The [Thursday] Papers

"A man who says he was beaten into confessing to a double murder by detectives under disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge was ordered released by a Cook County judge on Wednesday, the same day Burge reported to federal prison," the Tribune reports.

There isn't much justice in this world, but what little there is sure is sweet.

"Eric Caine, who was imprisoned for a quarter of a century after his arrest in 1986 for the murder of an elderly couple, is scheduled to be released from a state prison in southern Illinois on Thursday, said his attorney, Russell Ainsworth . . .

"Ainsworth said he was expecting that Judge William Hooks would hold an evidentiary hearing in the case Wednesday at the Criminal Courts Building. But to his surprise, the judge ordered Caine released after a special prosecutor appointed in several Burge cases moved to dismiss the charges against Caine. The special prosecutor, Stuart Nudelman, held he could not prove Caine's guilt without his confession, which had been tainted by the allegations of abuse against Burge and his detectives."

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See also:
* Tribune: Freedom Eludes Inmate Who Got Life, Not Death: His co-defendant walked free, but an oversight kept Eric Caine from being considered for clemency (December 2003)

* Reader: Pure Torture (December 1999)

Worst Campus Ever
Just the fact that the University of Chicago needs this so badly is testament to how lame it is. It's college!

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When suicide bombers die and go to meet their 72 virgins, they end up in a U of C lecture hall.

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It looks a little like this.

Cable Crime
"A man who worked at a suburban Chicago hospital admits he took two rings from a dead woman's finger and pawned them to pay his cable bill," AP reports.

Frickin' Comcast.

City-State
"Chicagoland today has hugely more in common in every way with the megaregion of which it is a part than it does with the rest of Illinois," James Krohe Jr. writes in Illinois Times. "Attempting to govern it and Downstate under a single political system has arguably held each back from realizing a future appropriate to its needs. Chicagoland's economy is so large that the region could stand on its own as an independent city-state.

"The notion of redrawing state boundaries along more plausible economic, cultural and geographic lines is appealing. I have written, in different settings, that southern Illinois should be attached to its natural mother, Kentucky, while Metro East becomes officially a part of the St. Louis metro area, the northernmost parts of Illinois faces a proud future as the southernmost parts of a new Wisconsin, and Illinois's farming midsection is split between the Indiana and the Iowa that it resembles in so many ways."

Queen Bees
"Chicago-based mobile coupon startup SampleSaint, which allows coupons to be scanned through a checkout system on any mobile device, will be relocating to Cincinnati this spring, taking advantage of a $250,000 cash infusion from Southwest Ohio tech investor CincyTech," midVentures reports.

"Drawing SampleSaint to Cincinnati marks the second time a CincyTech investment has moved a Chicago tech company out to the Buckeye State - the first being $250,000 that pulled TurboBOTZ, creators of a digital retailing marketplace for buying/selling used video games, away from the Windy City."

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em
"A Chicago man accidentally set fire to his house and a neighbor's after he set off a smoke bomb to scare off squirrels that got into his walls," All Headline News notes.

Police Chief Charade
"Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey acknowledged Wednesday that he would consider leaving Philadelphia to head the Chicago Police Department but was quick to emphasize that no such job offer had been made," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

"His remarks followed more than a week of speculation in Chicago and Philadelphia media that he is in the running for the title of top cop in the Windy City.

"'Clearly, I'm torn,' said Ramsey, who added that Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel had approached him."

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So like his predecessor, Emanuel is going around the system set up whereby the Police Board does the vetting and sends recommendations to the mayor and is just doing the search himself.

Not that I have any faith in the Police Board, but then let's not let it waste everybody's time.

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Someone with an agenda is using Sneed to push John Timoney, but he would actually be the kind of heavyweight Chicago could use.

The Irish Rover
There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee,
There was Hogan from County Tyrone
There was Jimmy McGurk who was scarred stiff of work
And a man from Westmeath called Malone
There was Slugger O'Toole who was drunk as a rule
And fighting Bill Tracey from Dover
And your man Mick McCann from the banks of the Bann
Was the skipper of the Irish Rover

Secret Government Is Corrupt Government
Tell it to the government.

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