University of Chicago Football Punts To Bears and Cardinals

A few days ago on the web I came across a photograph of the University of Chicago 1901 football team. The provider of the image remarked something along the lines of “Notice they’re wearing the Chicago Bears C-logo.” Well, where to start.


The University’s first football practice was led by new coach Amos Alonzo Stagg in nearby Washington Park on the new University’s first day of classes, October 1, 1892.

Chicago was a charter member of the Big Ten Conference, and had much success in football and other sports. The old trophy room at Bartlett Gymnasium, where I learned squash and handball and played in many a pick-up basketball game, was a sight to behold. Indeed, the first Heisman Trophy was awarded to Chicago running back Jay Berwanger in 1935. [Quick time-out for a trivia question: What school has the winningest record against Notre Dame in football, 4-0, outscoring them 83-11, and is the only school ND has played more than once but hasn’t beaten (with the exception of two recent bowl game losses to Oregon State); you only get one guess (okay, all the wins were in the 19th Century, but still). Answer: link.]

Chicago left the Big Ten in 1946 (football in 1939) because then-President Charles Maynard Hutchins, a young progressive educator, found the academic compromises attached to the increasing necessity of awarding football scholarships to be inconsistent with the University’s nature. Legend also has it that Hutchins was not athletically inclined, reportedly saying that "whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down till it passes.” This story may be apocryphal, but, as the old saw goes, it’s too good to check out.

As for those Bears, they didn't come into existence until around 1920. Their young coach, George Halas, a Chicago native and former University of Illinois football player, eventually adopted U of C’s football-shaped “C” logo for his Bears as well, and soon enough Chicago’s “Monsters of the Midway” sobriquet was being applied to his team to boot. And now many think they originated with the Bears. Stravinsky’s old quip comes to mind – bad artists borrow, great artists steal.

And incidentally, the Bears weren't the only professional football team to take something from U of C. When the Chicago Racine Avenue west side football team went looking for new uniforms, it settled on a used set from the U of C Maroons, and, as the story goes, upon observing the faded color, adopted the name Cardinals and has worn red ever since. The team has gone on to become the oldest one in the National Football League, with the Bears second right behind them. So, of the two oldest NFL football teams, one wears the U of C’s faded colors and the other bears its “C” emblem and nickname. Not a bad legacy.

The "C-Bench" (c1976) outside Cobb Hall on the main quadrangles of the University of Chicago, originally intended for the exclusive use of athletic lettermen. Jay Pridmore writes in his Campus Guide that "the bench constitutes something of a parabolic chamber that amplifies whispers in unexpected ways." Only at U. of C.

Richard Balsamo

Partisan Senator Bayh Now Decries Partisanship in Politics; and the Myth of a “Moderate” Democrat

Democratic Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana is shocked, shocked to find bitter partisanship in American national politics, and is now fed up with it. He apparently hadn’t seen much of it before. At least that’s what he’s saying now, as he announced his decision not to seek a third term in this fall’s elections.

But partisanship has always been there, it’s just that he’s accustomed to being on the delivering end. This is the Bayh whose Democrat party’s once-nominee for president, Al Gore, with whom Bayh had hoped to run as the VP candidate, shouted in a frenzy to a whipped-up audience that George Bush had “betrayed this country.” This is the same Senator Bayh who voted against George Bush’s two respected and distinguished supreme court nominees, Roberts and Alito, because they were too “extreme,” while Republicans a few years earlier almost unanimously voted to confirm President Clinton’s two ultra-liberal nominees, Breyer and Ginsburg, out of the tradition of bipartisan deference to the president’s choice. Bayh even voted against the confirmation of his former Senate colleague John Ashcroft as Attorney General. And writes Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online (link): “Bayh gave a speech at the ’08 Democratic National Convention that was obnoxious in its partisanship — even given that it was a convention speech.” This is the Senator Bayh, a media-proclaimed “fiscal conservative,” who voted for ObamaCare and the reckless, wasteful, and ultimately unsuccessful Democrat spending plan they called the “stimulus.”

Evan Bayh is the poster child of the fake moderate, who talks a good, conservative game back home with the folks and then votes in a hyper-partisan liberal way in Washington, knowing that most back-home voters aren’t paying attention to specific votes and that the liberal media will cover for him, all the while raking in campaign contributions from liberal interest groups. Here’s the Chicago Tribune editorial board, today (link): “Bayh was too centrist — and not concerned enough about placating interest groups — to make him a comfortable fit in Washington.” Is the Tribune that clueless or that deceitful? Evidence offered by the Tribune of Bayh’s “moderation” in the Senate: zip. The reality: it’s not that Bayh is too “centrist” for Indiana voters, you at the Tribune editorial board, it’s that he’s too partisanly liberal, and enough voters, in Indiana and elsewhere, have woken up to that fact.

But the radicalism of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi has unmasked these so-called Democrat “moderates” and has exposed them to the suddenly alert, attentive, and wised-up public (link). So now Bayh’s in trouble in the polls, at risk of losing his seat later this year, and so has decided to quit and take his multi-million dollar campaign fund home with him. There’s nothing wrong with being partisan and liberal in American politics, but it’s hard to respect a man who says one thing when home but votes another way in Washington, who is one thing but pretends to be another.

John M Greco

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

One of the gems of the University of Chicago, The Oriental Institute (link) houses a museum, an auditorium, a beautiful library, classrooms, and scholars’ offices. The museum, open to the public, contains countless artifacts gathered during excavations in the Near East over many years by University faculty, students, and staff. Among the striking treasures displayed: an Assyrian Lamassu, or human-headed winged bull (link); a Striding Lion of Babylon (link); a statute of King Tutankhamun from Egypt; and a colossal Persian bull’s head from Persepolis.

The Institute's beautiful building was dedicated in 1931. From Jay Pridmore’s architectural guide to the University: “Designed by the same [architectural] studio [responsible for Rockefeller Chapel], the architects certainly intended for the Institute to harmonize with if not resemble [the nearby] modern Gothic chapel. But for reasons of fashion and a few characteristic design features, [the Institute] is commonly tagged ‘Art Deco.’ The building’s simplified Gothic exterior is indeed notable for planes and masses similar to those of Art Deco or Art Moderne commercial buildings of the period, such as Chicago’s Board of Trade [building]…. [Nevertheless,] despite its exotic and modern touches, the Oriental Institute remains an integrated part of the Gothic revival campus…. its gables and gray stone, as well as its bays and buttresses show that the Gothic revival was still regnant in the early 1930s.”

American Egyptologist – Breasted & The Oriental Institute

A "colossal" statute of Tutankhamun (c. 1334 B.C.), “one of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt” says the note in the museum. Excavated in modern Luxor, it is one of a pair, the other of which stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Richard Balsamo

Related Previous Posts:
Ancient Assyria & the Transience of Economic Strength
The Oriental Institute's "Striding Lion" of Babylon
American Egyptologist – Breasted & The OrientalInstitute

Observations on the 2010 Illinois Primary Results

Ballots in hand have now been tallied from yesterday’s Illinois primary elections.

* Although overall turnout was low by primary standards, the percentage of Republican ballots requested was relatively high. I read that sometimes the Republican percentage can be as low as about 33%, but yesterday, using tallied votes in the governor’s race with 98% of precincts reported, the Republican percentage was about 46%. Yes, still fewer ballots than those voted by Democrats, but a considerable improvement. This result bodes well for the fall election.

* The Republican nominee for the Obama/Burris Senate seat is five-term Rep. Mark Kirk, 50, from Chicago’s tony North Shore suburban 10th Congressional District. A reserve Naval intelligence officer with a very good reputation in Washington, he bills himself as a fiscal conservative and social moderate, and is strong on national defense. Despite some waffling (for example, he voted for the “cap and trade” carbon tax bill that eventually went nowhere and whose reason for existence is now discredited), he looks strong against the young (33 yo), inexperienced one-term state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat primary winner with 39% of the vote who’s under fire for some in-office performance issues as well as for his earlier activities as a senior executive of his family’s politically-connected but failing Chicago bank.

* In the 6-man Republican primary for governor, State Senators Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard are in a race still too close to call – Brady leads by about 400 votes, at 20.3%, with all votes in-hand counted but with, according to WGN TV News, over 10,000 absentee votes still outstanding, about 8,000 of which are from Cook County. Most of the Cook County ballots should be Democrat, and most of the rest are likely Republican. Assuming the 10,000+ number is roughly accurate, assume 3,500 Republican absentee ballots are outstanding and that 2,000 will be received. With a 400 vote margin, Brady's lead looks hard to overcome unless Dillard has a significantly disproportionate showing. Such ballots need to have been postmarked by Feb. 1 and need to be received soon, meaning we won’t have a winner declared for a few weeks; a recount could delay the final determination even further.

Brady is a fiscally-conservative downstate businessman who’s already being attacked by the liberal media as holding “extreme views”, as two different TV commentators phrased it yesterday, for his anti-abortion and pro-gun rights (conceal and carry) positions. Dillard is from west suburban DuPage County, strong Republican territory, whose history on fiscal conservatism is questioned by some, and he notoriously participated in a 2008 Democrat primary campaign commercial for his state Senate pal Barack Obama, widely seen as a de facto endorsement, which has hurt him much among Republicans. Conservatives looking for a fresh face split their vote in the crowded 6 man race between Adam Andrzejewski and Dan Proft; combined the two carried over 22% of the votes, enough to win. Third place finisher Andy McKenna, Chicago businessman and former state party chairman, is about 8,000 votes behind Brady and almost certainly can’t catch up through the absentee ballots. Whoever wins the nomination will be in a tough race with the very erudite, bright, and affable Democrat incumbent governor Pat Quinn, who himself just barely survived a rancorous primary challenge.

* In the Chicago collar counties there are three traditionally Republican Congressional seats held by Democrats. In the far southwest suburban 11th District, Republican Reserve Air Force Captain Adam Kinzinger looks solid against first-term Democrat Debbie Halvorsen. In the far western suburban 14th District, Republican State Senator Randall Hultgren beat back a challenge from political rookie Ethan Hastert, son of former Speaker Denny Hastert, who had held the seat for a long time; he will face Democrat Bill Foster, who in 2008 won both the special election to replace Hastert (after his mid-term retirement) and the regular election against the same weak Republican opponent. Hultgren looks much stronger in a Republican year. Finally, in the northwest suburban 8th District, Republican political newcomer Joe Walsh won the nomination to challenge three-term Democrat Melissa Bean, who has positioned herself as a centrist; this race will be tough. I think the Republicans have a very good chance to pick up two of the three seats.

* In the north suburban 10th Congressional District, political newcomer Robert Dold won the Republican primary to face Democrat Dan Seals in the fall election to replace Mark Kirk. This race could go either way.

For the Illinois federal races, if I had to bet now, I think in the fall Kirk wins the Senate seat and Republicans have a net gain of two Congressional seats (which would raise their share from 7 to 9 of the 19 Illinois seats).


Related Posts:

Illinois Republicans: Slip, Slidin’ Away


John M Greco

The AIG-Counterparty “Wall Street” Bailout That Smells

The controversy over the federal government taxpayer bailout of AIG’s trading partners in late 2008 seems a big deal to me. It centers on why AIG’s trading partners, counterparties to complex derivative contracts, were paid off in full even though AIG was effectively bankrupt. If AIG had in fact gone bankrupt, AIG’s trading partners, which took ordinary business risk trading with AIG, would have been paid off at some lesser amount than full face value of AIG’s obligations. So why didn’t the government team, many of them Wall Street insiders themselves, negotiate or dictate a payoff of AIG’s obligations at some amount less than 100%? One would think that these trading partners would have been happy to get some portion of what AIG owed them, especially if it was more than what they would have received under an AIG bankruptcy. The thorny issue is that these counterparties included many of the big investment banks, most notably Goldman Sachs, and then-Treasury Secretary Paulson and many others calling the shots on the government side were former, and perhaps even future, partners and employees at these firms, which were filled with friends and former colleagues (in fact Paulson is a former Goldman CEO). Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, but Goldman got a 100% bailout via AIG. Talk about conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety, at a minimum.

We now have found out that one of these counterparties, a foreign bank, was willing to, and perhaps expected to, receive less than full value on its contracts with AIG, but nevertheless received the full amount. Also, we’ve now learned that the NY Fed, when current Treasury Secretary Geithner was in charge, instructed AIG to keep secret the names of its trading partners, a cover-up perhaps out of fear of public outrage. Geithner, although then the boss, claims he took no part in that decision.

A couple of days ago, Geithner appeared before a House Committee and received a seemingly well-deserved grilling on all this (WSJ article and editorial). His defense – AIG’s counter-parties were paid off what they were legally owed to prevent a collapse of the financial system. Paying off AIG’s counterparties at, say, 80% would have caused a collapse of the system? Count me as unconvinced and smelling something fishy. Paulson also appeared before the Committee, saying that he had no knowledge that the counterparties were paid off at 100%, claiming that that was a NY Fed decision.

All this bolsters the suspicion that the Wall Street taxpayer bailout engineered by Wall Street insiders within the Bush and Obama administrations was much more generous to certain Wall Street firms than it needed to be and likely should have been.


John M Greco

Obama Calls Bush “Indecent” in his State of the Union Address; Bashing Bush is Easier Than Actually Acting Presidential

While flipping channels this evening, I inadvertently tuned in to Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address already in progress. I regrettably and inexplicably watched for a few minutes. After regurgitating the standard ultra-liberal view of an America filled with poor, hungry, marginalized, rudderless, dazed, and confused citizens clearly needing a benevolent government to direct their lives, a recycled bit from a John Edwards “Two Americas” speech, Obama said this: “In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency.”

The government of the last decade, presumably that of George Bush’s, of which I myself have been very critical on certain issues, is called indecent by Barack Obama, while his own administration is held out as finally one that is as “decent’ as the American people. Obama has been president for over a year now, responsible for many a misstep and fumble of his own and of no real accomplishment, and yet demeaning Bush is still his main act. This was a despicable comment by an ineffectual, erratic narcissist whose emptiness and nastiness is increasingly obvious to all but the willfully blind.

John M Greco

Obama Proposes a Dishonest, Cynical Token Spending “Freeze” in One Tiny Place in the Budget, While Continuing Reckless Spending Everywhere Else

Obama continues to amaze me, and not in a good way. His self-destruction continues with his ridiculous, cynical budget “freeze” proposal. Reeling in the polls and having just seen his ultraliberal agenda explicitly rejected in liberal Massachusetts via the Brown Senate election, he apparently thinks this ploy will win him bona fides among independents. To rescue our nation from the severe and unprecedented national indebtedness he and his fellow Democrats have caused, Obama now proposes a “spending freeze” to help control spending. A spending freeze sounds good, so Obama hopes it will fool the foolable.

But this proposal is a fraud even his supporters know is risible. It freezes, but does not reduce, only about 12.5% of the entire federal budget and only for three years. Says the liberal New York Times (link): “The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.” And even if such a “freeze” were enacted, with all the budget trickery up their sleeves Democrats would get around it anyway and spend whatever they like “freeze” or no “freeze.”

Furthermore, any spending freeze at all, however insignificant, seems to contravene what the Democrats have argued all year as they racked up this huge deficit -- that more government spending of any kind for any purpose is exactly what is needed to “jump start” our economy out of recession. So now at the same time that the Democrats are talking about another massive spending bill to improve the economy (i.e., to lower unemployment) after the first $787 billion failed (in fact, unemployment has risen), Obama proposes less spending in one small place because of the massive deficit. So should the federal government now spend even more money (which it has to borrow mostly from foreigners) or less?

Should Republicans support this proposed “freeze” for its symbolic value even if there’s no meat to it? Perhaps so. But for Obama, it is incoherent, and only a sign of his desperation to halt the well-deserved slide in his fortunes.


John M Greco

Why Obama’s Soft Stance on Islamic Terror?

It has always been clear to me that one has to draw conclusions from what Barack Obama does rather than from what he says. His recent missteps in protecting Americans from Islamic terrorists is drawing me to a much harsher opinion of him than I ever imagined a year ago when he started his term.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen Obama and his team:

* Screw up in not “connecting the intelligence dots” to keep the Nigerian Muslim Christmas Day “underwear” bomber from boarding a plane to Detroit.

* Proclaim the “the system worked” when the airplane bombing attempt narrowly failed because of the bomber’s difficulty in detonating the device and the quick action of a passenger, the “Flying Dutchman.”

* Grant the “underwear” terrorist Constitutional rights, despite his not being an American citizen or resident, despite quickly ascertaining that he was a radical Muslim who just tried to blow up a plane, and despite knowing that his own father had told American authorities that his son had been radicalized and had spent time in Yemen.

* Bungle the interrogation of the “underwear” terrorist : Obama’s team only briefly and ineffectively questions him before he’s “lawyered up” and goes silent; also, for the interrogation they fail to call in the “High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group” that Obama touted as his solution to interrogating terrorists because, as explained by Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, the unit is not “fully operational.” Then, Obama spokesman Gibbs states that in its 50 minute interrogation the FBI got all the information it was possible to get, an astounding and frankly ludicrous claim.

* Grant some of the terrorists held at Guantanamo, captured overseas and not ever having set foot in this country, Constitutional rights and proclaim the intent to transfer them to New York City for trial in federal court rather than a hearing before a military commission.

* Release an official report on the Fort Hood American-born and raised Muslim jihadist mass murder that is widely regarded as a complete whitewash, overflowing with liberal political correctness which doesn’t even mention Islam by name.

* Overrule a longstanding ban in order to allow terrorist-linked Islamist academic Tariq Ramadan to enter the US.

* Refuse to release the names of the attorney pals of AG Holder whom he has brought into the US Justice Department and who, like lawyers at Holder’s own firm, have defended Guantanamo Islamic terrorists and have advocated granting them full Constitutional rights.

* Release a captured Islamic terrorist to Algeria, which may put him back in action against us.

I can’t help thinking that Obama’s soft stance on Islamic terrorism evidences a deeply conflicted view of America, which in part sees America as a racist and imperialist country that’s getting what it has coming. He may disagree with terrorist methods, but I can’t help feeling, especially lately, that there’s some sympathy with their views of America. He’s certainly repeatedly apologized to the world for what he perceives as the multitude of American sins, particularly to Muslims, and in fact, prior to his nomination, even his wife said she had never felt proud of America.


John M Greco

Chicago's Insurance Exchange Building

Chicago's Insurance Exchange Building, still beautiful, still vibrant, on a crisp January day in 2010. Occupying one square block directly west of the iconic Chicago Board of Trade Building in the south Loop, between Jackson and Van Buren Streets, it was once home to the Mid-America Commodities Exchange and, per Leslie A. Hudson in Chicago Skyscrapers, to the headquarters of more insurance companies than any other building in the world. Completed in 1912 by D.H. Burnham, with a southward expansion in 1928, it shows the classic tripartite structure with a well-defined base and top, here punctuated by ionic colonnades separated by an unadorned middle.

Pictured above is the east face of the building.

Pictured on this vintage postcard is the initial northern half of the building, viewed from the northeast across Jackson Blvd; the northwestern corner of the old Board of Trade Building is visible on the extreme left.

Richard Balsamo

Side Notes on the Scott Brown Senate Election Win

Regarding Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts special election for the US Senate seat previously held by the late Democrat Edward Kennedy:

* Remarkable, and ominous for Democrats: I read that Brown won in the Kennedy family’s spiritual base of Hyannis Port and in ultra-liberal Rep. Barney Frank’s district as well.

* This election result is about much more than just a referendum on nationalized health care. From the Brown campaign: “from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants”. In his acceptance speech, Brown said “with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation — they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.”

* Barack Obama said recently in referencing the fate of Democrat national health care legislation vis-a-vis the Massachusetts special senate election: we are at a “precipice.” Obama used a completely wrong word -- “precipice” has a negative connotation in this context, something to step back from; he meant something like “threshold” or “crossroads” or “pivotal moment”. If George W. Bush, or just about any Republican for that matter, had made this significant linguistic mistake the ultraliberal media would have mocked him mercilessly. When Obama, a part-African-American Harvard Law graduate makes the mistake, that media is silent.

* Particularly reality-challenged ultraliberal theories have surfaced to explain Brown’s win: voters’ racism against Obama (Donny Deutsch and Keith Olbermann on the ultraliberal MSNBC); sexism (two female analysts writing at the liberal Politico web site); Brown’s physical attractiveness (liberal writer Sally Quinn on O’Reilly’s program); and the obligatory, reflexive, vapid, delusional It’s All Bush’s Fault (Barack Obama: “people are angry … because of what’s happened over the last 8 years”; note to BHO -- GWB's presidency ended a year ago, and you've been president since).

* Even relatively mature Democrats still can’t fully face reality: Democrat California Senator Feinstein on the election results: “You see anger. … everything is jobs and the economy and education;” Jobs yes, absolutely, but education? I think not. Here’s Republican winner Scott Brown's view: “Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the agenda of a new [Democrat] establishment in Washington.”

* The irony: the Massachusetts Democrats’ disgraceful behavior this past Fall in changing the rules to allow the Democrat governor to appoint an interim replacement for the deceased Kennedy rather than holding an immediate election (link), which had been the law, backfired on them. If the election had been held months ago, before the revolting behavior of Democrats all Fall on their push for nationalized health care and their hapless response to the Christmas Day airplane terrorist attack, the Democrats almost certainly would have won the election then.

* The two big state-wide post-2008 elections in traditionally Democrat states, New Jersey and Massachusetts, both of which Republicans have won, have come in states that Hilary Clinton won over Obama in 2008 primaries (link). Other Clinton-won states with 2010 Senate races with increasingly nervous Democratic incumbents: California (Barbara Boxer) , Nevada (Harry “The Undertaker” Reid), Pennsylvania (Arlen “Benedict Arnold” Specter), and Arkansas (Blanche Lincoln).

It’s going to be a long year for Democrats.

John M Greco


Related Posts:

The Massachusetts Persecution on False Charges of the Innocent Amirault Family and Democratic Senate Candidate Coakley’s Disgraceful Role in It

Democrat Kennedy Proposes New Approach to Government – One Rule for Republicans and a Better One for Democrats

The Massachusetts Persecution on False Charges of the Innocent Amirault Family and Democratic Senate Candidate Coakley’s Disgraceful Role in It

About 15 years ago, the Wall Street Journal began a shocking and compelling series of articles by Dorothy Rabinowitz about the truly unbelievable and horrific persecution by numerous Massachusetts authorities of an innocent family on clearly false child-molestation charges (link). The family was a mother, daughter, and son named Amirault who ran the Fells Acres day care center. Rabinowitz’s stories contained about the most powerful writing I have ever read, as she systematically dissected the absurd charges, the biased legal processes, and the despicable and disgraceful conduct of so many of the Massachusetts authorities. I was deeply moved by the tragedy Rabinowitz so carefully related.

Martha Coakley, the Attorney General (no less) of Massachusetts who is now running as the Democratic nominee against Republican Scott Brown in the special election for the US Senate seat formerly held by the late Edward Kennedy, played a significant role in this horrific case. She appeared in it years after the convictions based on non-credible, fantastical manufactured testimony from young children without a shred of physical evidence, but at a time when most sane people, even in Massachusetts, recognized the egregious miscarriage of justice.

Dorothy Rabinowitz writes (link) about this case now once again in the Wall Street Journal:

In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor's Board of Pardons and Paroles … met to consider a commutation of Gerald's sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the "extraordinary if not bizarre allegations" on which they had been convicted. Editorials in every major and minor paper in the state applauded the Board's findings.

District Attorney Coakley was not idle either, and quickly set about organizing the parents and children in the case, bringing them to meetings with Acting Gov. Jane Swift, to persuade her to reject the board's ruling. Ms. Coakley also worked the press, setting up a special interview so that the now adult accusers could tell reporters, once more, of the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the Amiraults, and of their panic at the prospect of Gerald going free. On Feb. 20, 2002, six months after the Board of Pardons issued its findings, the governor denied Gerald's commutation.

Gerald Amirault spent nearly two years more in prison before being granted parole in 2004. He would be released, with conditions not quite approximating that of a free man. He was declared a level three sex offender—among the consequences of his refusal, like that of his mother and sister, to "take responsibility" by confessing his crimes. He is required to wear, at all times, an electronic tracking device; to report, in a notebook, each time he leaves the house and returns; to obey a curfew confining him to his home between 11:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. He may not travel at all through certain areas (presumably those where his alleged victims live). He can, under these circumstances, find no regular employment.

Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was "formidable" and that she was entirely convinced "those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants."

If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat….

Wall Street Journal reader Paul McCoy posted this comment to Rabinowitz’s article:

During the time the Amiraults were in jail, there was time to step back from the lynch mob daycare sex hysteria. Dozens of other cases around the country- CA, WA, etc. were prosecuted in exactly the same way, yet in all of those cases there were rational judges and people who stepped in to stop the madness and throw out the cases. So in the wake of the wave of all the other cases being dismissed, here comes Martha [Coakley], despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, despite the overwhelming vote of the parole board, [who] substitutes her own judgement that somehow, despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to a tragic miscarriage of justice, the Amiraults are guilty. She was a political toadie protecting the former prosecutor and now prominent Democratic politician Scott Harshbarger and the other cronies who prosecuted the case. She fought to keep the Amiraults in jail so those politicians wouldn't have to admit to themselves and the public they committed one of the most horrific miscarriages of justice in American judicial history.

What is it about Massachusetts and witch trials? Some people there seem to still relish them, as Martha Coakley, with all this history, won the contested Democrat nomination to run for the Senate just a few short weeks ago. Some Democrat Massachusetts voters apparently don’t mind the egregious miscarriage of justice.

Regardless, there will be a special place in Hell for Martha Coakley and all others from this horrible affair who misused their authority to persecute and destroy three lives for their own political and financial gain.


Dorothy Rabinowitz’s series is available at the Wall Street Journal online here and here.


John M Greco

Twelfth Night

Tonight is Twelfth Night, an evening of festivity ending the 12 Days of Christmas, which, along with tomorrow’s Feast of the Epiphany, closes out the traditional Christmas season, or Christmastide. In recent years, though, the masses seem to take their cue from retailers, so their Christmas season starts around November 5th and lasts till about mid-day December 25th, quickly followed by the clearing out of all Christmas decorations to make way for stuff for Valentine’s Day (formerly and properly known as Saint Valentine’s Day, before liberal political correctness took over).

I have long been confused by conflicting references to Twelfth Night as either the evening of the 5th or of the 6th of January. Wikipedia’s take (link):

It is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking". However, there is currently some confusion as to which night is Twelfth Night: some count the night of Epiphany itself (sixth of January) to be Twelfth Night. One source of this confusion is the Medieval custom of starting each new day at sunset, so that Twelfth Night precedes Twelfth Day.

So tonight it is – the Twelfth Night, with then the Feast of the Epiphany tomorrow closing out Christmastide.

R Balsamo

The Movie "Nine" Goes Down For the Count

Nine is about the artistic and marital crises suffered by a prominent Italian movie director in the early 1960s. I saw and enjoyed the original theater version in New York in the early 1980s. However, it looks as though the makers of the movie version had some crises of their own.

Nine, like Chicago, is a musical whose numbers have a surreal aspect to them. In fact, it’s very much like Chicago, and by the same director, but largely without the good acting, the good dancing, the good music, the good lyrics, the good script, and the good plot. The title has to do with the main character's flashbacks and emotional attachment to his nine year old self, but why this particular aspect is so important is not clear, at least in the movie version, although I confess to stretches of, ahem, inattention. It has a large cast of non-Italian, non-singers playing Italians with bad accents who occasionally break out in song; why the makers of this movie chose to cast in singing roles so many actresses who cannot sing may be the eternal question about this film. If you do wind up at the theater, my advice is to have your female companion elbow you for the “Be Italian” number, the only one worth distracting yourself for, and then return to your email, your nap, or your deliberations on places to vacation next summer. The "Folies Bergere" number also could have been pretty good – it has a catchy tune, but having the very overexposed and very-post-ingénue Judy Dench, heretofore and hereafter not known as a singer, belt it out in a dress with a generous décolletage is too much to bear, capturing in a nutshell this miss of a movie.

Richard Balsamo

Obama Team Fails To Prevent Airline Bomber & Then Claims “System Worked”

A known radicalized Muslim, despite previously having been reported to authorities by his concerned and fearful father and despite being on some kind of security watch list, on Christmas Day buys a one-way ticket on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and in-flight sets off a bomb that he smuggled aboard. The explosion that would have killed all aboard doesn’t happen only because of the bomber’s incompetence in properly setting off his device, which we hear could have brought down the plane, and because of the quick interference by a vigilant passenger, the “Flying Dutchman”, who lunged across seats to grab the bomber and extinguish a flame he had ignited.

Janet Napolitano, the Obama appointee who heads the Homeland Security Department, the federal agency responsible for, among other things, airline security, said of the almost-successful airplane bombing: “the system worked” (link). This is the woman who incorrectly said at one point that the September 11, 2001, terrorists entered the United States from Canada, and who has directed her Department to refer to terrorist attacks as “man-caused disasters”.

Unlike so many of Obama’s other acolytes, who are just dangerous to Americans, Napolitano is an idiot as well. But her fecklessness toward Islamic terrorism is, as the saying goes, not a bug but a feature for this pseudo-moderate President who is culturally a blend of Islam and black radical pseudo-Christianity and who feels that the sins of the West in general and of the United States in particular are the understandable fuel for Islamic terrorism.

The indefatigable Jennifer Rubin writes (link) at Commentary Magazine’s Contentions blog:

Janet Napolitano’s the “system worked” remark is going to go down as one of those memorably idiotic statements that for better or worse become forever associated with an official’s name…. It reveals a fundamental policy cluelessness and sense of denial that we have learned, unfortunately, permeates the entire Obama administration…. A Georgetown University terrorism expert added, “This incident was a compound failure of both intelligence and physical security, leaving prevention to the last line of defense — the passengers themselves.” But the smartest observation comes from Ken Dunlap, security director of the International Air Transport Association: “We’ve spent eight years looking for little scissors and toenail clippers. . . Perhaps the emphasis should be looking for bad people.” But that would entail being candid about who the “bad people” are.

Being candid about who the “bad people” are was not a hallmark of the Bush Administration, with, for example, its random rather than targeted searches at airports, and it isn’t remotely true of the Obama Administration.

John M Greco

There Will Always Be an England (At Least in Memory)

More Islamicization stories out of merry England – they’re the drip, drip, drip of cultural water torture. It seems most Europeans, and many Americans, are in some sort of 1932-like haze, preferring to party like it's 1928 rather than face the coming storm there for the clear-eyed to see. They dismiss Barney Fife's (link) wise advice: Nip it in the bud, Nip. it. in. the. bud.

From Mark Steyn at the Corner at National Review Online (link):

Here are some snapshots of a society in very rapid transformation. First, by immigration: [Headline:] Record Level Of British Population Is Foreign-Born

Second, by the higher fertility rates of those immigrants: [news article excerpt:] The proportion of children born here to foreign mothers has also hit a new high. Some 24 per cent of the births in England and Wales last year – or 170,834 – were to mothers born outside the country.

Third, by marriage and conversion: [news article excerpt:] The former Roman Catholic from Warrington, who converted to Islam last year, gave evidence after swearing an oath to Allah and kissing the Koran.

But, if you look at the deference the state is willing to extend to Islam now and then pitch it ahead a decade or two, after more immigration, more births, more "reversions", one would not be sanguine about the long-term prospects of ancient English liberties. Nonetheless, complacency remains the order of the day. Anne Applebaum thinks we underestimate the appeal of "the very mildness of modern Europe" - or, as I call it, the vast gaping nullity of the multiculti state. Responding to an NR column of mine, Oliver Kamm in The Times of London professes to be "in favour of a vast gaping nullity".

The problem, as he'll live to see, is that that's only a transitional phase.

John M Greco

Why the Left Loves Global Warming, or, What’s It All About, Alfie?

Why? What’s it all about? It seems to be about power -- the real end game of the global warming hype. The surest way to expand the power of government is to have a crisis that seemingly needs a bigger government. If global warming didn’t exist, the left would have to invent it (as it seems they have) or something like it. Some gigantic crisis only a world government run by elites can tackle, for the betterment of a united, and controlled, mankind. A green utopia run by enlightened elites, with the power to end poverty, strife (but only for a while at best), and, while they're at it, perhaps pollution (line from Evita, sung by dictator Peron: “why not [actually] do some of the things you promised to”). And, I think, the power to end liberty.

Posted by Jude at HughHewitt.com (link):

What is it about global warming and environmentalism that has so many leaders falling over themselves to be declared the most saintly and swift in response, even before the facts are in and agreed upon? Maybe, since the fall of Communism - and before that the utopian Marxist ideal - the world's political class, along with the many citizens who root for the elite political class as a matter of principle or to curry favor, have been searching for such a unifying concept to build the Super-State around.... It is all about power.

From Mark Steyn at National Review Online (link):

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you from getting ill in the first place — by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment,” then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for … “soft despotism.”

John M Greco

Climategate Shows Global Warming Alarmism Is a Faith-Based Initiative

The “Climategate” scandal, or hoax, has seriously damaged the standing of academic scientists and peer-reviewed science in general, as we have seen how a large group of prominent “scientists” actively engaged in a conspiracy, de facto if not de jure, to deceive the world via faked “data” that purported to demonstrate global warming in the first place and its human origin in the second place.

What we do know: the earth’s temperatures are not static, they are constantly changing, sometimes getting warmer and sometimes getting cooler. At times, the earth has been a relative hothouse and at times it has been a relative icebox. Even recently, relatively speaking, England and Chicago have been under ice, but, on the other hand, Greenland was warm enough to settle on and be named “Greenland” rather than ice-land. All this before man began burning oil and coal in a big way.

We certainly must be as environmentally responsible as possible, consistent with actual science. But we should not destroy our economies and way of life based on fear instigated by fraudsters who stand to gain financially, from scoring big research grants to selling books, films, and “carbon credits.”

And we also know this: some of the big hypesters of anthropogenic global warming don’t behave in a way they themselves describe as environmentally responsible. To wit -- Al Gore’s gigantic and wasteful carbon footprint has been well documented, and the attendees at the upcoming Copenhagen world climate conference will generate a larger carbon footprint in a few days than some countries do in a year. All this makes normal people believe that the leaders of the movement don’t really believe what they’re preaching, appearing to be modern-day Elmer Gantrys.

Will any of this mounting evidence of fraud deter the global warming acolytes? I doubt it, since their faith was never founded in true science, which is properly infused with skepticism and based on open inquiry and reproducibility of results. Rather, they are true believers, for whom faith in man-caused global warming has taken the place of organized religion, bringing a sense of purpose and meaning. True believers are not dissuaded by absence of science, let alone proof of fraud.

In response to “Climategate,” global warming advocates must rely on the “fake but accurate defense” – there may be some fraud, but is should not distract us from acting urgently on global warming, since the so-called scientists were only faking data to demonstrate the man-caused global warming we all know is happening. It’s wasted effort to argue with true believers that it's largely from faked and uncertain "science" in the first place that we “know” that global warming is happening and that it is man-caused.

Given the scope of what the alarmists want the people of the world to do, what they advocate is, to borrow a phrase from the Bush II years, the ultimate faith-based initiative.


John M Greco

Liberals Feigning Ignorance of History, To Their Advantage, So They Think

Two recent statements by liberals have astounded me for the boldness of their dishonesty, or, as Obama would say, of their “bearing false witness.” It happens all too frequently, unfortunately. For example, how about the immeasurable dishonesty from Democrats lately about Obamacare being budget neutral, not raising taxes, “bending” the medical cost curve downward, not negatively impacting Medicare (despite the hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts in black and white right in the bill), etc., etc.

I know these falsities are made to fool the foolable and to influence those inattentive to politics and history. But here’s what has struck me lately.

First from a liberal “journalist” at The Atlantic magazine, whom I see is still around – I would read the occasional article by him back 15+ years ago when I flipped through his magazine. Courtesy of Peter Wehner at The Corner at National Review Online, James Fallows writes this (link) at The Atlantic online:

I am not aware of a case of a former president or vice president behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power … Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest.

I could only shake my head reading this bald lie. I immediately thought of the multitude of outrageously disparaging comments made by Al Gore about Bush and Cheney during their 8 year run. Fallows is not an idiot – he surely remembers them. But as an apparent ultraliberal enslaved to his ideology, he can’t acknowledge that. He pretends Gore’s comments didn’t happen and thinks most of his readers won’t know any better.

Wehner reacts (link):

Let’s see if we can help Mr. Fallows by going way, way, way back in history — to, say, the George W. Bush presidency, when former vice president Al Gore charged that Bush had “brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon,” and that Bush had “betrayed this country” and was a “moral coward.”

Funny, but I’m not aware that Fallows had anything critical to say about Gore at the time, even though what Gore said about Bush is far more personal and ad hominem than anything Cheney has said about Obama. You would think that Fallows, if he were concerned about the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people then trying to make difficult decisions, would have spoken up at the time. But shockingly he did not.

And there’s this whopper -- on November 6 Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, apparently responding to a report that one person of tens of thousands at various anti-Obamacare rallies had a sign with Obama as Hitler, said: “Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler…” (link). Gibbs is either an idiot or a liar, and I suspect he’s not an idiot. If there was one constant about the many anti-Bush rallies over the years, it was the heavy doses of Bush as Hitler imagery (and Bush as a chimp as well). Just watching the occasional TV news show I saw countless examples. Yet here’s Gibbs, pretending none of that happened, and seizing on one supposed case to slur all opposed to Obamacare.

The Weekly Standard picked up on this bald lie and ran a collage of photos from rallies and exhibits with 56 images of Bush as Hitler (link; also nearby). As with Fallows, Gibbs surely remembers all that, but won’t acknowledge it, preferring to pretend the ubiquitous Bush as Hitler and Bush as a chimp imagery never happened.

I honestly don’t know why people like Fallows and Gibbs lie like this, when their falsities are so obvious to anyone half awake during the Bush/Cheney years. As I said, I know they say these things to fool the foolable and to influence those inattentive to politics and history, but in doing so they only reveal their debased morality.

Addendum: In the past, when liberals were in control of almost all national media, before conservative talk radio, the internet, and Fox News, Fallows and Gibbs would have gotten away with their statements uncontroverted media-wise in any effective, widespread way. But that was then. In today's world, easily refutable falsities won't fly any more (ask Dan Rather), though Fallows and Gibbs seem not to know that yet, almost certainly because they only read and watch liberal media, and they know those outfits won't call them on any fibs. Old habits die hard.

John M Greco

Navy Seals Charged with Assault in Capturing Terrorist – Military Leaders Once Again Fail Their Own Troops

The American military leadership continues to show its fecklessness in sticking up for and protecting the backs of the very men and women it leads into battle. Close on the heels of the Islamic Jihadist murder spree at Ft. Hood that led the Army’s top general, one George Casey, to disgrace himself by declaring that as bad as the murders were, it would be even a greater tragedy if Army diversity should suffer, comes this story from the Navy.

Not to be outdone by the Army in prostrating before the liberal god of political correctness and sensitivity, the Navy now is prosecuting three Seals for allegedly assaulting a terrorist prisoner this past September. According to this Fox News story (link), the prisoner came up with a bloody lip after being transferred to Iraqi authorities and claimed that the Americans had done it. He is suspected of being behind the horrific murders and mutilations of the four American Blackwater security personnel in Iraq a few years back, a story that had shocked the nation. The news story notes that “[t]he military is sensitive to charges of detainee abuse highlighted in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.”

George Bush’s military leaders charged many servicemen with various war crimes, and to my recall the charges have been dropped one by one after lengthy investigations, though not before the accused and their families suffered much. George Bush’s Justice Dept. even went after Border Patrol agents. The American military leadership continues to periodically sacrifice men and women to show their bona fides to the liberal establishment, home and abroad, and to the Muslim world. This disgrace started under Bush and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Obama will do anything but fan the fires.

John M Greco

Obama’s Health Care Push -- Destroy for Socialized Medicine

The Wall Street Journal reports (link) today that the Chinese are very critical of Obama’s fiscal management as they increasingly worry about the ability of America to repay its massive debt, much of which is owned by the Chinese themselves. And a big part of that fiscal mismanagement is Obama’s and the Democrats' relentless push for ObamaCare, with the unwillingness to try sensible alternative market-based and patient-centered reforms, all in the face of a massive federal deficit and unprecedented peacetime spending orgy.

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson writes today (link) in a piece titled Obama’s Malpractice:

Recovering slowly from a devastating recession, it's widely agreed that … a prudent society would embark on long-term policies to control health costs, reduce government spending, and curb massive future deficits…. So, what do they [the Democrats] do? Just the opposite. Their sweeping overhaul of the health care system -- which Congress is halfway toward enacting -- would almost certainly make matters worse…. The disconnect between what President Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it…. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them [Obama and the Democrats] to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

So why are the Democrats pursuing this reckless and destructive path? John Steele Gordon writes (link) today at Commentary Magazine’s Contentions group blog:

Obama, Pelosi & Co. see this as a one-time opportunity to make socialized medicine inevitable. By destroying the current health-care system under the name of reform, they would make single-payer unavoidable…. [Obama] is bent on sharply shifting power in the direction of the government, away from individuals and the free market, and is willing to defy both the public and fiscal sanity to achieve this goal.

John M Greco