The [Thursday] Papers

1. The governor advertises for a new press secretary and the smart asses weigh in. I wish I had gotten there first.

2. Can't Dick Mell just rewrite the law for Drew Peterson?

3. Another great lesson for the kids out there. Will the new Children's Museum have an Astroturfing exhibit?

(UPDATE: More here . . . read the comments.)

4. "State Senate President Emil Jones declined repeated requests from the Chicago Sun-Times for comment on how he has spent money from interest-free loans."

Barack Obama said he could not disown Emil Jones any more than he could disown Todd Stroger.

"A top aide would only say that some of the money was spent on gasoline."

A) For what, Emil Air?
B) He has a really big grill.
C) Though he gets his electricity free from ComEd.

5. Daley Recommended Irony.

6. The city's superintendent of sewers "has been placed on administrative leave with pay after he was tracked to an unidentified suburban golf course when he was supposed to be on the clock at the Water Management Department's South District headquarters," the Sun-Times reports.

His name is Winston Cole, he makes $106,115 a year, and I hear his short game is a disaster.

7. Maybe he was working after all.

8. Regarding Ald. Dick Mell rewriting a city ordinance to give himself amnesty for not re-registering his personal cache of weapons, Fran Spielman writes today in a straight news story with a straight face that "Daley responded by endorsing the idea without reservation - not as a favor to Mell, but to get a realistic handle on the number of guns in Chicago."

Or perhaps the paper's editors accidentally deleted the ;) at the end of her story.

9. "In the June issue of Playboy, media baron Rupert Murdoch was asked if print [newspapers] is dead," Stella Foster informs us today. "'No, I don't for a minute believe it's dead. It's got a great future,' he said."

A) The remarks were first reported on Playboy's website.
B) "On the print side we've been working against difficult publishing industry trends for three years . . . "
C) Playboy is still around? And Stella Foster reads it?

10. More evidence Todd Stroger doesn't have enough PR people on his staff.

11. It's still about the math.

12. Ald. Joe Moore on his spineless colleagues:

"Over the years I've agreed with [Daley] on far more issues than I've disagreed with him on. I think what has changed in the last couple of years was the fact that on a couple of issues - the living wage ordinance and this ordinance, for example - my allies and I had scored some legislative victories. And that's apparently something the mayor takes very personally. And so he has been more demeaning, not just to me but to the entire City Council. And what I find shocking is that most of my colleagues just take it. They may grumble about it privately, but they do nothing to comment on it."

13. "One of the goals of the Chicago Justice Project is to enhance public discourse on issues where an open public discussion has been lacking or on issues where the discussion requires a greater degree of factual evidence," Tracy Jake Siska writes. "Nowhere is this more needed than in the discussion to re-fund the antiviolence program Ceasefire. Gary Slutkin, the administrator of Ceasefire, has recently made a strong behind the scenes push to get his program's Illinois state funding restored.

"Coinciding with this effort several very favorable media articles appeared in both Chicago dailies and the New York Times Magazine, as well as an extremely favorable column by Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune. All of the media coverage has either ignored the audit completed by Office of the Auditor General of Illinois or dismissed the audit's findings by attributing them to mere accounting deficiencies that could easily be corrected and should not prohibit the program from future state funding."

This is the first of a three-part series that will provide a fuller picture of CeaseFire based on reality instead of easy cheerleading.

14. Speaking of CeaseFire, what ever happened to Project Safe Neighborhoods? Plus, Black Slabbath.

15. The will of the people.

16. "Study after study suggests that a person who kicks the dog is likely to batter a spouse or child as well, and for the same reasons: power, control or anger-management issues, vented against a weaker being," the Tribune editorial pages says. "One study found that in 88 percent of homes where children were abused, pets were mistreated too. And kids who are cruel to animals are often acting out what they've learned from adults."

Does force-feeding geese until their livers explode qualify?

17. "How Dusty Baker Ruined The 2008 Reds Season Before It Started."

18. Dusty deja vu all over again.

19. "For those who still believe public transit is a low priority for Mayor Richard M. Daley, a revealing episode occurred late last month," Greg Hinz writes in Crain's.

"On a Friday, the mayor pretty much blew off an incident that day in which hundreds of riders had to be evacuated from a stalled Blue Line subway train. But by Monday next, a red-faced Hizzoner was angrily berating the Chicago Transit Authority, demanding better performance now!!!

"What changed? Though some speculate that one of CTA President Ron Huberman's City Hall enemies dropped the dime, a source who should know says Olympic officials phoned the mayor after his original comments to tell him such transit breakdowns would hurt Chicago's prospects to lure the 2016 Summer Games here."

20. Former Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey, now the executive director of the Chicago Central Area Committee, has a new site up for his photography. He still blogs at Lee Bey: The Urban Observer as well.

The Beachwood Tip Line: Outside the law.