Month: September 2010

Give me coverage to match those editorials

See the pix here? Quinn-Giannoulias in one, Kirk in the other? Same size, right?

Q-G:

K:

??????

!? What the . . . ??? They’re both of G, with Q thrown in! No Kirk to be found! Home-delivery hard copy Sports Final at least had a (dinky) 2.5-by-1.5 of K. top right, over a 6-by-3.5 of Quinn & G, over a 3-by-2 of G-supporter Tammy Duckworth at the wheel of an airplane — to go with this by Lynn Sweet, which will do for a Giannoulias press release any day.

Giannoulias will call out Kirk on WMDs, resume boost

is the head. The story is not even about what happened, but what the G-supporters are planning to happen, an advance man’s heads-up, compliments of the Chicago Sun-Times, self-described as an independent newspaper, really progressive-liberal, usually mainly in its editorials but not exclusively so, as we see from today’s sports final.

Reading John McCarron closely

CTA blue line station at O'Hare international ...
Blue line station at O'Hare

McCarron had me worried with this. Was he to contemn the weakness of democracy in implementing ideal solutions?

[T]he specific and difficult choices that inevitably will have to be made [in Chi-area mass transportation] choices between bullet trains to St. Louis, say, or express elevated trains to O’Hare International Airport are left to the future push-and-pull of politics and economics. [italics added]

But right away this:

That is as it should be. [Phew!]

Followed immediately, however, with something of a puzzler:

Ideals stand the test of time far better than the means we choose to achieve them. [Huh?] Better to dream no little dreams. [Main point, a good one.] Then make sure our actual plans the ones that cause bulldozers to roll and billions to be spent are in tune with the resources of today [yes] and the technology of tomorrow. [Huh? How do we do that]

Here’s one vote, then, for a few big dreams . . . followed by a lot of smaller, cost-effective plans.

Let’s do it.

Proviso comments

Typical triage tag. Note 'tear-off' sections f...
The medical kind
Mary Mitchell faces a problem in her own town, and she’s not so sure those Proviso East expellees didn’t deserve it.
As harsh as that is, it may be the only way to keep Proviso East from succumbing to the problems that have ruined some Chicago public schools.
And the school board president defends triage in solving social problems.
“[T]hese [expellees] are not the students that we should be focusing our resources on. There are 5,000 other students who are coming to school. We are not going to tolerate the kind of violence that was displayed in this case.”
Limited resources.  What do you know?
Tags: ,

Con brio

American writer and editor Peter Beinart, of T...
Peter

A peek inside the storied beltway:

[TRB writer, New Republic, Peter] Beinart is well known among Washington journalists as a quick-witted polemicist and a gifted stylist. He’s also regarded as one of the most energetic careerists anyone has ever seen.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Banish careerists from the ranks of Washington journalism and the only people left would be a handful of newsroom librarians and a couple of copy editors from Human Events.

A hit, a palpable hit!

When abusers were not sent to another parish

Basil of Caesarea
St. Basil of Caesarea

Once upon a time, long ago, clergy sex abusers were made short work of:

St. Basil (330-379) stated: A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys is to be publicly flogged . For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement he shall never again associate with youths neither in private conversation nor in counseling them.

That’s not the half of what Basil had in mind. Here’s a fuller version:

“The cleric or monk who molests youths or boys or is caught kissing or committing some turpitude, let him be whipped in public, deprived of his crown [tonsure] and, after having his head shaved, let his face be covered with spittle; and [let him be] bound in iron chains, condemned to six months in prison, reduced to eating rye bread once a day in the evening three times per week. After these six months living in a separate cell under the custody of a wise elder with great spiritual experience, let him be subjected to prayers, vigils and manual work, always under the guard of two spiritual brothers, without being allowed to have any relationship . . . with young people.”

Nailing this down in Basil’s writings has been a challenge, however. Best near-ancient source seems to be St. Peter Damian (1007-1071), in his ever-popular Liber Gomorrhianus, or Book of Gomorrha — a primary source book for protesters of ecclesiastical indifference to abuse.