The long form lives in this Chicago Contrarian series.

The face of failure

When Lori Lightfoot announced her bid to unseat then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in May 2018, the Ohio native and former head of the Chicago Police Board and Chicago Police Accountability Task Force struck a pose as a seismic and completely heterodox politician. Over the past two-year period, Chicago residents have come to learn at halfway through her first term in office, Ms. Lightfoot has been a miserable failure. That Ms. Lightfoot has failed is not because of faulty policy, but because she has forsaken her duties as the leader of the City of Chicago. The three areas in which Lightfoot has failed most significantly are on budgetary matters, education and crime.

Etc.

Quite interesting . . .

“Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,” Fauci wrote in response to one person who was concerned about the use of masks on her upcoming trip.

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you,” Fauci continued. “I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location.”

If he had been that clear for the rest of us, he would have saved people a lot of trouble, even anguish and grief.

Quintessence of the blue, blue state.

Few things in the COVID-19 saga are more frightening than how casually most courts have let our most fundamental constitutional rights be voided by emergency orders, particularly in Illinois. Under those orders, which Illinois courts allow to persist with no time limit, the list of trampled rights is almost as long as the Bill of Rights itself, including freedoms of association, travel, assembly, religion, property, equal protection and due process.

Two rulings by Illinois courts this week continued the trend.

First, an appellate court upheld one of the most egregiously unfair elements of Illinois’ emergency orders – the eviction moratorium, which has essentially forced property owners to pay for a free housing program. . . .

For a quick, reportorial look at how the ruling party talks to voters, see this little book.

Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters

He loves a leftist.

2. Influence on U.S. elections: Soros once said that removing President George W. Bush from office in 2004 was the “central focus of my life.” He put his money where his mouth is, giving $23.58 million to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating Bush. His early financial support helped jump-start Barack Obama???s political career. Soros hosted a 2004 fund-raiser for Obama when he was running for the Illinois Senate and gave the maximum-allowed contribution within hours of Obama???s announcement that he was running for President.

‘Course, if you do too . . . But that’s another question.

Baseless accusations.

NEW YORK, May 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York District Attorney (D.A.) has thrown out allegations of assault against well-known priest Fr. George Rutler.

So far, this news has been confirmed by New York parishioner Jonah Bergman, who told LifeSiteNews over Twitter that Rutler told him the good news himself. In response to a tweet by Sohrab Amari saying that the D.A. had refused to charge the priest, Bergman wrote, “Yes, it is true! He is my pastor and he married me and my wife. Answered prayers!”

Also on Facebook, from the public group “news and events” about Fr. Rutler:

Samuel J. Howard shared a link.

This article from LifeSite news summarizes what I understand to be known so far. While I’m not always impressed with LifeSite’s credibility, I do find Ms. McLean to be reliable.

I also know Dr. Jonah Bergman and trust his word…

To go by Jesuit’s America Mag:

While it is unclear how much attention Pope Francis gave the document, Gerry [Gerard O’Connell, its man in Rome] says that it is significant that the document said the pope was “informed” and “assented to its publication,” a more hesitant phrasing than “approved” and “ordered its publication,” the terms the Vatican normally uses.

Statement “may have been rushed past the pope,” the headline says.

Which might explain what “disappointed L.G.B.T. Catholics who had come to appreciate the pope’s more supportive tone.”

Who does she think she is? is the question.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, alleges that Lightfoot’s denial violates the DCNF and Catenacci’s First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“It’s absurd that an elected official believes she can discriminate on the basis of race,” DCNF Editor-in-Chief Ethan Barton said. “Mayor Lightfoot’s decision is clearly blocking press freedom through racial discrimination.”

. . . .

“Racial discrimination has no place in America, especially in the halls of government,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Mayor Lightfoot’s admitted policy of race-based discrimination is flagrantly illegal and immoral. Simply put, we’re asking the court to find Mayor Lightfoot’s racist abuse unlawful.”

Catenacci said: “Preventing journalists from doing our jobs in such a blatantly discriminatory way is wrong and does a disservice to our…

Start here:

1. Ask white people to stop coming. – This is an easy one. Before the service, ask people to silence their cellphones and also tell white people to leave and never come back.

That’s a start. Now read the rest for yourself.

Says this fellow, citing himself.

In a recent Newsweek article, senior reporter Jason Lemon alleges there is “significant data showing” that the U.S. is plagued by “systemic racism.” As evidence of this, he claims the “NAACP found that from 2017 to 2020, Black men were five times more likely than white people to be stopped by law enforcement without a valid reason.”

The hyperlink Lemon uses to support that claim leads to another article by Lemon, which links to an earlier article by Lemon, which dead ends with no link or reference to an actual study or data.

Nice work if you can get it.

As for NAACP,

A search of [its] website revealed a “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet“ that claims: “A Black person is five times more likely to be stopped without just cause than a white person.” The “fact sheet” contains no link or…

The boy wanted “to become one of them.”

That is probably where I learned to feel at home in a library. I would already have made a list of the books I wanted, and in those pre-internet days I relied on the massive card catalogues and trusted in serendipity.

Some of my fellow library-goers at first seemed scary to this suburban kid. Old men, perhaps younger than I am today, wearing too many items of clothing, murmuring and reading close to the page with magnifying glasses. I wished to become one of them.

They seemed free to ignore what others thought of them, intent on the words they held to their noses. I read Louis MacNeice’s “The British Museum Reading Room” (1939) and thought again of those contented old men:

“Cranks, hacks, poverty-stricken scholars,

In pince-nez, period hats or romantic beards
And cherishing their hobby or their doom . …