By the Book

The state of Illinois just became the first state to ban bans.  Illinois just passed a bill making it illegal for county and local governments to ban books for whatever reason there might be.

Governor J.B. Pritzker (above), a Democrat, said that book banning is an affront to the First Amendment and discourages and  stymies the right to a free exchange of ideas. It may be true that some books are so obscene and vulgar that they're not worth the paper they're printed on.  But those aren't necessarily the sort of books that are being banned.  Books that are being banned tend to offer perspectives from marginalized populations such as blacks and non-heterosexuals as well as promoting supposedly un-American ideas such as socialism.  Young-adult books that are frank about the problems of adolescence are also under the gun for their mere admission of such problems, such as the books of Judy Blume (question: would a male Protestant who wrote books about teenage issues receive the sort of abuse a Jewish woman like Blume has received?)  

But, from Chicago to Cairo, at least, you are free to read and assign to students any book you want, because the Land of Lincoln is intent on preserving your rights as an American and as an Illinois resident to read what you like.

Even smut. 😉

Railroaded

When the incoming governors of Ohio and Wisconsin refused federal money for high-speed rail projects citing potentially heavy operating costs and, in Wisconsin at least, a preference for highway improvements, I thought to myself that at least there was still Florida. Not . . . any . . . more. Yesterday, the Sunshine State's new governor, noted Medicare ripoff artist Rick Scott, canceled the proposed Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail line that was announced with such great fanfare only a year ago, insisting that Florida can't afford it. (This, by the way, comes on top of his decision not to implement the new health care law until and unless its constitutionality is settled once and for all.) What do high-profile Florida politicians who support the rail line think? Who cares, most of them lost at the ballot box in November.

The governors of these three states are all Republicans, raising the obvious point that the Grand Old Party has an utter disregard for any sort of mass transit projects. (Florida's earlier attempt at high-speed rail was canceled by Republican governor Jeb Bush.) But it's become obvious that incompetence with passenger rail is an American, not a partisan, phenomenon, and that we're no better at it than we are at stopping gun violence in our cities and schools, educating our children, or dealing with climate change. Consider Illinois. As soon as Scott canceled Florida's high-speed rail project, Richard Durbin, Illinois's senior senator and the Democratic whip in the U.S. Senate, wrote to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a fellow Illinoisian and a Republican, requesting that money intended for the Florida project go to the Prairie State's high-speed rail project.

How fast will Illinois's passenger trains go? 110 miles an hour.

Wow, how cutting edge is that? Not very. Florida's Tampa-Orlando line would have had trains going twice as fast, and trains in France and Japan already run at such speeds. California's high-speed rail project is so far the only one still on track (no pun intended) that's designed for speeds taken for granted in those countries and in others. Even Amtrak's Acela has a top speed of 150 miles an hour, though it rarely reaches it and never actually sustains it.

I give up. If I want to ride a bullet train, I'll have to wait until I go overseas, which is as likely as Scott changing his mind on the rail issue. But even if there were genuine high-speed rail in this country, it begs the obvious question: Where would I ride such a train to? I can't afford to travel anywhere these days. And quite frankly, the lack of a high-speed train between Tampa and Orlando doesn't concern me. I'd rather be in hell than in Orlando . . .. Wait! Orlando and hell are one and the same! :-p

More Derailings

If you're an American fan of passenger rail, it must feel like being an Irishman who likes erotic art; there's not much in your own homeland for you to appreciate. And thanks to two incoming Republican governors in the Midwest, there's going to be a whole lot less for rail fans in the United States to cheer about.

In Wisconsin, incoming Republican governor Scott Walker says he plans to refuse federal transportation money specifically meant for high-speed rail. Walker insisted that Wisconsin needs more money to fix existing roads and bridges, not build more railways. Walker plans to refuse $810 million for such a project, citing the burden between $7.5 million and $15 million it would place on taxpayers to pay for operating expenses. Walker sounds reasonable, though, in comparison to former congressman John Kasich, the governor-elect of Ohio. Kasich, who's also refusing federal rail money, also cited hard numbers - $17 million in taxes to pay for more than half of the $29 million cost of operating it - but added, "We don’t have any idea who would even ride the train. This is just the federal government wanting to spend money, and they've got it all wrong."

Kasich doesn't "have any idea who would even ride the train?" How about people who need to travel to Columbus from Cleveland or Cincinnati - or travel across Ohio - who don't want to put up with driving on Interstate 71 because it's too much of a hassle? How about people who want to take the train to transfer to an Amtrak train to take them to New York or Chicago? Mr. Kasich, do you have any idea about the cleaner air, less congested highways, and new jobs high-speed rail in Ohio would generate? Or how much more cost-effective it would by than more highway construction? Do you have any idea at all? About anything?

Kasich, a budget expert and former Wall Street executive, knows his numbers. But, like any other number cruncher, he knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Walker and Kasich would have gladly taken stimulus money for more highways, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, put his foot down. Trains or nothing. And nothing is what the residents of those two states are going to get. One Midwestern governor, Pat Quinn of Illinois, is happy to see his counterparts in Wisconsin and Ohio refuse the railroad money. Quinn, a Democrat who was just elected to a term in his own right after completing the infamous Rod Blagojevich's second term, is eager to get more money fort his state's high-speed passenger train program, and Illinois's senior senator, Richard Durbin, has said his state will be happy to take the money Wisconsin and Ohio don't want. LaHood, also from Illinois, might be happy to oblige.

It's enough to make me want to move to Chicago. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has killed the proposed passenger rail tunnel to Manhattan. And as if that weren't bad enough, negotiations between NJ Transit and Amtrak on a shared rail tunnel to New York City have broken down.

So, apparently, has common sense.

Illinois Central

The one U.S. Senate race people are watching closely this election year more than any other, with the sole exception of Nevada (and the less said about that, the better) is in Illinois. Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias are vying for President Barack Obama's old Senate seat. If Kirk wins, it will be a psychological blow to the President. This is ironic, as Kirk is a moderate with a few liberal positions on social issues who is less likely to fall in line with the Senate Republican caucus on everything than, say, Ron Johnson in neighboring Wisconsin. If not for the fact that this is Obama's Senate seat, a Kirk victory on Tuesday wouldn't upset Obama much.

The problem with calling this close race is that Kirk and Giannoulias are both attractive candidates that are greatly flawed. Giannoulias is dogged by the checkered history of his family's bank, which dealt with shady characters before going under, while Kirk is accused of inflating his war record. Seems Kirk, as a Navy pilot, won an award for outstanding support during the Kosovo air campaign in 1999 that was given to his entire unit rather than to him individually but that he's talked about winning the award in the singular first person rather than the plural, and he said he won the Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year prize when he in fact did not. But the award he did win with his unit was called the "Rufus Taylor Intelligence Unit of the Year" award. He's made a few other exaggerations, as reported earlier this year by the Huffington Post in this article.

Some of these exaggerations border on lying, but Kirk's overall military record is quite impressive. Now, in the interest in being bipartisan, I don't understand why this is such a big deal. As you know, I defended Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut for misspeaking about his military service. So now I'm going to defend Kirk. Kirk was technically telling the truth about his award, even in talking about it in the singular first person, because he did win it individually. So did everyone in his unit: each of these service personnel have it on their records. As for the name of the awards, well, the two separate prizes are similar. So I would call it an honest mistake. As for his other exaggerations, I'll leave it to the voters of Illinois to decide how relevant they are.

If I lived in any other state with a Senate seat up for election this year - and, somewhat thankfully, I don't - I'd assuredly vote Democratic. But if I lived in Illinois and had to choose between Kirk and Giannoulias, I'd probably toss a coin. As to the fact that it was Barack Obama's seat, well, it was. It was also the great Everett Dirksen's seat. It was the seat of Adlai Stevenson's namesake son in the seventies. It was also the seat of Peter Fitzgerald, the only Republican elected to the Senate from Illinois (in 1998) since 1978. The truth is, this seat doesn't belong to anyone except the people of Illinois. If the Democrats maintain control of the Senate without winning in Illinois, who cares if Obama held this seat?

And quite frankly, the Democrats are given a roughly 90 percent chance of holding the Senate by Nate Silver. Now, that has to be good news. If the weather forecast says there's a 90 percent chance of rain, you'd take an umbrella with you.

I can't call the Senate race in Illinois. As for the Illinois governor's race, though, expect Republican Bill Brady to beat Democratic caretaker governor Pat Quinn easily.

Burris In the Saddle

Why does the continuing saga of Roland Burris feel less like a Shakespearean tragedy than a second-rate Second City (double word usage not intended) repertory skit?

Burris, the newly appointed Democratic senator from Illinois, testified last month that he had no contacts with ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Now it turns out that Burris in fact talked with Robert Blagojevich, the governor's brother, about fundraising for the governor, but he said he never did anything of the sort. Then it turned out he tried to do fundraisers for Blagojevich but couldn't get any started.

Would we even be having this conversation if Blagojevich hadn't played the race card by making this appointment? Burris's enormous ego has been clashing with his utter cluelessness of late, embarrassing a state that thought it had put this latest wave of corruption behind it. I've concluded that Burris himself is innocent of wrongdoing, but his ability to get so thoroughly mixed up in the Blagojevich clan's sliminess makes him seem like a bewildered fool who doesn't know what he's doing.

The irony here is that Illinois almost seemed doomed to be deprived a senator due to scandal, then they ended up with this joker. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, where elections are run more cleanly than just about anywhere else, Al Franken - an intentionally funny guy - can't get seated because of an ongoing recount made possible by that same sense of ethics.

Al Franken wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and worked with Second City alumni. And even he couldn't have written a sketch like the one unfolding in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln - 200 Years

Behold, the greatest President of the United States of all time.

Abraham Lincoln, born two hundred years ago today, not only preserved the Union and ended slavery, he set the nation on a new course for freedom and justice. He reinvented the country through four years of civil war, guaranteed opportunity and possibility for its people with his support for commerce, science, and education, and eloquently explained - and repeatedly so - what this nation is about: government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Barack Obama has some tough shoes to fill.