Sen. Harmon’s optimism notwithstanding,

Despite repeated dire warnings about Illinois’ public employee retirement debt, a deal to change pensions remains elusive as the General Assembly reconvenes this week with political considerations taking an upper hand over policy.

House and Senate negotiators from both parties have met for months and report progress on coming to grips with the worst-in-the-nation $100 billion pension liability. But progress and passing a plan are two different things.

“We’re at the one-yard line,” said Rep. Mike Zalewski, a Riverside Democrat who is on the 10-member pension conference committee. “We ran it to the right, and we ran it to the left. We’re third down, and now we need a third play.”

Another view of the Park Grill business:

Michael Shakman, an attorney who represented the original investment group, said in an interview in 2011 that the city’s lawsuit was a “money grab.”

Shakman, who no longer represents the group, insisted at the time that the Park Grill concession was a “Clean and honest deal negotiated fairly” by an outside consultant the city hired at a time when “absolutely nobody wanted to put a restaurant” at Millennium Park.

“Nobody was willing to take the risk. It was right after 9/11 when the restaurant business was terrible and Millennium Park was viewed as a high-risk area,” Shakman said after the lawsuit was filed.

“It’s a money grab by the city,” he said at the time. “They see this restaurant that was struggling and now looks like it’s something of value and the city is making an effort to seize some of that value. It’s not a very pretty picture of how to deal with people who step up to the plate and take on a challenging project like this to treat them this way. It’s kind of disappointing.”

Shakman was asked then why the deal allows Park Grill to avoid paying fees for water, gas and garbage pickup as well as the $275,000 in annual rent whenever gross sales fail to reach a certain level they have never reached.

“They made a deal. It includes all the terms it includes. I know it’s hard to believe, but it was an arm’s-length, straight and honest deal with no clout involved,” he said at the time.

What to make of this. It’s realpolitik?

The beef is mainly about immigration politics as practiced by U.S. hierarchs, but the image of a glad-hander (bear-hugger) is telling:

Last Sunday, to pep up his homily, a visiting monsignor regaled our Long Island congregation with an anecdote about how he had recently learned, at the cost of bruised ribs, just what a firm-grippin’, bear-huggin’ guy good old Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, actually is.

The Church previously did not inflict such incontinent showmen on America. All Americans deserve better. American Catholics need shepherds, not sellouts.

From monarchs to showmen in, say, 75 years.

It’s all about Al and his plans (again) for the City.

Headline Al Sharpton plans to spotlight people fighting violence in Chicago

should be “Race hustler camps out again.”

Quit school, that is, vs. Sen. Lightford’s promotion of compulsory schooling at ever lower ages.

When schooling is compulsory, schools are, by definition, prisons. A prison is a place where one is forced to be and within which people are not free to choose their own activities, spaces, or associates. Children cannot walk away from school, and within the school children cannot walk away from mean teachers, oppressive and pointless assignments, or cruel classmates.

The writer, Peter Gray, teaches at Boston College. He does not mention school choice, by way of vouchers, for instance, but it seems to me the freedom to quit is comparable to the freedom to choose one’s own school or other place of learning.

Illinois teacher union hearts same-sex “marriage.”

Had a chance today to spout off at a men’s prayer meeting, came out (up: hadn’t thought it before quite this way) with: The mass could be in sanskrit, it wouldn’t make any difference. Point is, it’s a group experience of people gathered together to be part of something big. The priest drones on, I tune out so as to tune in on the big event, renewal of Christ’s sacrifice for all of us.

It’s not bingo night. Everybody there knows that. God bless the priest who comes and does it for us. I appreciate that very much. I just find it better if I pay little or no attention to his articulation of a text, which I nonetheless consider important. I’m not an iconoclast (I don’t think), but after a thousand or ten thousand times I get what’s happening. And I like it.

Agency rogues or rogue agency?

In March 2012, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading homosexual-rights group, posted the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) confidential 2008 tax returns, including the names of donors.

The disclosure of tax returns without permission is a felony, and NOM quickly cited evidence that allegedly pointed to an Internal Revenue Service official as the likely source of the confidential data.

But a year and a half later, after repeated inquiries elicited no satisfactory response from the IRS, NOM has filed a lawsuit demanding answers and damages.

So they have gone to court, as has been widely reported by NY Times, AP, and our other even-handed clarions of of what the heck is going on. NOT!!!!

NOM’s lawyer did get it on Fox News blog, however.

How they do it:

The Internal Revenue Service became another arm of the campaign and when Democrats called on it to take action against the Tea Party; it acted.

Lois Lerner received an email with a link to an NPR story in which top Democrats complained about Republican contributions and described a complaint that they planned to file with the FEC. Lerner, revealing her allegiances and informed by her FEC past, responded, “Perhaps the FEC will save the day.”

Lerner was not some rogue employee. She was reacting to pressures from top Democrats who were afraid of the rising strength of the Tea Party and worried about the consequences for the 2012 elections. The IRS was rotten with partisan figures like Wilkins and Lerner who were approaching the political contest from the standpoint of Obama employees, not employees of the United States government.

So? You have a problem with that? Get lost, Buddy.