Statehouse 'civil war' to occur this spring on immigration disputes?

It seems the Trump-ites and the sensible people of our society are going to be doing battle this spring at the Statehouse in Springfield. As if we don't have enough nonsense pervading our capitol building, we will get to add the disputes of those factions of our society to the mix.

Statehouse Scene could get gloomier with immigration thrown into mix

As if that wasn't enough, it's going to be over immigration. An issue that always has the potential to add to the insanity of society whenever it comes up.

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS officials recently informed principals they ought to respond to the presence of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on their campuses by demanding to see a warrant. Officials with the school board for Oak Park-River Forest High School are in the process of creating a similar policy -- actually writing it into their school code to give it more lasting authority.

Which is what led state Rep. Chris Welch, D-Hillside, to introduce a bill before the Illinois General Assembly that would address the issue by giving school districts, hospitals and churches the authority to designate themselves sanctuary zones.

Such a policy would require local law enforcement to show they have a warrant before they can try entering those places' properties.

Some people are getting outraged at the very thought. Although if you want to know the truth, those people are the ones who are scary and suggesting something that we ought to think of as un-American.

THE POINT OF a warrant is to show that police are arriving on the scene for a specific purpose, and not just to harass or go on a fishing expedition -- of sorts -- in hopes of getting lucky and finding something that might lead to an immigration-related bust.

It also says that a judge has given at least cursory review to the evidence that would lead to an arrest, and that there is some reason to believe the allegations are legitimate.

I don't see what is wrong with requiring a warrant -- unless you're the type who believes we ought to live in a police state. Which makes you the ones of a terrifying mentality.

TRUMP: Talk gets people riled up!

Although I know we do have such people in our society who are convinced they are behaving in our best interests. Such is the motivation of people like state Rep. Allen Skillicorn, R-East Dundee, who has his own bill pending that is meant to counter the Welch measure.

HIS BILL WOULD say that local law enforcement entities can negotiate agreements to cooperate with federal Immigration authorities. Under the concept of "sanctuary" cities, such as Chicago and Cook County, the local police are not supposed to concern themselves with any information concerning immigration policy.

The theory being that federal authorities who actually understand immigration policy should do their own work!

We have dueling bills -- one pro- and the other anti-, although it could be argued that what is for and against on this issue depends on where one stands on immigration policy -- and how long it has been since their own families (in my case, it was the grandparents' generation) were directly affected by the immigrant condition.

We even had dueling protests on Saturday; with the State Journal-Register reporting on the two protests that took place just outside of the Statehouse during the noon hour.

THE GROUP TAKING up the concerns of the police and the nativist element of our society gathered by the statue of Abraham Lincoln to try to claim some of his moral authority, while those protesters looking to protect the interests of immigrants who otherwise would face harassment gathered by the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr.

RAUNER: How will he dodge this issue?

Which strikes me as odd, because I know historically Lincoln was among those people who as a member of Congress opposed the war with Mexico that ultimately resulted in the U.S. land grab of California, Texas and other states we crafted out of Mexico. While I also know King's children have expressed support for those who want to close off this country to some of the newcomers.

We can dismiss the Saturday sentiments as being those of people who had nothing better to do with their weekend, I suppose. But the fact is that this immigration hatred that is being stirred up so much by the presidential administration currently in power is going to keep cropping up on our own political front.

Which could wind up being a major source of headache for Gov. Bruce Rauner -- seeing that he has desperately tried to avoid taking a position on any of the nativist nonsense that Trump has been spewing. It will be interesting to see how he tries to dodge this issue when it comes up on his own doorstep.

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I'm getting old(er) and ill(er)

PALOS PARK, Ill. -- I spent this past weekend lounging around, watching television, having my meals brought to me special order and having my every whim catered to.

I'd have rather spent the weekend at the ballpark, than in bed watching the ballpark on TV

Of course, I also had to put up with doctors prodding me and poking me with needles periodically while trying to figure out my problems (aside from my usual grouchy temperament).

FOR I SPENT the weekend in a hospital (Palos Community Hospital in suburban Palos Park, to be precise). I was diagnosed by a doctor last week with asthma and it also was discovered my blood pressure was running high. So I spent Friday night through Sunday afternoon under observation, while making sure I don't have some sort of kidney disease that could take me down permanently (I don't).

The bottom line is that doctors spent the weekend trying to calculate the proper mixture of medicines that I'll have to consume in order to keep me alive and thriving.

Blood pressure pills and a combination of inhalers. I'm only 50, yet it seems like this is the new routine of my life.

Yet as I laid in that hospital bed, I couldn't help but think how typical I have become. So many of us now have our medications we must take for various ailments. Whereas past generations would have just accepted complications in life and presumed it was evidence we're getting old(er)!

IN FACT, I recently attended a family function where the conversation turned to health and the medications we all were taking. It turns out I was the only one not taking anything.

Not any more. So was I really healthy? Or just oblivious to my own well-being?

So what was hospital life like?

My hospital room was similar, but my window view looked out onto a courtyard where I could look into the windows of other hospital rooms. And no, I didn't catch a glimpse of another patient half-naked. Image provieded by KJWW Engineering Consultants.

I got admitted late Friday and wound up being able to watch the entire weekend of Chicago White Sox baseball (that Saturday game was frustrating as the Sox should never have needed 12 innings to win). I even stumbled across reruns of "Hill Street Blues" (which a nurse's aide mistook for that "Chicago PD" cop show, as she called it), while I flipped through several cable news channels.

I ALSO WAS able to meet one nurse who took a blood sample who says she shares my exact birth date in 1965. I never would have guessed -- she looked significantly younger than myself.

Hill Street's "Hill" and "Renko" characters still amuse

I got to see how small food portions could be made and still be thought of as a meal (and they wouldn't let me have a pickle to go with a turkey sandwich -- too much sodium).

In short, a mind-numbing weekend whose end I anxiously awaited. Returning to work this week will be a relief. I'm even eager to make the trek to Gary, Ind., to cover a (non-)scintillating hearing of the Gary/Chicago International Airport Authority for a local newspaper I do some work for.

Although the moment I may most remember from my weekend of hospitalization occurred Sunday morning when another nurse brought my medication. She noticed me watching CNN where Donald Trump, Jr., was talking about his father's presidential campaign -- while also saying opponent Ted Cruz' only chance of victory was if he bribed delegates at the upcoming Republican Narional Convention.

Our future president?

THE THOUGHT OF Trump, the elder, as president caused my nurse, Greta, to say Trump was scary, but add, "twenty years from now, it will be (entertainer) Kanye West running for office. That's the direction we're headed."

My fear is that Greta is right -- superficiality above all else will prevail in future politics. That thought scares me more than anything I heard from a doctor this weekend.

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Having to flee one’s home ought to be a disgrace on an Independence Day

I recall a day from back when I was a kid and my brother and I went with our mother for a day-long visit to grandma’s house.

Putting in overtime this coming weekend

What provoked this visit wasn’t any real desire to see the relatives. It was that there was talk of white supremacists feeling the need to come to our neighborhood in suburban Lansing and hold a rally of sorts, just a couple of blocks from where we lived.

NOW I DON’T remember the specifics of this particular rally, which would have been back in the late 1970s. I seem to recall a local radio personality (and by local, I mean someone on a suburban-based radio station whom most of Chicago would never have heard of) who got all worked up over “Roots” being shown on television.

So perhaps it was a batch of crackpots showing unity in their outrage over having some of the horrors of slavery in this country being illustrated on national television – and living on to this day on DVD.

Or maybe it was some other outrage the bigots felt. Quite frankly, those people rarely have any sense of logic about the way they perceive anything. So who knows what bothered them?

All I remember is that my mother didn’t want to be around. So off to grandma’s we went.

IF MY MEMORY is correct, that rally didn’t amount to much. I was told by people who didn’t leave that day that it turned into a few people yelling and shouting and screaming and pretty much making fools of themselves.

I do recall that when we came back home, there was quite a bit of trash strewn around the streets on the block where we lived. Much more than would be if it were just a neighbor’s dog running loose and getting into the neighbor’s trash cans.

But that was the extent. A fairly minor incident, and not one whose details have really clung into the crevasses of my mind.

Not everybody will view Independence Day in this way

Although that feeling of having to leave our home for the day because we didn’t want to get caught up as collateral damage, of sorts, popped into my mind Wednesday when I stumbled across a Chicago Tribune report about how some Chicagoans are planning weekend trips this weekend because they don’t want to get struck by stray gunfire.

I FEEL GRATEFUL that I have never lived in a South Side neighborhood where such an approach to life during the holidays is commonplace.

Although it strikes me as particularly odd that on a holiday meant to celebrate the ideals upon which this nation was founded (“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and all that jazz), some people feel the way to protect their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is to skip town.

Because there are those individuals who view Independence Day solely in the context of explosives and the chance to set off rounds of gunfire.

As a reporter-type person, I have seen the many holiday weekends in which people wind up getting picked off by stray bullets. I remember one incident where a bullet fired into the air wound up coming back to Earth about a mile away before someone got shot (although the oddest incident I recall from my police reporter days was the naked woman being chased around 95^th Street and Western Avenue on a New Year’s Eve some three decades ago).

THE NEWSPAPER REPORTED about how there also will be extra police on duty this holiday weekend. Hospitals also are working to ensure they won’t be short-staffed if they get a sudden flood of gunshot wound victims.

It makes my one-time incident of having to see grandma for a full day seem kind of minor by comparison, because it wasn’t an annual tradition of a trip that we planned to make just to survive.

So while some people may think the quintessential Chicago holiday weekend is attending the Grateful Dead (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) concert or festivities at Navy Pier, keep in mind that some people think a successful holiday involves just staying alive.

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Let’s not panic, okay?

I’m not trying to downplay the significance or risk of the Ebola virus that is starting to show traces of cropping up in the United States.

But I also sense that there are some people who are way too eager to panic and predict an epidemic of the virus that can kill. When we start to panic, we look for people to blame for the problem.

AND THAT’S WHEN we as a society become inclined to act stupid. Please people, let’s not be stupid; particularly when there’s potential for illness and fatality.

For the record, the virus was once thought to be a product of the nations of the western portion of the African continent. Some 4,500 people are known to have died from Ebola.

Of course, many of us cared less about this fact. It wasn’t until recent weeks when U.S. citizens who are doctors who were on humanitarian relief efforts in Africa started showing signs of the virus that many of us even gave Ebola a second thought.

Now, we have one person dead, and two nurses infected. One of those nurses had direct contact with the person who died. While another supposedly was on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas, and has now been isolated at a medical facility far from either locale. It has people panicking about how easily this virus could spread.

IT HAS HAD some people wondering how long it will be until this spreads beyond Dallas and winds up in Chicago – along with the rest of the country. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide (or so sang Martha and the Vandellas, could that be the new theme song for those inclined to panic?).

I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Tribune, which reported about how nurses across the Chicago area are skeptical that their hospitals are equipped to deal with Ebola. They’re wondering if the so-called safety equipment isn’t safe enough to protect them from the fluid-spread virus.


Although I have heard reports indicating that the infected nurse with contact might not have been wearing the proper gear.

It also was interesting to see the Chicago Sun-Times report that officials are considering designating Rush University Medical Center as the official treatment center for Ebola.

AS IN ANYBODY anywhere near Chicago who shows signs of the virus and can document that they were in contact with someone who had the virus would wind up at Rush, rather than having them scattered around the dozens of hospitals in the Chicago metro area.

A concentration would reduce the likelihood of more people being exposed.

It was interesting to see President Barack Obama on Wednesday create the image of taking on the issue – he spent a couple of hours meeting with Cabinet members to try to figure out some sort of national strategy for addressing Ebola in this country. On Thursday, he gave authorization for National Guard units to be called into action to serve in west Africa to support U.S. operations that are trying to control the virus.

It also was curious to see the Washington Post report that Obama acknowledges a need to help try to deal with Ebola at its root – meaning the west African region where we once thought the virus was contained.

THAT DOES MAKE sense. But I wonder how long it will be until we hear the ideologues screeching and screaming about how we ought to focus on our own ill, instead of someone else’s.

The grandchildren of the isolationists of old can rant and rage as loudly and strongly as their ancestors. Even when it is that isolationist strain of thought that can cause panic that leads to short-sighted actions.

For now, I plan to try to relax. There isn’t much we can do, other than try to avoid irrational exposure that we probably wouldn’t do anyway. That, and turn down the dial for the mental volume I have set for the rest of the world – including when our own City Council feels compelled to hold (as yet unscheduled) hearings about Ebola virus spread.


Talk about the ultimate in individuals who will want to scream and panic when it is fairly certain they have a clue what they’re talking about!

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Remembering what never was

Consider this commentary a moment of silence for the most memorable political campaign that never will be – the challenge of Chicago Teachers Union head Karen Lewis against Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

On account of her illness (a Chicago Sun-Times “Sneedscoop” tells us it’s a brain tumor), it seems Emanuel will get a batch of lukewarm to nothing challengers, and we will get the reign of Rahm II. For all those who were viewing the gubernatorial election as a prelude to next year’s mayoral brawl, this will be the biggest letdown!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And as for Lewis, here’s hoping she recovers in full from the “Brain Tumor Battle” that the Sun-Times splashed all over Tuesday’s front page.

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Lewis’ secrecy over hospitalization not a good character trait for public official

It’s always intriguing whenever a public official winds up becoming ill and needing the services of a hospital.

Not only does it show us how vulnerable they are, it also puts them into positions where they have to take orders – rather than bark them out to their minions.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of the fact that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis (also the hopeful mayoral candidate for many who despise the thought of “four more years” of Rahm Emanuel) is at an undisclosed hospital somewhere in Chicago.

Or, for all we know, it could be out in the suburbs somewhere. Maybe she thought she could do a hospital stay somewhere isolated and no one would ever know?

Now before anyone gets all worked up, I must disclose that I don’t know where she is, or what exactly she is being treated for. Which, if you’re relying on the various news media accounts that began popping up on the Internet Monday night and updated in the Tuesday newspapers, is the same level of knowledge you don’t have.

The teachers union initially tried saying nothing, even though the rumor mill out there was saying that Lewis, who is 61, suffered a stroke. That tidbit got reported in several places.

ALTHOUGH A STATEMENT by union officials that reads like it was coerced flatly denied that she suffered a stroke.

“Karen is being evaluated in a local hospital after experiencing discomfort Sunday evening,” the union said, while going on to cite her “privacy” as a reason for offering up so little detail.

The only problem with that line of logic is that one gives up a certain amount of privacy when they throw themselves into the public policy eye – or even contemplate doing so.

Perhaps this is a reason why those people who want to replace Rahm so badly (we hate Emanuel more than we despise Eisenhower Expressway morning rush hour traffic, according to a poll by yet another mayoral challenger, Robert Fioretti) that they’re practically begging Lewis to run for mayor ought to get a grip and focus their attention elsewhere.

BECAUSE IF SHE were mayor, there’d be no way she’d be able to get away with this kind of non-talk. We literally would have reporter-types staking out every single hospital in Chicago and nearby suburbs in hopes of trying to catch a glimpse of her (we literally didn’t know where she was, so we’d have to hit them all).

Watching this play out brings back memories from just over two decades ago when then-Gov. Jim Edgar wound up requiring quadruple bypass surgery to remove a blockage that was preventing sufficient blood from getting to his heart.

I remember the level of briefings being so detailed to the point where one of my editors commented that my stories were rather graphic about referring to the condition of the governor’s groin – something he claimed to have never read before.

While Lewis is giving us something we have all read way too often – absolutely nothing. Unless you want to read the platitudes about how Lewis is a “freedom fighter” who will be “back on her feet in no time.”

I’LL GIVE THE union the benefit of the doubt that the little bits of information they have provided about their boss is all truthful. For all I know, she may well be out of the hospital by the time you get about to reading this commentary.

There are those of us who will go on about concocting tacky jokes about how it probably was Rahm himself who plotted out a scheme to make Lewis ill so as to knock her out of the election cycle before she could get in.

But what I do know for sure is that Lewis is showing us she has at least one characteristic of a political person – a sense of secrecy. Unfortunately, that’s not one of the reasons some people are wishing, praying, hoping for a “Mayor Lewis” come next May.

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Was cellphone really worth it? Why can’t people be more careful w/ stuff?

Learning of the trio of people who fell into the Chicago River while trying to retrieve a cellphone brought back to my memory a childhood incident that had a less-tragic ending.

CHICAGO RIVER: Pretty on postcards, Repulsive in person

 

I forget how old I was exactly (it might have been 7), but I had just got a cheap camera as a gift. So when the family took a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry, I felt the need to take it along.

I RECALL BEING on an upper level of the museum, looking down at that giant layout of a model railroad that I’m sure all of us locals saw at one point or another in our lives. I wanted to take pictures of the trains from above.

But I got clumsy, lost my grip, and saw my new camera fall a couple of floors.

Following a brief angry blast from my father, he then went down and managed to get the camera – which surprisingly enough, was not broken. To this day, I still have the camera and it still functions. Or at least it did the last time I tried to use it many years ago.

Unfortunately, an early Monday incident had a much less satisfying ending.

FOR IT SEEMS a man was walking along the river when he lost his grip on the cellphone he was using to take pictures of the ice-covered river. It fell into the river, although based on the reports I have read, it seems like it floated on the water’s surface, which is why the man appears to have thought he could just reach into the river and grab it back.

River's St. Patrick's Day shade of green ...

But that is where any resemblance from my moment of clumsiness and this man’s moment of misery comes to an end.

For he slipped and fell into the river.

The woman and another man who were with him, all of whom were from Minnesota and were on their way to New Jersey, felt heroic and dived into the river to try to retrieve him.

... and its usual sickly green shade

IT ENDED BADLY. The body of the cellphone-less man was recovered, although he was pronounced dead at 3:14 a.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The woman’s body has yet to be found (my police reporter memories make me think she'll turn up in the spring when the ice thaws out), while the other man who tried to do a rescue was at Presence St. Joseph Hospital.

Alive on Monday morning, albeit in critical condition.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the deceased man trying to retrieve his telephone was from St. Paul, Minn. It would make sense to think that all three of them were tourists visiting Chicago.

It is very clear to anybody who isn’t a native Chicagoan that they weren’t locals.

FOR ANYBODY WHO was from around here never would have dived into the Chicago River.

We may joke about how it’s a waste to dye the river green for St. Patrick’s Day because the water has a natural green (albeit sickly) color to it. From all the years of waste that got dumped into the river that once was officially classified as “toxic,” but is now merely “polluted.”

Exposure to the water for even a few minutes (which is how long it took for the Police Department’s Marine Unit to recover the men from the river) is long enough to cause severe illness.

Even if that one man survives, he’s probably going to have some lingering problems to his health as a result of his brief “swim” in the river.

I CAN’T THINK of anyone local who would risk that much to get a cellphone back. And I write that knowing full well how much of a pain in the behind it can be to switch cellphones if you don’t have your old phone to retrieve data from. If, as a kid, I had dropped my camera into the river, I never would have expected my father to try to retrieve it.

It’s why I sometimes sarcastically quip that when I die, I’d like to be cremated and have my earthly remains dumped into the Chicago River.

I can’t think of any fate that would more repulse a native Chicagoan than that. Let’s hope the woman’s body is ultimately found so that she doesn’t suffer that fate.

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Law enforcement living in warped past when dealing with protesters?

It's not the least bit surprising to me (although I wish it were) to learn that undercover police officers are posing as protesters, hoping to get close enough to people trying to express their opinions (not an illegal activity, by the way) so as to identify them as potential "suspects."

Some people are willing to give their law enforcement such overwhelming authority because they're convinced it will only be used against other people.

I'D WONDER HOW those people who are now defending the police at the University of Chicago if they found out that the police were hanging out amongst themselves -- trying to drag out details that could be twisted agaisnt them.

That is the scandal of choice these days at the Hyde Park neighborhood-based college. Protesters have been complaining about the hospital on campus, trying to get its use as a trauma center expanded for more people.

At a protest on that issue held last month, one of the "activists" turned out to be an officer with the university police department, according to the Chicago Maroon student newspaper.

The publication published photographs of the officer at the protest, showing him carrying picket signs and sending text messages.

IT'S ONE THING for police to be on hand at a protest or picket to watch over the crowd, ensure that it does not get out of hand in expressing its opinions, and also protecting them in the event that counter-demonstrators (or just troublemakers bored and looking for some mischief to cause) try to disrupt things.

During my time as a reporter-type person, I have seen various police responses. I have seen cases where protesters were thankful to have the police on hand because they felt it kept them safe to speak out from others who might have thought to use some sort of force to try to silence them.

So I don't wnat to hear that those other people are merely expressing their own opinion, and that we're all supposed to think it equal in value to that of protesters.

Other times, I have seen police at a protest who appeared bored and seemed to wish that everybody would just pipe down and go home so they could either go off to some other duty -- or perhaps finish their shift and go home themselves!

BUT THE ACTIVITY alleged by the university police? It borders on infiltration. It stinks. It really comes across as someone thinking that expression of opinions need to be silenced.

Perhaps somebody still thinks this is the 1960s, and identifies a little too closely with those who wanted to view all forms of protest as somehow subversive.

That is a scary concept, particularly since I can't envision the protester-types at the University of Chicago these days as being the type who want to overthrow anything.

They're more likely to be in training to BE a part of the establishment, than to want to take it down by force.

ALTHOUGH IT IS commendable that university officials told the Chicago Tribune this week that they will investigate the matter, although those same officials are saying they had no advance knowledge of the alleged police tactics.

We'll have to wait and see whether the university actually investigates, or is more concerned with bringing an end to any public disclosure of what happened at the hospital?

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EXTRA: A three-way tie!?!

It must have been ugly in the early hour of Friday (also the beginning of a new decade in Chicago), as hospital officials eager to give their facilities a plug were hastily making calls to reporter-types to claim that they had helped to give birth to the first new Chicagoan of 2010.

The reports now turning up on the Internet seem to be proclaiming a three-way tie for Stroger and Northwestern Memorial hospitals, along with St. Joseph Hospital.

AS IT TURNS out, the latter hospital located in the Lakeview neighborhood was the only one willing to identify the new parents, so it’s their kid who will get the fleeting seconds of attention. So welcome to the world, Miya Tanni.

It never fails to amaze me the degree to which hospital officials take this baby “designation” so seriously. It’s not like there are serious cash and prizes on hand for the parents of the (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/01/cutesy-first-baby-stories-become-ugly.html) first newborn.

And I’m sure there will be little difference between baby Miya born at 12:00:10 a.m. and the kid who was born two minutes earlier.

But then again, it’s New Year’s Day, and there isn’t much other activity passing for “news” that can be reported. Learning that a baby boy was born 30 seconds after midnight at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is more pleasant to learn than to focus on the fact that Northwestern University’s football team got beat (http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/01/northwestern-outback-bowl-auburn.html) in overtime playing Auburn University in the Outback Bowl - or those Polar Bear types hanging out at North Avenue beach.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: For those who need to know, the “first baby” details were reported promptly by the websites (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/infants-battle-for-first-2010-baby-title.html) of our city’s (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1969080,first-births-of-2010-chicago-010110.article) dueling newspapers.