“It’s a sign of how terrified many are of the Daleys’ punitive exercise of their power that few will criticize the brothers for the record,” writes Doug Ireland in the Nation (February 3). “One prominent lawyer, a Democrat who is now out of politics, insisted on anonymity before confiding, ‘My client says Bill Daley told him that if he wanted to get city business, “You need a new lawyer.” So-called honest graft is wildly prevalent in Chicago, and Bill is a practitioner of it.’”
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Only connect. “While the members of women’s study clubs and participants in the Great Books groups of the ’40s and ’50s were largely interested in self-improvement through education, it would seem that many contemporary members are drawn more by the social nature of book clubs,” writes Patrick McCormick in the Chicago-based U.S. Catholic (February). “In the midst of the electronic age and the increasing information glut that accompanies it, it’s not knowledge that’s a scarce commodity, it’s the leisure of a good conversation….Forty million folks have seen the latest film or TV show, and they all saw it recently, so you can walk into any place and connect or start a conversation, shallow as it may be. But pick up a serious book, spend 20 hours reading it, and where will you go to talk about all the things it stirred up in you?”
You don’t understand, murder isn’t controversial! From the Illinois State Bar Association’s Bar News (January 3) account of attorney Lucinda Finley’s talk at the association’s midyear meeting: “Some lawyers are unwilling to take cases because their partners are against abortion, she said, but the same lawyers are willing to defend rapists and murderers.”
