Chi Trib is a crafty creature. Items are searchable outside its archives for one week and no more, which may not be unusual. But there’s no advice to look in archives if you can’t find what you’re looking for, boo-hoo. So I missed the John Kass column of one week ago 4/15, “America needs Bush to lead, not Oprah,” , which archives has for you at $2.95. UNLESS you get at it via the Kass page under “recent columns.” So yes, Chi Trib did have comment on Madame Gorelick and Chi readers were not as deprived as I said.

Eric Zorn on Hale” target=”_top”>Eric Zorn in today’s Chi Trib — on the trial of racist-and-proud-of-it Matthe Hale — is as measured and readable statement of constitutional rectitude as we are likely to find in a daily noosepaper.

And in Chi Sun-Times Monday 4/19, irregular columnist and onetime TV reporter Mary Laney blows whistle on Clinton aide Jamie Gorelick as member of 9/11 commission. [Not linkable] Fox in chicken coop is this Gorelick, who herself tied investigative hands in 1996 with a memo, adopted as Unholy Writ by AG Janet Reno, that prevented FBI from searching computer of suspected Al Quaeda terrorist Z. Moussaoui. Gorelick gives new meaning to chutzpah by (a) serving on the commission when she should be one of those testifying and (b) grilling C. Rice et al.

No one at Chi Trib commented on this, though its web site has a thorough airing of the matter in an AP story. The reliable Robert Novak reported on it in three lead paragraphs to his 4/18 news-item column in S-T. Otherwise, Chicago readers have been out in the cold in this more than ordinarily crucial matter.