Before he was a world-rebuilding, race-transcending international statesman, our president had become well acquainted with the Chicago Way. And they tell me your are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true that I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. ~Carl Sandburg, “Chicago,” 1916 When Rudyard Kipling saw Chicago in 1891, he wrote, “I urgently desire … [Read More]

Self-evident Truths: For Barack Obama on the Eve of His Inauguration as President of the United States. • Israel has the inalienable right to pursue terrorists in the Gaza Strip and everywhere else they are hiding. • Israel has the inalienable right to attack houses, mosques, churches, United Nations shelters, schools and hospitals to kill terrorists. • Israel has the inalienable … [Read More]

Salvation was in the air. Repeal, also, was in the air. Two weeks before, the lame-duck Congress had turned a somersault and voted the amendment to the Constitution ending Prohibition. The wets were making merry with applejack, bathtub gin and prohibition hooch. “Beer by Easter,” they cried. Forty-one legislatures were in session for the chance to approve the wet amendment and … [Read More]

There was enough brass in the room to forge a cannon. The generals were all there, the joint chiefs and the commanders from the front lines. They came along to tell the senators why America could not quit now. “General,” Senator Bullfrog Epidurus interjected in the midst of General Manassas T. Deeyemzee’s testimony, “haven’t we heard all this before? Every year … [Read More]

“I am going to teach [them] to elect good men.”—President Woodrow Wilson, referring to his decision in 1914 to invade Mexico.  (Quoted in Peter Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.-Latin American Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. page 51.) When the American electorate handed the Republicans a majority in the national legislature, the world gave it some thought and … [Read More]