By Steve Rhodes
“Hearings won’t be held in the Southland on the closing of the Tinley Park Mental Health Center,” Phil Kadner writes for the SouthtownStar.
“Last October, hundreds of people packed a banquet room at Georgios Comfort Inn in Orland Hills for a legislative hearing on the closing of the mental hospital.
“Former patients, their relatives, mental health experts from Will County and local hospital officials were among those who opposed Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close Tinley Park Mental Health Center.
“And the closing was postponed.
“But the governor has now set a July 1 shutdown date for the hospital, and the same legislative panel, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, is again holding mandated public hearings.
“But this time the hearings are being held in Springfield. That pretty much assured that interested Southland residents couldn’t testify.”
Pat Quinn is a Democrat.
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“When I challenged state officials about the proposal to close Tinley Park Mental Health Center during a SouthtownStar editorial board meeting, it became clear that they knew mental health patients weren’t going to be getting better care [elsewhere, as claimed].
“The state has to cut its budget because it is billions of dollars in the red. The Tinley Park center is a casualty of that process.”
Gay Bill
“A year after Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation creating civil unions, four House members introduced a bill Wednesday to allow gays to marry in Illinois,” the Springfield State Journal-Register reports.
It’s a good thing Barack Obama isn’t still in the legislature because he opposes gay marriage.
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“Mr. Obama has said in the past that he opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds; as a Christian, he has said, he views marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” the New York Times and others have reported.
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“I do not support gay marriage,” he wrote once in a candidate questionnaire. “Marriage has religious and social connotations, and I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman.”
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“‘I’m a Christian,’ Obama said in a WBBM-AM 780 interview in September 2004,” Eric Zorn noted last July. ‘And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs, say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.’ In August 2008, when he was running for president, he added to this sentiment: ‘God’s in the mix.'”
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Does he try not to have his religious beliefs determine his political views on this – or any – issue?
“At Prayer Breakfast, Obama Says Christian Faith Guides His Policies,” the Washington Post reported last week.
Sticker Shock
“As controversy swirled, Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza weighed concerns from some quarters that gang signs adorned the new city sticker against the feelings of a 15-year-old boy who said winning the contest to design the decal was the best thing that ever happened to him,” the Tribune reports.
“In the end, perception trumped emotion.
“On Wednesday, Mendoza yanked the teen’s version of the vehicle sticker and replaced it with a safer design, one that doesn’t include hands drawn in a way that some experts associated with a notorious street gang symbol.”
Yada yada yada. Here’s what got me:
“‘Nobody should be putting down that picture. It’s wrong,’ the teen told WGN-TV. The Tribune is not naming the boy because he is a minor.”
Not naming the boy? He was just on TV!
Not only that, you already named the boy – last week! With photo!
And this:
“In less than 24 hours, the teen’s sticker was felled by a cop blog with a dirty name and a Facebook page that left some questions about the winner.”
With no links – or even an explanation of the posts and Facebook page. By now many of you have already seen what the Tribune is only willing to allude to, but for those who haven’t:
* The blog is Detective Shaved Longcock.
* This is the post that kicked off the whole thing.
* Second City Cop then pushed it along.
* Here are the Facebook messages the Tribune references without explanation.
Gang Bang
“There were at least two gang stories in Chicago on Wednesday: One that’s getting the buzz and another one that’s soft and weepy,” John Kass writes for the Tribune. Click through to read about the other one.
Baseball Is Better When . . .
. . . one of your owners isn’t a lying boob.
My Body Is Not An Amusement Park
(I am) MORE.
‘L’ Car No. 1
It was from Delaware.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Faithful.
Posted on February 9, 2012