After setting her sights on higher office - for County Board president last year, for mayor against Richard M. Daley in 2007 - Dorothy Brown is focusing on winning another term in her current job as Cook County Circuit Court clerk.

Brown is in her third term after winning the job in 2000 by defeating the Democratic organization's candidate. In a recent interview, she laid out her talking points for the upcoming campaign.

Dorothy Brown (John H. White~Sun-Times)

To hear some lawyers mutter about the record-keeping abilities of her office, it's sounds as though Brown is lucky the vote won't be restricted to members of the bar. But that's exactly where Brown thinks she's strongest. She's proud of her record on computerizing the office.
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So many people commute on bicycles that it is hard to remember what a revolutionary idea that was a half-century ago.

But here's evidence: When a wire service reporter happened to see Richard Frisbie (father of this writer) riding his bike to the Arlington Heights, Ill., train station in 1955, the reporter was so amazed that he wrote a report that went out on the national wire.

Newspapers as far away as Arizona (and maybe farther, but there is no easily accessible record now) ran the story and accompanying photograph.

A photograph that amazed the readers of the 1950s: a man actually commuting on a bicycle.

Here's what United Press correspondent Alfred Leech wrote:

There are those who would argue that no one who has not seen "The Wire" is qualified to be a big-city police chief.

Garry McCarthy, Chicago's police superintendent for about the last four months, has not seen that TV drama series based in Baltimore (even though he once lived in that city). But he does have a strong idea of what Chicago's police need to be doing.

Garry McCarthy (John H. White~Sun-Times)

His philosphy? A four-step process.

Step One: "Timely, accurate intelligence. You have to know what's going on, when it's going on and why it is going on."