD have you think that the “will of the people” was being ignored by the super-delegates. In reality, the “will” is uncertainty. If the will of the people was as strong for one candidate as these pundits want us to believe, then one of the candidates would wind up with a majority of the elected delegates.

There would be no need for the next step of “super-delegates,” whose purpose would be to serve as a tiebreaker mechanism used by the political party if the majority of declared delegates become hopelessly deadlocked and cannot choose a candidate.

Insofar as political mechanisms are concerned, “super-delegates” sounds to me like a reasonable way to break ties. At least those individuals have to put themselves on the record, and their political legacies (always a priority with elected officials) would be at stake if they truly voted for someone the locals hated.

I always hate it when government matters are decided on something that is the equivalent of a coin toss. For those who think I’m exaggerating, all too many decisions with great effects on public policy were made by dumb luck.

HAD THEN-ILLINOIS Secretary of State George H. Ryan reached into the antique glass bowl once used by Abraham Lincoln and picked out the name of a Democrat in 1991, Republicans likely NEVER would have gained control of the state Legislature in the 1990s.

But Ryan picked out the Republican name, and the commission that drew political boundaries for the decade used their influence to favor their political party. Likewise, Democrats gained control in the 1980s and in the current decade because that same random drawing ended in their favor.

Would you really want the Democratic Party’s nominee being chosen by putting the names of Obama and Clinton into a hat (perhaps one once worn by Franklin D. Roosevelt), and picking one out at random?

WHAT I FIND ironic is that both Clinton and Obama (in their roles as U.S. senators from New York and Illinois respectively) are “super-delegates” themselves. Both will get the chance in Denver to personally try to sway their “super-delegate” colleagues over to their side. It’s not like either one of them will be at a disadvantage due to access.

Besides, the concept of political party officials getting together to decide who should represent their party for president is a good thing, particularly if the convention turns into a debate.

The last thing that a healthy Democracy needs is a nominating convention that is a pre-set schedule of events intended to be a candidate coronation or an over-glorified political pep rally.

REGARDLESS OF THE celebration that one campaign will do at convention’s end, the other side will wind up the loser. Then, the winner has to reach out to the losing faction and remind them of the issues they have in common (which in the case of Obama and Clinton is most everything). If the winning Democrat can’t do that, then we the people of the United States of America get President McCain.

It will be messy to watch the politicos at work while they figure out whether we are better off with Obama or Clinton at the top of the ballot. But the “mess” IS Democracy at work.

Democracy is often rambunctious and raucous. It is not neat and pretty. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who would want “neat and pretty” politics is asking for something that is really and truly Un-American.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., who also is a “super-delegate,” has a problem (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0212delegatefeb12,0,4373892.story) with the concept that his colleagues at the Democratic National Convention may actually have to decide amongst themselves who the political party should nominate for president.

Obama needs strong debate performance more than Spanish radio ads to boost Latino votes

“Obama me está hablando a mi.”

That is the phrase Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants to have flowing from the lips of every person of Hispanic ethnic origin in Texas and the rest of the United States by the end of spring.

IT TRANSLATES TO, “Obama is speaking to me,” and it is the key phrase that is repeated three times in a new campaign broadcast spot that is airing on Spanish-language radio stations across Texas, where Barack hopes he can motivate the Tejano population of the Lone Star State in ways that he has failed to get the support of Latinos elsewhere in the United States.

On the one hand, it is good to see Obama take seriously his problem in letting Hispanic people know he really is sympathetic to their concerns. But he’s going to have to do better than just putting out a radio spot or two in the weeks prior to the March 4 Texas primary.

His real chance to sway the Latino voters of Texas – the only remaining state with a significant Latino population to have an upcoming primary election – is going to be the Hispanic issues debate scheduled for a week from Thursday.

This image, used by Obama supporters in San Antonio, is potentially dangerous for a candidate who wants the Hispanic vote. One wrong remark about the Alamo (which remains a sore spot for many Mexican-Americans), and Barack will make Hillary’s day by giving her the Latino vote for sure. Campaigning in Texas means Obama will have to dig up that Stetson. Illustration and photograph both provided by Texans for Obama.

It could be Obama’s last chance to put an end to the Latino trend – Hispanic people largely support Hillary R. Clinton because they already know her and Barack Obama has not done much to date to make Latinos think he is worth taking the time to get to know.

THE ONLY STATE thus far where Obama was able to take a majority of the Hispanic vote was his home state of Illinois. Even here, he barely (52 percent) won the support of Latinos overall, while losing in wards controlled by aldermen Ed Burke and Dick Mell. He lost those wards with growing Hispanic populations even though the aldermen publicly backed Obama.

People who are “simpático a Español” just aren’t swooning for Barack the way the Youth of America are. Obama would like to think his commercials will introduce him to Tejanos.

He could use their support in slashing back on the number of presidential delegates Clinton gets from the Texas primary, as the two are still running even in the delegate count. Even though Obama has been winning a streak of primaries in recent days, Hillary can’t be counted out because she got the big delegate counts in New York and California, and could take Texas too.

The only big state Obama has won thus far is right here in Illinois, which sadly enough is dwarfed by California, and still topped by the other two states. He’s not winning in the right places to put the Clinton campaign down for the count.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE the 2000 general election, where Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the right to live in the White House because he won the electors.

So all across Texas in the next few weeks, people in places like Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas and down near the border where the United States and Mexico blend into one multicultural region, their airwaves will be hearing a condensed version of the Obama story – the one the rest of us read in full if we bothered to buy or borrow a copy of, “Dreams from My Father.”

But the debate to be held Feb. 21 in Austin on the University of Texas campus (Jenna Bush’s alma mater) is more important.

It is an event that has significance to more people than just the Texas Legislature community that the late columnist Molly Ivins used to think of as a collection of all of Texas’ “village idiots.” Hispanic people across the United States will be paying attention to Austin that night – even those of us living in states where we already have cast our ballots.

MANY HISPANIC PEOPLE are going to be looking for THE moment where Obama slips up, if only to confirm our collective judgment that he is just a kid politico (a ‘politicito,’ in Spanglish?) and that “we” were right all along in backing the Hillary R. Clinton machine.

For those of us Latinos who actually cast ballots for Barack, we’ll be hoping for a moment where he slams Hillary down and we can gloat to our elders that they should have given Obama some attention early on. Our “padres y madres” and maybe our “Tio” Carlos will flip us a nasty look that implies “shut up,” but deep down they’ll know we’re right – so they won’t actually say it.

And for the roughly 26 percent of the Texas electorate that is Hispanic, the debate could be the moment that persuades them to join Illinois as the only state where Latinos preferred Obama. Taking the Latino vote the rest of the way through the primary season, when combined with his existing support from young voters, intellectuals and the African American population, could be what helps Obama stop the presidential nomination from being decided by the party bigwigs (officially known as, “the super delegates.”)

For Clinton, this debate could be her chance to cement her ties to Latinos. Any show of good faith that she has not forgotten us (even though her Mexican-American campaign chief recently had to take the blame and be fired for Hillary’s recent campaign failures) could be what ensures a majority of Latinos stay with her, and that the presidential primary remains a close one all the way to the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver.

THIS IS NOT the first Hispanic oriented debate of the primary season. But the others were held so early in the process (does anyone care anymore about how people in Las Vegas voted?) that anything said back then hardly seems relevant.

I also still remember the first Hispanic debate where organizers went out of their way to provide interpreters for each candidate. That hurt New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (whose childhood was spent living in Mexico), who could have answered the questions directly in Spanish. Instead, questions asked by a Spanish-speaking moderator were translated into English for Richardson to answer “en Inglés” and have translated back into Spanish for the Spanish-speaking viewing audience.

Here’s hoping Univision officials have figured out a way to get around not giving any one candidate a lingual advantage, even though my understanding is that both Obama and Clinton have a rudimentary knowledge of the Spanish language. Obama’s language skills are good enough that he occasionally gives the Senate Democratic Spanish-language response to President Bush’s regular radio addresses.

These other Hispanic debates were confined to Spanish language television.

THIS TIME AROUND, CNN is getting into the act, which could be a sign that Anglo television news is catching on to the fact that the Hispanic population is an electoral force of some significance. (Or maybe they just want to sell us new HD televisions, now that our conventional TV sets will become worthless next year?)

CNN and its overseas operation, CNN International, will broadcast the event live and then repeat it again (likely in the middle of the night and in the early morning) for those people who didn’t get their fill the first time.

Only after the event is over will Univision affiliates across the country (in Chicago, that’s WGBO-TV, Ch. 66) broadcast the event.

I want to compare the ratings of the two broadcasts. How many people will decide to wait until the latter broadcast “en Español?” A Spanish-language newsperson is going to be more likely to catch the subtle nuances relevant to Latinos that an English language broadcaster might just totally miss.

PERSONALLY, I’LL TRY to watch both. That’s a lot of Hillary and Barack to have to endure in one evening.

But the event has the potential to be like ESPN’s broadcasts of international soccer tournaments. Anyone who knows anything about soccer knows that ESPN should stick to football and NASCAR and poker tournaments because Univision and Telemundo broadcasts make the English versions seem so dull and uninformed.

Will CNN do the same for Latino political empowerment?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama’s broadcast spots “en Español” can be heard either on radio stations across the Lone Star State, or on the Internet, if you don’t feel like taking a (http://obama.3cdn.net/a34e1ee2e966917261_bjm6bwuky.mp3) trip to Texas.

Obama’s efforts to win votes in Texas (http://blog.texansforobama.com/frontPage.do) are detailed here.

Obama in the past has been used by Democrats to respond in Spanish to President Bush’s (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2006/02/_el_senador_obama_in_spanish_v.html) regular radio addresses.

Is Barack Obama’s comprehension of the Spanish language as weak as President Bush’s? This commentator (http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=123134) thinks so.

Chicago should embrace its Lincoln heritage

What does it say for the parochialism of Chicagoans that the official ceremonies commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Illinois’ most significant resident ever are largely an afterthought in the Second City?

While communities all across the nation are planning events throughout the next 366 days leading up to the Bicentennial of the Sunday in 1809 that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in rural Kentucky near the current town of Hodgenville, there is nothing set for Chicago.

FOR THAT MATTER, there’s nothing scheduled to take place anywhere in Cook County.

Thus far, the closest that any official Lincoln celebrations will come to Chicago will be in Batavia – and both events are rather minor celebrations.

Those events are both scheduled for this weekend, and consist of little more than allowing people to meet, and talk with, a Lincoln impersonator on Saturday at the museum which displays a recreation of the sanitarium cell where Mary Todd Lincoln was committed for four months in 1875. There also will be a re-creation Sunday of the famed debates between Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas at a nearby restaurant.

Actors portraying Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln walk the downtown streets of Springfield, Ill., near the Old State Capitol. Lincoln actually walked these streets, as his law office was located across the street from the capitol and his home was two blocks south. Photograph provided by Illinois Bureau of Tourism.

The debate recreation is taking place there even though none of the seven real debates held during the 1858 race for a U.S. Senate seat were anywhere near the Kane County town located just under 40 miles from downtown Chicago. Freeport, located on just the other side of Rockford, is as close as Lincoln and Douglas ever came to the city that grew in Lincoln’s lifetime from a rural trading post to an Illinois city rivaling Springfield or Peoria (it’s rise to a world-renowned metropolis came following its resurrection from the Great Fire of 1871) in influence.

ADMITTEDLY, A MUSICAL show inspired by the life of Lincoln is under production. Tentatively entitled, “A Good Man,” it will be shown at the Ravinia Festival near Highland Park some time during 2009.

But that just isn’t enough, considering that Lincoln is the one president of the United States to date whose political style was developed in the nitty-gritty political world of Illinois. Barack Obama would be the second if he actually gets elected – I don’t count Ronald Reagan because he left Illinois after graduating college for a life in California.

There are no plans for anything in Chicago like the period ball held Saturday in Springfield, Ill., or the open houses scheduled for Tuesday at the recreated log cabins at Lincoln’s Kentucky birthplace and at New Salem (near Petersburg, Ill.) where Lincoln first lived as an adult in Illinois.

Similar events are scheduled throughout the year and into early next year in cities across the state, and in other Mid-western states. Some people are determined to pay tribute to the memory of Lincoln, whose efforts kept a nation together at a time when it was in danger of collapsing.

FOR THOSE PEOPLE who think the chasm between North and South is just a natural part of the United States’ composition, keep in mind that the regions may have their differences on many cultural and economic issues, but at no other time in this country’s history have Southern “rebels” seriously talked secession, not even during the 1990s.

Lincoln’s determination to keep the nation whole made possible the gains in the late 19th and 20th centuries that allowed the United States of America to become one of the top nations of the world.

For those “Southern sympathizers” of today who try to recast the Lincoln legacy into one of a hypocritical racist (he didn’t really believe in integration of the races, would have liked to have seen slaves repatriated to Africa and only turned the U.S. military effort during the Civil War into a fight for freedom to prevent other world nations from siding with the Confederacy), one needs to keep in mind that Lincoln’s view was the “liberal” viewpoint of that era.

He regarded African slaves as human beings, unlike his opposition who saw them as little more than livestock that could be trained to speak. And it was those same opposition forces who were willing to scrap the thought of being part of the United States of America when Lincoln was elected president in 1860, out of the mistaken belief that Lincoln’s first act would be to start freeing slaves (taking away their property, as they saw it).

THIS IS A legacy that all people ought to be proud of. It is sad that many people who grew up here probably think Lincoln’s only tie to Chicago is that the bed upon which he died at the Petersen House in Washington is now on display at the Chicago History Museum (generations of school children, including myself, have walked by the bed as part of elementary school field trips).

Lincoln in his own lifetime saw the rise of Chicago to a city of influence, and he used its developing power to boost himself from obscurity as a central Illinois politico to a serious presidential candidate.

For starters, it was the Chicago Tribune that used its muscle to boost Lincoln into the ranks of the powerful. When one considers that he was little more than a former state legislator who had served one term in Congress (and lost his one bid for the U.S. Senate to Douglas), the newspaper’s use of its influence is a significant achievement.

It was at a nominating convention in Chicago that the then-fledgling Republican Party chose Lincoln to be its candidate in the 1860 elections that resulted in the first victory ever by a GOP nominee.

THERE ALSO IS the fact that after Lincoln’s death, his family relocated from their downtown Springfield home (located about a two-block walk from his law office and the Statehouse building that was then in use) to Chicago. Who’s to say that Lincoln (had he lived) would not have retired to the Second City, and could have been one of the city’s elders in his final years of life?

It was as a Chicagoan that Mary Todd Lincoln fully developed the flaky reputation by which most people remember her today. And it was in the Cook County court system that her son, Robert, ultimately had to trust to have his mother committed to the Bellevue Place sanitarium in Batavia, which has since been converted to rental unit apartments.

I’m not saying we need to erect a plaque at the site of the old courthouse, reading something like, “On this site in May, 1875, Judge Marion R.M. Wallace declared former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln to be insane.”

But one could easily envision a plaque at the southeast corner of Lake and Market streets. That was the site of “The Wigwam,” the nickname given to the giant tent that was erected for the then-princely sum of $5,000 to house the 1860 convention that tabbed Lincoln to be the GOP nominee.

THE LINCOLN LEGACY is just as much a part of Chicago history as it is downstate Illinois, even though we don’t have Lincoln’s home and law office like Springfield or the actual courthouses where Lincoln actually practiced law like many central Illinois counties.

I can’t help but notice looking at the schedule of events for the upcoming year that many are historical forums taking place on university campuses. A perfect example is the March 13-15 Illinois History Symposium to be held at Millikin College in Decatur, where several speakers will give their impressions of Lincoln’s continuing legacy.

Why can’t events like that be held in Chicago, which has several universities of quality? Events could be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago or Loyola University or Northwestern University in Evanston. I’d also suggest the University of Chicago, except my dealings with the university throughout the years reveals a mindset that thinks local issues are beneath their mission in life. Would the good people who root for the Maroons think that Abraham Lincoln is too parochial?

There’s no reason we in Chicago should surrender our share of the fun in celebrating the life of Lincoln. Here’s hoping that officials can get their act together and stage some events to celebrate the life of Honest Abe so that I don’t have to make the 200-mile drive south to Springfield to get my fill this year of Abe-mania.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: To date, very little of the actual celebrating of the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln (http://www.lincoln200.net/index.asp) is scheduled to be celebrated anywhere near Chicago.

This is how the White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/al16.html) officially remembers the Lincoln legacy.

Lincoln buffs prefer to remember their Lincolniana (http://www.alplm.org/home.html) in this way. For what it is worth, everybody on Earth at some point in their lives should take a trip to Springfield (the one in Illinois) to learn about Lincoln.

Unlike Gen. (and president) U.S. Grant, there’s no mystery about where Lincoln is buried. He remains (http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/art/tombtour.htm) at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield (his body wasn’t revived for a few seconds after being dug up from a grave at Arlington National Cemetery, as the Weekly World News reported a few years ago), which means there are generations of central Illinois residents whose claim to fame is that their earthly remains lie within shouting distance of a former president.