Division Street

“Severe weather abruptly shut down the state Legislature on Friday, forcing lawmakers, lobbyists and others into the Statehouse basement as storm sirens wailed and funnel clouds, hail and heavy rain buffeted the capital city,” the Sun-Times reports.

“House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) and Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn were among those in the basement, where the mood was mostly ebullient. At one point, a handful of lawmakers could be heard singing ‘99 Bottles of Beer’.”

A) The singing came to a standstill after Jones insisted there were only 98 bottles of beer.

B) Quinn proposed ethics legislation banning lawmakers from taking bottles of beer down from the wall.

C) Madigan pissed off everybody by refusing to pass the bottles around.

D) Gov. Rod Blagojevich rode out the storm from a Wrigley Field suite.

The Hastert Highway is back in the news, thanks to a Fox News Channel investigation into congressmen who have allegedly benefitted from their own earmarks.

“In February 2004, Hastert, with partners and through a trust that did not bear his name, bought up 69 acres of land that adjoined his farm some 60 miles outside Chicago. The price was $340,000. In May 2005, Hastert transferred an additional 69 acres from his farm into the trust,” Fox reports.

“Two months later, Congress passed a spending bill into which Hastert inserted a $207 million earmark to fund the ‘Prairie Parkway’ which, when completed, would run just a few miles from the 138 acres owned by Hastert’s trust.

“After President Bush flew to Hastert’s district in August 2005 to sign the bill, Hastert and his partners flipped the land for what appeared to be a multi-million dollar profit.”

That much close followers already knew. But the best part is the e-mail correspondence between Fox and Hastert’s lawyer, who is obviously well-practiced in evasion. Via Fox:

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One of my Beachwood readers points out the historic nature of the Pfleger Flap.

“Pfleger, a longtime friend of Wright’s and Obama’s, could not be reached for comment.”

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To pick up on what a Division Street commenter points out, I wonder if there is video of Pfleger excoriating Children’s Museum opponents from the pulpit; he’s already called their position “morally indefensible” and stood by Mayor Daley’s ridiculous assertions of racism.

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What’s unfortunate is that I happen to think Pfleger has nothing but the best of intentions. But zealousness and a trigger-happy mouth that overwhelm facts and reasoned discourse are not virtues no matter what the cause; they are the exact traits decried in others who also think their causes are righteous. True leaders maintain minds open to honest inquiry and evaluation with an allegiance to truth, rather than allowing themselves to be absorbed into insular environments and their choir books.

Including:

* I think everyone’s missing the point about Mayor Richard M. Daley speaking at Northwestern’s commencement. Does NU president Henry Bienen believe that Daley is a good role model for ethical public service?

* Tony Rezko’s Las Vegas gambling debts.

* Children’s Museum parody songs.

Over at today’s Beachwood Reporter.

Please visit, and then return here for more political blogging throughout the weekend, after I duck out for some coffee that sadly won’t be from Dunkin’ Donuts.

As Lynn Sweet reports, Barack Obama has another preacher problem.

“An audit of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Office of Management and Budget found that the state’s top fiscal office did not competitively bid some services and failed to maintain even the most basic records of major financial activities,” the Tribune reports.

Other audits of the Blagojevich administration have found:

* There’s not enough parking at the Department of Transportation.

* The Toll Highway Authority is out of change.

* The Department of Aging has laid off its oldest workers to save money.

* The State Police Merit Board is filled with patronage appointments.

* Something is going around in the Department of Public Health.

Children’s Museum officials finally found that misplaced list of other sites they considered for its new home before settling on Grant Park.

It was in a desk over at Jones Lang LaSalle, and it included some 36 alternate locales, all of which were rejected - according to a letter museum CEO Jennifer Farrington sent to the Chicago Plan Commission - because they didn’t meet the “core criteria” of a central downtown location, easy access to public transportation, access to green space, adjacent covered parking, and being in Grant Park.

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“Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said he believes the list was recently ‘manufactured’ and argued museum executives repeatedly have stated they considered only Grant Park,” the Tribune reports.

“Reilly noted that Children’s Museum vice president Jim Law, Daley’s former special events director, has spent the last year insisting that Grant Park was the ‘only location considered,’” the Sun-Times reports.

Back in the Tribune, Farrington “declined to explain why the museum rejected the the 36 other sites, stating she couldn’t ’speak specifically to each site’ because she is not a ‘real estate development expert.’”

Also, her public relations consultants couldn’t come up with 36 good excuses.

“Farrington has stated before that sites such as Northerly Island and Pritzker Park on State Street, both of which are on the list, were passed over because they did not have easy access to public transportation and adjacent covered parking. Expanding at Navy Pier was ruled out after review because it ‘was not possible,’ she said.”

She didn’t mention that none of the other sites are illegal like the Grant Park site, presumably because she’s not a legal expert.

“At the risk of touching off a border war with the cheeseheads to the north, Mayor Daley today branded Wisconsin a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to protecting Lake Michigan,” the Sun-Times reports.

“Daley ridiculed Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle for belatedly signing on to the Great Lakes Compact, a multi-state agreement designed to restrict access to a Great Lakes system that provides nearly 20 percent of the world’s supply of fresh water.

“‘Oh, finally. Thank God they realize where the Great Lakes is. Wisconsin has never supported the Great Lakes movement. They wanted to do a lot of things’ detrimental to Lake Michigan, the mayor said.”

Let’s check in with our neighbors to the north to get the other side of the story.

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At least 24 injuries are reported so far in a Green Line derailment this morning on the South Side - just a day before Mayor Richard M. Daley flies to Athens to learn if Chicago will advance to the next round of competition for the 2016 Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is expected to pare the list of finalists from seven to four or five. That’s cutting it pretty close for Chicago; last fall, United States Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth said that Rio, Madrid and Tokyo were ahead of Chicago. The other contenders are Prague; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan. (Doha just won a nice little award for how it handled the Asian Games.)

It seems unlikely that Chicago won’t make it to the next round - Sun-Times reporter Andrew Herrmann recently said on Week in Review that his sources say it’s a lock, though I haven’t seen that in the paper - but visions in the minds of IOC members of Olympic visitors hurt in train derailments don’t help.

“The U.S. Supreme Court rejected former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s appeal of his federal racketeering and fraud conviction Tuesday, all but assuring the 74-year-old will serve out his 6½-year federal prison sentence,” AP reports.

To save time, the Court also rejected Rod Blagojevich’s future appeals.