Rocky Clark in his home in Robbins in 2010.

The sad news comes from the Chicago Tribune: “Rasul “Rocky” Clark, who was paralyzed while playing football for Blue Island’s Eisenhower High School in 2000 and later fought an unsuccessful battle to keep his health insurance, died Thursday after undergoing surgery at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, a hospital spokeswoman said.”

More from the Trib:

He was a 16-year-old backup running back on Sept. 15, 2000, when Eisenhower’s starting running back separated his shoulder in a game at Oak Forest High School. Mr. Clark went into the game. Four plays later, he was tackled and suffered two broken vertebrae in his neck and a spinal injury.

Left a quadriplegic, Mr. Clark for 10 years received top-notch health care through the catastrophic medical insurance provided by Community High School District 218. That included nurses in his home around the clock, access to pain medicines and prescriptions and a storeroom of supplies.

But in August 2010, Clark was informed the $5 million health insurance had reached its maximum and would no longer cover his medical needs. Officials with Clark’s insurance agency, Health Special Risk Inc., previously declined to discuss his case or their policies on claims and lifetime maximums with the Tribune.

At the time his policy ended, Clark said he felt he was being punished for living too long. Many quadriplegics die within 10 years after their injury because of lung or kidney failure. But Clark was able to thrive, in part because of the meticulous health care he received, his physician and family members said.

Punished for living too long.

Read the whole story here.

Christa Dias, a former teacher at Holy Family and St. Lawrence Catholic schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, claims she was fired for becoming pregnant using artificial insemination.

Ms Dias was fired in October 2010 when, at five and a half months pregnant, she approached her employer about maternity leave options.

And this is truly despicable:

The schools initially fired Ms Dias, 32, for being single and pregnant, Cincinnati.com reports. 

When the schools discovered that violated several federal and state anti-discrimination laws, they said she was fired because she became pregnant using artificial insemination.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

And Cardinal George in Chicago defends likening the Gay Pride Parade to a Ku Klux Klan rally.

How sad for him.

How saw for Catholics everywhere.

A local investment group is acquiring the media company that includes the Chicago Sun-Times, taking over from owners who purchased it out of bankruptcy under the direction of the late James Tyree.

The buyers include Michael Ferro Jr., chairman of Merrick Ventures LLC, a private equity firm that deals with technology companies. Ferro, who will serve as chairman, is bringing in media executive Timothy Knight to run the company as chief executive and as an investor.

Knight is a former publisher of Newsday, the newspaper that serves Long Island. Jeremy Halbreich, who was part of the Sun-Times investment group and was the company’s chairman and chief executive, is stepping down.

From ABC 7 Chicago:

A nun used humor to publicly scold Mayor Rahm Emanuel for ending free water for charities — and using the "s" word.

Sister Rosemary Connelly criticized the mayor’s decision to cut off charities while the two were at a breakfast fundraiser for the non-profit Misericordia, which Emanuel proposed charging for water to help plug the city’s budget gap. Connelly is Misericordia’s executive director.

Chicago’s first Jewish mayor found out what it’s like to be dressed down in public by a Catholic nun. But instead of a ruler, Sister Rosemary spanked the mayor with humor.

Brandon Arnold and Michael Burns dressed as women to commit robberies in Chicago's Lincoln Park. Archived on November 26, 2011. | Police photo

Had to write this one up.

The two dudes on the right are, well, dudes, arrested by police and charged after they allegedly threatened people with pepper spray to get them to give up their goods.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Brandon Arnold, 24, and Michael Burns, 21, appeared Saturday in weekend Bond Court — where defendants don’t always look their best — sporting well-groomed, luxurious hair. Burns had his tight shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel.

“They were both dressed as women” when they accosted two people in two separate cases Friday afternoon in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, a Cook County prosecutor said.

“They approached the victims, demanded property, and threatened [them] with Mace.”

Well, at least they looked fabulous for their close-ups — allegedly.

I really don’t care for Chicago politics. Let me start with that disclaimer.

I don’t understand how there are churches in the Chicagoland area that can be so overtly political, while others work overtime to keep the pols out of the pulpit.

I don’t understand how Carol Moseley Braun can vanish so completely from the public eye affter leaving office, and then return only to be christened in a church as the leading black candidate for mayor in Chicago.

Don’t get me wrong. I supported Moseley Braun when she ran for the United States Senate. Even joined her and Senator Durbin for a morning gathering of coffee and rolls with others from Illinois.

That was more theater than substance.

And that is pretty much my impression of Carol Moseley Braun: more theater than substance.

I will watch the mayoral drama unfold from 30-and-some-odd miles south of the Loop.

No desire to be a part of it.

Wouldn’t you?

Come on, now. Of course you would. Bill is an excellent, excellent campaigner.

Which is why it appears the sanctimony runneth over in Chicago these days as former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun (where, exactly, has she been these past several years, only to rise from the dust and run for mayor of Chicago?) and Rep. Danny Davis decry Bill Clinton’s offer to campaign for Rahm Emanuel.

Carol. Danny. Come on.

Come on.

If Bill Clinton offered to campaign for you, would you really turn him down?

Really.

Criticized repeatedly for stacking the public payroll with family members, Joe Berrios has hired his son and sister to work for him as he takes the reins of the Cook County assessor’s office.

Berrios, who was sworn in as assessor Monday after winning a rough-and-tumble election, hired son Joseph “Joey” Berrios as a $48,000-a-year residential analyst and sister Carmen Cruz as director of taxpayer services at a salary of $86,000. Their salaries will remain unchanged from when they both worked for Berrios when he served on the Cook County Board of Review, which hears property tax appeals.

“They’ve got experience, and I’m hiring people with experience,” Berrios told the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday.

Berrios said he wants competent people he can trust working in his administration.

“I trust them,” he said. “It is what it is.”

Yes, Joe.  It is what it is.

Nepotism.

Plain as day.

The Blagojevich retrial is scheduled to start April 20, 2011, the Sun-Times reports.

Keep your campaign contributions.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Mayor Daley isn’t the only elected official who could retire from Chicago city government and take a pile of money in campaign cash with him.

Twenty-two of the city’s 50 aldermen also would be eligible, when they retire, to keep some or all of their campaign funds, a Chicago Sun-Times review finds. The amounts they could walk away from office with range from as little as $629 to $2.4 million.

When he retires next year, Daley can keep nearly $1.5 million or, if he chooses, do whatever he wants with the money, the Sun-Times has reported.

The amount of campaign money that the aldermen could keep is largely a matter of whether they took office — and took in campaign contributions — before June 30, 1998.

An Illinois law enacted that year barred state and local officials from converting campaign funds to personal use but also left an exception: Anyone who had money in their campaign accounts as of the 1998 date could keep the amount they had in the bank then whenever they eventually might retire.

Like Daley, four aldermen have announced they won’t run for re-election next year.

Too bad for those of us who contributed before 1998.

The numbers are incredible.

Check the Sun-Times.

He claimed credit for something he did not do at all. Claimed credit for a bill the Democrats passed.

Mark Kirk claimed credit for a Democratic initiative.

Yet another Democratic wannabe.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Rep. Mark Kirk claims credit for being a driving force behind a bill signed into law this year that requires the president to crack down on companies doing business with Iran.

But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, says Kirk is guilty of "exaggeration" when he says the "Kirk bill" became the "Berman bill" so it could pass the Democratic Congress.

"We didn’t even look at his legislation at the time," Berman said. "Our bill did so much more and went so far beyond his bill, I would have to put it in the context of an exaggeration."

Kirk told the Sun-Times editorial board last month, "The Iran Sanctions Bill, it was originally Kirk-Andrews, but if you were going to move it, that means you need to adjust to the power of the House. This legislation eventually became Howard Berman’s legislation, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He had my full approval in moving that forward under his badge."

For years, Kirk has been an apostle of trying to hold Iran’s feet to the fire by choking off its supply of gasoline. He passed a resolution this year to do that — H.R. 3081. (His staff had inadvertently listed the resolution as 3801 — a bill dealing with mortgages — on his campaign website but corrected it Monday morning after a Sun-Times story was published.) Kirk is listed as a co-sponsor of Berman’s bill.

"There is no doubt that Mark was a committed person on this idea, which wasn’t his idea, it was out there in the press," Berman said. "He introduced legislation in the previous Congress on refined petroleum products. He did chair a group I occasionally went to, the Iran Working Group.

"The bill that I was involved with, we didn’t even look at his legislation at the time. It was a much broader bill than his bill and, in fact, we were persuaded that while the refined petroleum sanctions were valuable and useful, Iran has a way of reducing its reliance on imported petroleum."

Illinois, you need to get it. Mark Kirk is not your man.

Alexi Giannoulias is the only coherent vote for United States Senate.

An article in today’s New York Times reveals so much more, reporting on the bizarre culture Zell and those he has brought in have created at the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere at the Tribune Company.

Clearly, Zell is steering company into the ground.

From the NYTimes:

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.

Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.

After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.

“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The report goes downhill from there, where sexual harassment is justified as path to creative thinking, with disclaimers like this in the Tribune’s revised employee handbook:

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

My jaw dropped several times reading this article. So sad. I don’t see how the Tribune can be taken seriously any more.

A top aide to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was arrested and charged Monday with several felonies relating to alleged money laundering and theft.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Carla Oglesby, Stroger’s deputy chief of staff, was taken into custody about 4 p.m. by members of the Cook County state’s attorney’s financial crimes unit, said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

Oglesby is charged with several felonies, including theft of government property over $100,000, money laundering and official misconduct.

“It’s in connection with the ongoing financial crimes investigation conducted by the state’s attorney’s office into the awarding of so-called 24-9 contracts,” Daly said.

The “24-9″ reference is to contracts that fall below the $25,000 mark, the threshold requiring approval by the Cook County Board.

On Monday afternoon Oglesby was pulling out of a Loop parking garage when investigators — armed with an arrest warrant — stopped her vehicle and took her into custody, placing handcuffs on her before they drove her to a nearby police station.

Her attorney did not return a call for comment.

Todd Stroger could not be reached for comment either, the Sun-Times reports.

I remember when Todd Stroger was running to be elected to the seat his father held. I was at a meeting of a local township’s Democratic organization when a young college student asked the Democratic Committeeman if Stroger received the nod just because of his name. The committeeman responded with a lecture, “Young lady, you need to understand how things work.”

“How things work” at the time essentially meant “fall in line.” The young college student was too naive.

Weren’t we all…?

Toni Preckwinkle, clean up this mess. Please.

And work for the taxpayers of Cook County 24-7, not 24-9.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The electronic chirping can continue during Cook County Board meetings, as commissioners shot down a plan today to ban members from Tweeting during meetings.

Several members of the board’s Rules Committee expressed frustration with the messages Commissioner Tony Peraica sends out to followers of his Twitter account as debates rage. In the end, however, only Commissioner Joseph Moreno, D-Chicago, voted to prohibit the practice.

Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston, said silencing the Tweets would infringe on board members’ freedom of speech. "In this situation, we are trying to limit First Amendment access — which has been guaranteed by both the federal and state constitution — between the elected officials and their constituents, and more importantly, between the constituents and the elected officials," Suffredin said.

Peraica, R-Riverside, was not on hand for the meeting, but his presence was felt throughout the debate.

"I’ll chime in, since I’ve been the target of erroneous tweets by the twit in question," said Commissioner Elizabeth Gorman, R-Orland Park.

Gorman said Peraica has inaccurately Tweeted about her positions on county issues, but she acknowledged it’s a "behavioral issue" that shouldn’t be outlawed.

Yes, there was actually action taken by the Cook County Board regarding Twitter.

I think I’ll have to Tweet this.

Betty Loren-Maltese may lose her home, but right now the auction is on hold.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

An attorney for former Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese persuaded a federal judge today to postpone the auction of her Cicero home until she can challenge her 2002 corruption conviction.

The government was scheduled to auction her one-story brick home Thursday to recoup a portion of the $8.3 million in restitution that she owes.

But Judge John Grady granted a stay of the auction until Loren-Maltese can challenge her conviction based on the so-called "Skilling" defense, said her lawyer, Leonard C. Goodman.

"It’s been hard for her," Goodman said of his high-profile client, who was sentenced to a 97-month prison term in 2003 and was released to a halfway house in February. "She’s been trying to get steady work." Since her release to a halfway house, Loren-Maltese has worked as a restaurant hostess and written a blog.

Her attorneys are seeking to have her conviction thrown out based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s conviction for theft of honest services.

The high court found the honest-services fraud law was unconstitutionally vague and that violations must include acts of bribery or kickbacks.

I certainly don’t want to see anyone lose a home, but Betty was convicted. There’s no reason to say "alleged" here.

There was no minimum price set for the home, according to the notice.