Something going on here we should know about?

The [OP village] board tabled the discussion on the zoning change until the end of the meeting, when it entered into a closed-door discussion citing “attorney-client privilege,” which is not one of the 23 “strictly construed” exceptions that allow public bodies to meet in private.

When the board returned to open session at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, [President David] Pope explained the board’s position before a unanimous 6-0 vote to direct the village attorney to prepare a “findings of fact” on down-zoning the block. Trustee Greg Marsey left the meeting before the vote was taken.

The findings of fact would replace those prepared by the [village] Plan Commission in its recommendation to deny the zoning change from R-7 to R-6, which is a more restrictive and less dense residential zoning designation. The change, if it were to affect the planned condo building, would lower the four-story building by one floor and reduce its 11 units to nine.

Plan Commission, butt out.  Meanwhile, historic preservation took a hit when the relevant village commission denied landmark status to two buildings on the 400 N. Maple block

Commissioners expressed sympathy with preserving examples of more pedestrian architectural styles and with the neighbors’ plight in trying to prevent the character of their neighborhood from changing. However, most of the commissioners at the meeting found that the buildings are too badly dilapidated to retain historic architectural characteristics.

Falling-down buildings need not apply.  But landmarking the third would stop or slow down the condo development.  Neighbors are looking for “cultural”-historical reasons to save it — as if their interest was piqued in the first place by issues of crowding and making their block less livable or at least less cozy.

Meanwhile, the developer has made his plans under the wild assumption that zoning on books matters.

[Bob] Allen said he’s already spent a lot of money getting the project ready to be built, having not held back because he intended to build within allowable zoning.

But he faces a zoning change after the fact:

For weeks, Village Attorney Ray Heise has told the board that any zoning changes made now would not apply to a project for which a building permit application was received prior to the change.

Monday night, Pope would only say that the applicability of the zoning change, if approved, would be “subject to internal operating procedures of the village, village codes and state laws.”

Which with $1.50 or so will get you a Green Line ride downtown or even to the South Side.  You can trust this village board as far as you can throw it. 

Trustees Geoff Baker and Robert Milstein were the most vocal in pushing the board to consider setting aside the Plan Commission to deny the zoning change request.

“I’m not going to sit by and let inappropriate zoning affect anybody,” Baker said.

Milstein said the board needed “to send a new message in Oak Park that historic homes and peoples’ neighborhoods will be protected.”

In other words, we can change that law if we want.  Or, to paraphrase the Red Queen, words mean what I want them to mean, period.

The unfolding investigation of last November’s events in Haditha reveals much more about the Bush administration’s critics than it does about the U.S. armed forces. Although the inquiry is ongoing, it appears that 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were deliberately murdered, allegedly by American Marines seeking revenge for a fallen comrade. If true, the episode was a war crime, something that must be–and no doubt will be–severely punished. However, the administration’s critics are already cynically leveraging the Haditha killings as a means of undercutting the president, heedless of the effect this may have on American national interests.

It is hard to define the context in a place where the enemy regularly tortures and beheads people, and murders children on a daily basis, and this seems to raise scant ire. They can kill a dozen kids, or come to a classroom and murder a teacher in front of young students, and still be called “rebels,” or “freedom fighters.” I call them terrorists. A smart Australian recently told me during an interview that “terrorist” is not a subjective term; after all, terror is their principle weapon, and so the term is accurate.

In the matter of Haditha, what we do know is that an investigation is underway. The results of that investigation have not been issued publicly and it is uncertain whether those results will include criminal charges. Because we have one of the only militaries on earth that actually investigates its own troops so openly, at the end of the day, we can and do hold our people to very high standards. Granted, in this case, apparently it took a media pry-bar to crack the lid, but we also have one of the only militaries in the world where a writer — even one who is flagrantly anti-military — can embed with combat troops.

 

Foreign journalists often contact me for advice on how to get in with troops other than Americans in Iraq. American forces are easy to go out with. A journalist need only contact the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, and he or she can be getting shot at while dodging roadside bombs as early as next week. But it can be extremely difficult, unless the journalist in question is a known sympathizer, to go out with militaries of other nations.  [Italics added]