August 2008 Archives

Many of you, like me, watched Sen. Hillary Clinton's speech last night waiting to see if she would rally Democrats to support Sen. Barack Obama.

Her words were clear: "Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president."

But did you notice she didn't have too many words of praise for Obama as a candidate?
Not much was said about his ideas or his character.

She did successfully spell out an argument that Democrats cannot afford to lose the White House. She also did her job by leading the charge against John McCain. Too bad she spent more time attacking Obama than McCain while campaigning, because now those words are being used against Obama in McCain ads.

While Hillary called for unity, there are still grumblings among her supporters.

The Sun-Times' Michael Sneed reported that New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney said at the convention, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't support women."

And by now you've heard of the "Uncle Tom" flap with State Sen. President Emil Jones allegedly calling Clinton die-hard Delmarie Cobb an "Uncle Tom."

If the Democrats want to win this November, they need to put aside their resentments and name-calling.

Tonight we'll see if Bill Clinton can check his ego and bring the Democrats together.

We promised to name names of Illinois state senators who voted in favor of giving themselves a pay raise.

What happened in Springfield Tuesday was something of a political miracle. Not one of the senators voted in favor of the 7.5 percent raise.

Senate President Emil "I need a pay raise" Jones voted present and chickened out on voting for his raise. But he got in a cheap shot by calling those who voted against it "hyprocrites," because the legislators will still get a 3.8 percent cost of living increase.

Now that they have taken action against the pay raise, it's time the legislators get back to work on more pressing issues like education and transportation funding.

What are we paying them for anyway?

Alan Ehrenhalt, in a recent issue of the New Republic, explains a fascinating change that's happening in Chicago and other cities across the nation, called demographic inversion.

In short, the affluent are filling up the middle of the city and pushing the poor out to the edges.

To read more about it, check out the story, here.

A lot of people are angry at illegal immigrants. In one recent case in Pennsylvania it turned deadly.

A 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, Luis Ramirez, was allegedly beaten to death last month by a group of teens and prosecutors have called it a case of ethnic intimidation. Now the U.S. Justice Department has opened a federal civil rights investigation to determine if it was a hate crime.

Nationwide, anti-Hispanic hate crimes rose by 25 percent from 2004 to 2006, according to the latest FBI crime statistics.

Ramirez's alleged attackers were a group of young white men, including football players and students with strong academic records. They were reportedly drinking and started a fight with Ramirez as he walked home with a friend.

No matter what your opinion is on the immigration debate, there's no excuse for such hateful acts.