By Steve Rhodes

I’m busy today ranking the presidents in order of war criminality, but here’s a bunch of stuff elsewhere on the site you should check out.
The Beachwood Radio Hour #73: The Real Obama Is Bernie Sanders
The throughline from Dean – and the under-discussed one-on-one dynamic of the race.
Plus: I Don’t Care About Beyoncé; Rahm’s Big Bad Bond Deal; Seven Innocent People, Picked To Share A Jail . . . ; and Meet The Chicago Police: Rigged Lineups, ‘Lost’ Files, Upside-Down Batteries.

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Posted on February 15, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“The McDonald’s across from Wrigley Field will close on March 1 to make way for a hotel,” DNAinfo Chicago reports.
From the link: “The Ricketts family also owns the land across from the ballpark where a McDonald’s now operates. Renderings showed it housing a glass, L-shaped hotel with a courtyard facing Wrigley. A McDonald’s, however, would remain on the property, though it may be rebuilt to better fit with the hotel, according to the plans.”
Every last charm is being removed from Wrigley Field as our Cubs overlords create a new neighborhood called Rickettsville. One of the coolest things about the ballpark was that it was just sitting on a corner like any other business – T-shirt store, 7-Eleven, McDonald’s, baseball stadium. That’s what made it part of the neighborhood.

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Posted on February 13, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“A Chicago man won a $1 million verdict this week in a lawsuit that accused police of rigging a photo lineup to ensure he would be wrongly identified as an armed robbery suspect,” AP reports.
“Jermaine Durdin was 18 when he was charged in the 2010 robbery of several hundred dollars from an ice cream truck in the Lawndale neighborhood on the city’s West Side. He spent nearly two years awaiting trial in the Cook County Jail before he was found not guilty – an experience he said in court this week deeply affected him and left a ‘stain’ on his brain.”

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Posted on February 12, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“A witness to a 2013 police shooting that resulted in a six-figure settlement with the City of Chicago says she was detained by officers and prevented from talking to reporters at the scene about what she saw,” the Chicago Reporter reports.
“Asiah Clark, who watched as a police officer shot 16 times into a car full of unarmed teenagers, has sued the city for violating her First Amendment right to free speech. The shooting was captured in a dashboard camera video that went viral last year.
“Her account of how she was treated is reminiscent of those of witnesses to the shooting of Laquan McDonald, who told lawyers for his family that they were threatened by officers, and it raises questions about whether Chicago police engage in a pattern of silencing witnesses to police shootings. Clark appears to be the first to sue the city over this issue.”

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Posted on February 11, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

1. BERNIE BUCKS.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders took a few moments in his victory speech Tuesday night to make a small request of his supporters: ‘Please help us raise the funds we need, whether it’s 10 bucks, 20 bucks, or 50 bucks,’ he said,” the Washington Post reports.
“The response was so overwhelming that his website buckled under the traffic. Between the close of the polls and 12:30 a.m., his campaign brought in $2.6 million.”

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Posted on February 10, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“Tina Hunt had gone to the Cook County criminal courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue to attend her son’s court appearance in November 2013 when she found herself in a dispute with sheriff’s deputies,” Steve Schmadeke reports for the Tribune.
“After she was taken into custody, a sheriff’s deputy charged that she kicked him in the shin during a struggle in a lockup at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
“On Wednesday, the 49-year-old grandmother is scheduled to return to the same courthouse to be sentenced for her felony conviction for aggravated battery of a peace officer.
“With convictions for two violent crimes decades ago, Hunt faces a mandatory minimum of six years in prison, even though the deputy testified at trial that the kick didn’t hurt and left no marks on his shin. The harsh penalty is the result of Illinois’ version of the ‘three-strikes’ law.”

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Posted on February 9, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

I’m off to the Genius Bar for urgent MacBook repairs, so I’ll just have to leave you with these fine offerings.
The Beachwood Super Bowl Halftime Prop Bet Results Are In!
We all lost.

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Posted on February 8, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

Welcome to Super Bowl weekend: Jilted taxpayers, broken players, warlords and Coldplay. Pass the chips!
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Posted on February 6, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but what happens when your friend becomes the biggest investor in your enemy?” Peter Frost writes for Crain’s.
That depends – who is the enemy and who is the friend in this scenario? I had to bear down on this lead for a few minutes to realize that Michael Ferro is the friend – but a friend to whom? – and Tribune Publishing is the enemy.
But isn’t Ferro the enemy – except to Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin, who was quite happy to make a new friend for $44 million?
I’d say those are the only two friends here, and the rest of us are their enemies.

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Posted on February 5, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“Michael Ferro, majority owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, has become the largest shareholder in Chicago-based Tribune Publishing, parent company of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other major daily newspapers,” the Tribune reports.
Layoffs begin immediately.
No, seriously, this is not good.

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Posted on February 4, 2016