By Steve Rhodes
1. Joey the Clown Lombardo sentenced to life. Here’s the profile of Lombardo I wrote for Chicago magazine in 2005.
2. Lombardo’s alibi in the murder of Danny Seifert has always been that he was reporting a lost wallet to police when Seifert was killed. A little too perfect.
On Monday, Lombardo wielded a police report placing him at the station as a last-ditch plea.
“In the report, a Chicago Police officer stated Lombardo approached him in [a pancake house] to report his wallet had been stolen from the glove box of his car while he’d been having breakfast,” Mark Brown writes.
As if Joey the Clown Lombardo would ever leave his wallet in a glove box.
COMMENT 2:00 P.M.: From Beachwood reader Mark:
So those commercials were true – mobsters really do go to Denny’s.
3. “Lombardo reported the theft at a police district led by William Hanhardt, who went on to become chief of detectives and was convicted of running a jewelry-heist ring connected to the Outfit,” the Tribune reports.
I still can’t get over the fact that the Chicago police department’s famed chief of detectives was a master crook. This stuff runs deep, folks.
4. After meeting with Mayor Richard M. Daley, new Gov. Pat Quinn says he’ll do “whatever is necessary” to support Daley’s Olympic bid. And if that means Daley won’t stand in the way of Quinn’s re-election, so be it!
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No word on whether Quinn will do whatever is necessary to fund the city’s mental health centers – or if reporters even asked.
5. “Speaking to WGN-AM, [Michael] Madigan specifically noted a secret 2004 inspector general report reviewed by the House impeachment committee that accused the governor’s patronage office of driving hiring even for jobs that were supposed to be free of political influence,” the Tribune also reports in its Quinn story.
“The Chicago Tribune disclosed the confidential report during Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign.”
Meanwhile, President Obama said that he had no idea the governor was under federal investigation when he gave him a rousing endorsement in 2006. Maybe he was too busy helping Todd Stroger to keep up with the news.
6. “Madigan also said he expects to push for a number of ethics measures that had passed the House previously but stalled in the Senate while Blagojevich held office,” the Tribune notes.
Those measures didn’t stall because Blagojevich was the governor, but because Emil Jones was the senate president. You know Emil Jones, Barack Obama’s self-proclaimed political mentor . . .
7. “Daschle: ‘I Deeply Apologize’.”
Says Geithner told him his taxes were just fine.
8. “Hope Or Nope?” a Sun-Times headline reads today. “President already hiring people he said he wouldn’t.”
9. “Barack Obama came to the White House promising to meet a higher ethical standard than his predecessors – ‘a clean break from business as usual,’ as he put it shortly after taking office. In time, he may accomplish that goal,” the Tribune editorial page writes today. “But so far, what’s striking is not the higher standard he proclaims but the new administration’s frequent unwillingness to meet it.”
It’s only striking if you haven’t been reading the Beachwood the last two years.
“To proclaim high standards and then suspend them exposes Obama to charges that he is either hypocritical or obtuse.”
Proclaim high standards and suspend them once, shame on you. Proclaim high standards and suspend them a zillion times, shame on us.
10. “The children of this country are counting on all of us,” Michelle Obama said on Monday.
No word on what designer she was wearing when she said it.
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“Do as we say, not as we do,” First Lady declares.
Or maybe that was just me.
11. “The looming federal trial of a former top aide to Mayor Richard Daley promises to open old wounds into hiring abuses inside City Hall and to provide fresh evidence of the campaign misdeeds of a pro-Daley political group, according to court records filed Monday,” the Tribune reports.
President Obama said he had no idea the Daley administration was under federal investigation when he endorsed the mayor’s re-election.
12. Tony Rezko out of the hole.
President Obama . . .
13. . . . lied.
14. Alternate universe:
“The bipartisan honeymoon is over for John McCain as Democrats accused the new president as being out-of-touch with the American people by filling Cabinet posts with millionaires who failed to pay their taxes and high-level administration positions with lobbyists just days after announcing a new policy against doing just that.”
15. I wonder when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will have his first meeting with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood . . .
16. “Nearly $1 million in drugs and medical supplies were spoiled or unaccounted for in a Chicago Health Department warehouse, the city’s inspector general said Monday, and record-keeping was so poor it was impossible to tell if some of the medicine was stolen,” the Tribune reports.
I know there’s a Rod Blagojevich joke here somewhere, but I can’t find it.
COMMENT 1:59 P.M.: A Beachwood reader writes:
I thought the joke was in the story itself, but it wasn’t a Rod Blagojevich joke; it was when the mayor’s spokesperson said that (1) Hoffman got it wrong about the program being mismanaged and wasteful, but (2) the warehouse was being shut down anyway. Because it was so successful, it had put itself out of business. Or something. Media flaks tell the best jokes, especially when they don’t mean to.
17. “‘We are not just going out and asking for more money and being reckless,’ [Todd] Stroger said Monday, noting the county for years had borrowed money to cover operating costs. ‘This is well thought out’.”
Nah . . . too easy.
18. Rod Blagojevich is scheduled to appear on the David Letterman show tonight. Todd Stroger is booked for Wednesday, Roland Burris will appear on Thursday, Ray Wardingley is up next Monday, Rickey Hendon next Tuesday, Blagojevich returns next Wednesday, and Daley will appear next Thursday.
19. “McCormick Place Lands New Comic Exposition.”
Newspapers ready their “comics are for adults, too” stories.
20. Earmarks out; shovel-ready in.
21. The Shovel-Ready CTA.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Keep shoveling.
Posted on February 3, 2009