By Natasha Julius

Savor this special Memorial Day edition of The Weekend Desk Report, if only because it tastes better than that crappy potato salad you’ll politely choke down at that lame barbecue. That’s no way to honor our fallen. The Papers will return on Tuesday.
Market Watch
On the Constitutional Crisis Index, separation of powers saw its stock rise considerably on news of concessions from its chief executive. Freedom of speech futures were once again sharply lower, leading some analysts to predict a sell-off. And due process staged a rally on strong consumer confidence numbers. Analysts caution, however, that the market could cool when sentencing figures are released this fall.
Sforza Italia
Silvio Berlusconi continues to insist he is the democratically-elected leader of Italy despite his opponent already having been sworn in. In keeping with tradition in these situations, he has already been booked for an appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Short-Changed
Memorial Day Weekend marks the official start of rollercoaster season (the savvy amusement park aficionado waits out spring training) and with that, America’s vertically-challenged citizens suffer another round of humiliating height inspections. New this year: You must be as tall as the top bunk to gain admittance to Prisonland.

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Posted on May 26, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

1. City council members are seeking a $20,000 raise over the next four years because, as Ald. Bernie Stone puts it, “we deserve it.”
Stone can be reached at bstone@cityofchicago.org. His ward phone number is (773) 764-5050; his City Hall phone number is (312) 744-6855.
2. “In a newly unsealed court document,” the Tribune reports, “Scott Fawell says former Gov. George Ryan and he had a simple approach to the business of government: ‘Looking out for friends and contributors was the overriding factor in handing out contracts and favors.'”
3. Same goes for the Daley Administration.
4. And this is as powerful a pleading as you may find as to why it matters.
5. Jackie Heard thinks she works for the mayor, but we pay her salary.

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Posted on May 25, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

Note to readers: The [Wednesday] Papers will appear later today, while I attend to issues designed to enhance your Beachwood Reporter experience. In the meantime, enjoy the funkified stylings of Scott Gordon, as he describes the the scene at the University of Chicago last weekend, when George Clinton landed the Mothership in Hyde Park; paste one of our cool Beachwood link buttons on your site and anywhere else you can think of; and stir things up in our neglected forums – including telling us how we can do better. Then check back in again this afternoon for The [Wednesday] Papers.

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Posted on May 24, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

In the two years that the paper has been investigating the city’s Hired Truck program, the Chicago Sun-Times had never requested an interview with Mayor Richard M. Daley until it submitted written questions in advance of an interview that never happened regarding the paper’s current series on the Roti family, reporter Tim Novak said last night on Chicago Tonight.
Hello?

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Posted on May 23, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I have to admit the promotions leading up to today’s first installment of the Sun-Times‘s three-part “First Family Of Clout” series piqued my curiosity. Clearly, from the artwork, this wasn’t going to be a story about the Daleys. So who?
It turns out, according to the paper, that Chicago’s First Family Of Clout is the Roti clan, from the late patriarch and Al Capone-associate Bruno Roti Sr., to his infamous alderman (and made Chicago mob member) son Fred Roti, to grandson Fred Bruno Barbara, a close pal of none other than Mayor Richard M. Daley. (The family’s influence extends in many directions – Frank Caruso Jr., convicted in the beating of Lenard Clark, is the grandson of Bruno Roti son-in-law Frank “Skid” Caruso, who authorities say inherited the Roti criminal empire, and the son of union leader and mob associate Frank “Toots” Caruso.)
The case the Sun-Times makes is persuasive: It seems the Rotis have been in it from the start, at the nexus of the organized crime, politics, labor, and public works that has shaped this city.
This is not just ancient history, either. The Roti family is directly linked to the scandal-ridden Hired Truck program – and to the current mayor.

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Posted on May 22, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The Tribune‘s campaign against youth (and the ever-so-dangerous Internet) continues apace on Sunday, this time in a story about “emo” culture in the Q section that is so predictably misguided and laughable it’s more of a bore than an outrage.
The formula is the same one that’s been employed for years in wonder of other youthful, music-based subcultures, including goth, grunge, punk, and metal:
Discover dispossessed teens.
Disparage their unapproved clothing and haircuts.
Dismiss their emotional pain as posing.
Fail to ask why so many kids feel so shitty, generation after generation. (Hint: It’s usually upon discovery of what a crappy and crooked world has been bequeathed to them.)

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Posted on May 22, 2006

By Natasha Julius

Seek the truth. We’ll stick with the news.
Market Roundup
The American Civil Liberties Index took a beating this week as privacy, equality, and free speech all posted major losses. Health and prosperity rallied briefly on news of a new vaccine, but ethics complaints wiped out the early gains.
Bordering on Insanity
Now that the U.S. Senate has approved construction of a barrier along the nation’s border with Mexico, attention has shifted to other issues of border security. The vast construction project has fueled fears that waves of Canadian softwood lumber will flood Northern states in search of work. Reports suggest that President Bush is preparing to mobilize 15,000 National Guard troops to cope with the problem. Sources also indicate he will send 1,250 troops to police the testy Illinois-Indiana border and keep another 45,000 on active duty to secure wedding receptions, senior proms and children’s birthday parties.

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Posted on May 20, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The Chicago Tribune‘s account of Gen. Michael Hayden’s testimony to a Senate committee considering his nomination to be the next CIA director is startling.
From the top:
“Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated to be the next director of the CIA, told a Senate committee Thursday that he initially doubted the legality of a Bush administration program to expand domestic wiretaps on U.S. citizens after the Sept. 11 attacks, but that White House officials convinced him the program was lawful.”
White House officials convinced him the program was lawful? Does that sound like a legitimate legal opinion? What did the Constitutional experts at the NSA say?
“Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is considering his CIA nomination, he at first told then-CIA Director George Tenet that the NSA was doing all that the law allowed on surveillance.”
You would think that would be the case. Why would the NSA hold back?
“Director Tenet came back to me and said, ‘Is there anything more you can do?’ Hayden testified. “And I said, ‘Not within my current authorities.’ And he invited me to come down and talk to the administration about what more could be done.”
So the White House had to talk him into it. And it did. Questions about Hayden’s ability to act independently of politics and presidential power become clearer.

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Posted on May 19, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

It’s true the Sun-Times has been running a series of stories for days throughout the paper under the rubric “Da Vinci Code Week,” including a Travel section article informing us that “You don’t need to decipher a message in a cryptex to plot a great European vacation following in the footsteps of the characters in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code,” and a Food section article – with recipe – about the special Da Vinci Cod entree at a local restaurant called, well, Vinci.
But I’m not sure that kind of madness tops the Tribune‘s front-page story today about the press screening of the movie at the Cannes film festival.
The Tribune‘s piece opens awkwardly with another writer’s description that newly named lead movie critic Michael Phillips must have desperately liked better than anything else he came up with on his own, considering the way it’s shoehorned in there, and then slides into a weird religious reference that I might call offensive if I knew what it meant.
“There was blood in the water by the Palais on Tuesday, as Toronto Globe and Mail correspondent Simon Houpt put it on his blog, when The Da Vinci Code screened for a press and industry crowd prior to Wednesday’s official opening of the 59th Cannes film festival,” Phillips wrote. “And the blood didn’t belong to Jesus Christ.”
Whoa! What?

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Posted on May 18, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

The early-going in the Robert Sorich trial does not look good for either the current defendants or a potential future one – the mayor.
To wit:
* The former personnel director for the sewer and water departments, Mary Jo Falcon, testified Tuesday “that Mayor Richard Daley’s aides dictated which job applicants were to be hired before openings were posted or interviews were held,” the Tribune reports.
* When Falcon took the job in 1994, she says, she was told “My boss was the mayor’s office,” the Sun-Times reports.
* “She also recounted dozens of times she had walked out of Sorich’s office with a list of which political workers to hire before she fudged documents and doctored the ratings of job candidates,” John Kass writes.
But most devastating of all is Carol Marin’s telling of the story of Andy Ryan, the son of a union boss who, at 19, got a $50,000-a-year building inspector job with the city. Lead prosecutor Patrick Collins “prominently featured Andy’s employment saga” in his opening statement, Marin writes.

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Posted on May 17, 2006