The racketeering indictment in October of 18 Latin Kings gang-bangers for such nefarious crimes as drug trafficking and murder was different, federal prosecutors say, in that it got decent play in the news media. That came on the same day I had a column, written after the shocking video-recorded murder of a Fenger High School student, suggesting President Obama should direct the Justice Department to do more to combat gang violence.
You're probably familiar with the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grants," $500,000 fellowships awarded to foster creative and humanitarian work by scientists, researchers, artists, writers and other talented people. You probably haven't heard about the latest philanthropic innovation -- a kidnapping grant.
A day of reckoning is fast approaching for President Obama. Iran shows no sign of yielding to diplomacy and abandoning its nuclear weapons program, so the burden will fall to Obama to organize the kind of tough international sanctions that can avoid the forbidding alternatives of an Islamist atom bomb or a military strike to prevent it.
Now the Senate has its 2,000-plus-page health-care "reform" bill to go with the House's 2,000-plus-page package. Both are chock full of mandates, taxes, regulations, penalties and unsustainable promises to make health care better and cheaper.
The notion that America has to prove itself a just society by putting the 9/11 terrorists on trial in a civilian court shouldn't come as a surprise from a president who never seems to miss an opportunity in his global travels to apologize for this nation.
Illinois is careening toward a California-style economic meltdown, says a new report. Gov. Quinn promotes what one expert calls a "fiscally reckless" borrowing scheme to fund the CTA. The Legislature passes a "reform" bill that concentrates power in the hands of Democratic Party bosses.
In a bit of political irony, the administration of President Obama is turning out to be the mirror image of the White House of President George W. Bush.
All the pretty words in the world and all the high-sounding sentiments, no matter how eloquently expressed, can't change the hard, cold facts of life. On the contrary, good intentions divorced from reality can make matters worse. President Obama is learning that unhappy lesson in the collapse of his high-profile drive to jump-start peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
