By Steve Rhodes
“A federal judge on Wednesday blasted neighborhood residents who harassed a Bridgeport man and vandalized his home after he cooperated with the government and testified for prosecutors in this year’s City Hall hiring fraud trial,” the Tribune reports.
The details are pretty amazing.
“There were harassing phone calls and slashed car tires, [lawyer Jeffrey] Steinback said. There was also graffiti on [former deputy Streets and San commissioner Daniel] Katalinic’s house. And finally, last Easter morning, there was a large bottle tossed through the glass front door of the home he shares with his wife and three young children, Steinback said.”
Katalinic, of course, was a key witness in the trial that sent Robert Sorich – the former patronage chief of Mayor Richard M. Daley – to jail. Three other high-ranking aides were also convicted.
“Following their sentencing, Daley defended Sorich and the others, saying they were all men of good character,” the Tribune notes.
I wonder what Daley thinks of Sorich’s other friends and defenders – the ones harassing Katalinic.
Daley has spent a fair amount of time and energy over the years imploring residents of the city’s less privileged precincts to cooperate with police – to squeal on their friends and neighbors – because it is the right thing to do to combat crime.
Surely the mayor was aware of what was going on in Bridgeport and the home of Katalinic. I didn’t hear him speak out, did you?
“I know what I did was wrong,” Katalinic told a federal judge yesterday, when he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for his own role in the massive hiring fraud the city has engaged in under Daley.
Does the mayor think what Katalinic did was wrong?
“The citizens of Chicago have to demand that this stop. They have to stop shrugging their shoulders and saying, ‘That’s just Chicago,'”U.S. District Court Judge David Coar said.
It would be nice to hear that from Mayor Richard M. Daley. Then again, if it came from the mayor it would be a lie.
“During Sorich’s trial, prosecutors tracked the hiring scheme to 1989, the year Daley became mayor,” the Tribune noted recently.
And to think all this time Daley simply didn’t know how people came to get jobs in his administration – or what would happen to those who told the truth about it to federal prosecutors.
Words to Live By
“For over ten years, Chicago has emphasized community policing,” Daley says, “with residents working together with the police and other city departments to remove the conditions that lead to crime.”
Except when it comes to crime in his own administration.
Appointment Politics
Shouldn’t governors be required to appoint replacements of the same party in situations like this? And if they aren’t, isn’t it the right thing to do anyway?
Harry Palms
“Senator Harry Reid, who will be the majority leader in the next Congress, did not break Senate rules in accepting free ringside seats at boxing matches from the Nevada Athletic Commission, the Ethics Committee has concluded,” The New York Times reports.
“Mr. Reid defended attending the matches, saying it helped him understand boxing regulations.”
Reid is expected to return to Las Vegas next month when the Senate considers new strip club regulations.
Will Power
Funny how all the reasons people give for why Barack Obama should run for president have nothing to do with whether he would actually make a good president.
Little Lipinski
In other words, Dan Lipinski bought his way onto the House Transportation Committee with a little help from his father. His father the lobbyist. The one who lists United Airlines as one of his clients. Nice.
Editorial Exception
The same Sun-Times editorial page that endorsed Todd Stroger came out against nepotism today.
At least the paper also announced that editorial board member Jennifer Hunter, the former editor of North Shore magazine whom the paper hired shortly after her husband, John Cruickshank, became publisher, would be stepping down.
Oh, it didn’t? Consider myself corrected.
Source Code
Just between you, me, and the government.
Is there no such thing as a confidential source anymore?
Cuban Sandwich
“After 20 years and more than $530 million, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting operates a radio station that by the U.S. government’s own estimates has suffered a precipitous drop in listenership and a television station that may never have been seen by anyone in Cuba for more than a few minutes at a time,” the Tribune reports.
“Cubans who manage to tune in to Radio or TV Marti hear or see programming that is sprinkled with vulgarity, presents one-sided programming as news and omits stories critical of the Bush administration and Miami’s Cuban exile community, all in apparent violation of federal broadcast standards, according to recent U.S. government quality-control reviews of OCB offerings.”
Dollar Bill
I’m trying to decide which one is more credible.
Bill Beavers: “What they did is hired homeless people to circulate petitions and they are paying a dollar a signature.”
Sandi Jackson: “This insulting comment is yet another put-down of the hard-working men and women of the 7th Ward. The real story is our phones are singing off the hook with calls from people who want to support our campaign and are outraged that their leaders are being selected and not elected.”
Scrubs
Wouldn’t the Cubs have been better off taking all that money they spent on Soriano, Lilly, Marquis, DeRosa, and re-signing Ramirez and spending it instead to sign D-Mat and putting the best defense they could behind him, Zambrano, Rich Hill, and whoever fills out the back end?
Neutral Death
The new Swiss Army Knife kicks a lot of ass.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Redefining neutrality.
Posted on December 14, 2006