* Purchase tickets here for the December 16th performance of “No-El, Or How the Blagojegrinch Stole Christmas” - Our Capitol Fax holiday party
* Sun-Times Editorial: Sharpton’s anti-Chicago Olympic sentiment could backfire
So Sharpton is willing to jeopardize the economic benefits that the Olympics could bring to the African-American community, the same people most victimized by police brutality? His demands expose the New Yorker as having a singular, narrow focus, one that ignores recent Chicago Police reforms.
* Tribune seeks access to state police files of Blago fundraising probe
* Aaron Chambers: Attorney General put in a tight spot
* Tribune Editorial: How to avoid Stroger’s taxes
All through 2007, Stroger’s allies didn’t hold him to his “solemn oath.” Many of them figured budgeting for 2008 would be like the good old days: They’d harrumph and whine about how impossible it is to cut Stroger’s $3 billion-plus budget — and in the end they’d get their way.
Maybe they will. But county government has been inexorably approaching this bitter showdown for several years.
* Zorn: City torture payoff reeks of bad message
Hobley, who had no previous criminal record and was employed as a medical technician at the time of the fatal fire, became one of the cause celebres in the local campaign against capital punishment. When former Gov. George Ryan commuted every death sentence in Illinois in early 2003, Hobley was one of four inmates to whom Ryan granted a full pardon and immediate release.
If the U.S. attorney’s office is able to revive the case and convict Hobley on federal charges related to the same crime, Feuer said that Hobley’s damage claims against the city would be far weaker and his cash settlement from a civil jury would be far smaller.
* Over 200 CPS teachers certified as ‘masters’; more here
More than 200 Chicago Public Schools teachers were certified as “master teachers” in 2007, the second-highest total of any school district in the country this year, Mayor Daley said today.
Certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is the highest credential an educator can earn.
With 208 “master teachers” this year and 860 total, Daley’s goal of having 1,200 of the most qualified teachers by the end of next year is well within reach.
* More farmers seeing wind as cash crop
* Do state troopers get enough training?
* War Room: “Oh Dana’
At a White House press briefing on Oct. 26, a reporter asked [UIS Public Affairs Reporting grad] Dana Perino about Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that a U.S. plan to base parts of a missile shield in Europe was similar to the events that led to the Cuban missile crisis.
Perino’s response: “Well, I think that the historical comparison is not — does not exactly work. What I can say is what President Putin went on to say, which is that the president and President Putin have said that we can work together on this.” […]
Appearing on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” over the weekend, Perino said she “panicked” when she got the Cuban missile crisis question because she wasn’t exactly sure what the Cuban missile crisis was. “I really know nothing about the Cuban missile crisis,” Perino said. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”
Perino said she went home that night and asked her husband, “‘Wasn’t that, like, the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’”