January 2010 Archives

Perhaps Republican congressional candidate Joe Walsh of Winnetka will get some political traction among his fellow tea-baggers for his brush-up with Joe Walsh the rock star. But the fact is, attorneys for Walsh (the Eagles' guitarist) took Walsh (the candidate) to pieces in a scathing and hilarious letter that nonetheless had serious and threatening undertones.

Walsh's campaign thought it was clever to plunder Walsh's James Gang tune "Walk Away" in music video "Lead the Way" http://walshforcongress.com/ that glorifies the candidate and features lines like "Pelosi and Bean wanna screw ya," with Bean referring to incumbent U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean, D- Barrington.

The News-Sun www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/2013573,5_1_WA27_WALSH_S1-100127.article asked Joe Walsh the rock star's people what they thought of the tune, and the result was the letter to Walsh and his campaign from an Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, law firm that threatened to sue the campaign for copyright and trademark violations if the music video does not disappear.

"Given that your name is Joe Walsh, I'd think you'd want to be extra careful about using Joe's music in case the public might think that Joe is endorsing your campaign or, God forbid, is you. Or maybe you intended that. But you shouldn't have," wrote attorney Peter Paterno.

"As a candidate for Congress, you probably have a passing familiarity with many of the laws of this great country of ours. It's possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populist for you to really have spent much time on," Paterno wrote. "We're writing because we think laws are important, and it might be beneficial to your potential future career as a congressman if you were more aware of them."

Note to Joe Walsh the candidate - a lawsuit from a former campaign manager over unpaid bills is one thing. Provoking a legendary rock star over intellectual property is another. The Hound suggests you stay in your league.

No early indications that Walsh the candidate is shaken, though. His Wednesday morning "Message from Joe Walsh," campaign e-mail was titled: "So, you want a revolution?" Paging the Beatles' attorneys...

Watching the returns the other night from Massachusetts reminded The Hound of the famous Adlai Stevenson quote after the 1952 election: "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House..." A funny thing happened on the way to health-care reform: Massachusetts voters.

Surprisingly, Democrats aren't in shock after what happened in the Bay State with Republican Scott Brown now a senator-elect for a seat held by the Kennedy clan for decades. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 3-1 margin, couldn't the party have scrapped up some voters for Democrat Martha Coakley? This wasn't just a defeat of a Democrat, this was a humiliation for the president. Heck, Coakley didn't even carry the Kennedy stomping grounds of Hyannisport. It was a Mass-acre.

While national Democrats paint the election as lost by Coakley's poor campaign style, exit polls tell the true tale of the tape: Fifty-two percent of Massachusetts voters surveyed as polls closed told pollsters they opposed health-care reform. This in a state that was the lone bastion of support for George McGovern during the Nixon landslide of 1972.

Despite this defeat, or because of it, congressional Democrats appear to be full-speed ahead to pass health-care reform with or without Sen.-elect Brown's 41st filabuster-making vote. If The Hound were a Democratic strategist, that's the worse thing they could do, putting entire states in jeopardy come November.

That includes Illinois. So get ready Land of Lincoln for the Beantown bounce in the second-bluest state in the nation. It's coming.

The Hound should have placed this bet years ago --- closing in on two to be exact. Attorneys for Lake County Circuit Court Judge David Hall alleged in court the other day that Vernon Hills cops erased video of the judge's DUI arrest. On purpose.

What motive police would have to destroy evidence is beyond The Hound. But it seems to be a defense move to place the cops on trial, rather than a judge whose blood-alcohol content was .107, above the legal limit of .08. Wonder how other county police officers might feel if they were accused --- by a Lake County judge's paid messengers --- of breaking the law regarding an arrest. Might they have questions about future court appearances? It's not like Hall's attorneys are dancing around this.

Their motion contends the "Vernon Hills Police Department had the memory of the squad car computer hard drive erased" sometime after the judge's traffic arrest. Sounds like a conspiracy, what Holmes? Just bringing this allegation up casts a pall over the arrest. If they have proof, the judge's attorneys should take this information to the Attorney General's Office for further investigation and prosecution, unless they're throwing this contention out there and hoping it sticks to the legal wall. That's what well-paid defense lawyers do, after all. They work all the angles.

Regardless, the judge's attorneys are ready to argue their motion March 1, which is nearly two years from Hall's April 26, 2008 arrest on DUI and resisting charges. The attorneys also claim the blood sample taken from the Waukegan jurist at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville also might be tainted because it was not properly preserved. Wasn't a similar allegation part of O.J. Simpson's defense? If it worked for him, might work for a judge.

Vernon Hills police and the attorney general's prosecutor contend it was an honest mistake that the video doesn't exist of the judge's arrest. Who do you believe: Cops from the mean streets of Vernon Hills or a judge's attorneys?

The Hound certainly is bewildered over the suit filed by a group of Chicagoans contending the Regional Transportation Authority and Metra discriminate against the city. Doesn't the Chicago Transit Authority get the lion's share of transit funding in the six-county area? To The Hound, this is another "us versus them" suit.

In fact, the CTA gets about double of what Metra gets in operating funds from the RTA, the umbrella transit agency for the region. The class-action suit maintains blacks and Hispanics, who make up the majority of CTA riders, get shortchanged. The suit goes on to contend Metra riders, mainly white, get better service. Its racial discrimination, the suit claims.

Obviously, these Chicagoans have not taken the Metra North Line to Zion or Winthrop Harbor or North Chicago or Waukegan. Talk about lack of service. It's not the trains. They run fine. It's the stations.

Or should The Hound say lack of stations. Waukegan's closes up earlier than an Iowa town and the building looks like it was designed by a Russian architect, circa 1960. Let's move north to Zion, where the station is well, not a station. It's a platform which doesn't even compare to the nice El platforms in the Big City. As for parking, it's catch-as-catch-can. The same goes for the "station" in Windy Harbor. The North Chicago station is hidden in back of Abbott Laboratories and, once again, is a skinny platform.

Maybe these four communities should have joined in the discrimination lawsuit. They want to see disparities in funding? Come north and see what Metra gives Waukegan, Zion and Winthrop Harbor. The Hound doesn't even think Zion and Windy Harbor have porta-potties on site. Now that is discrimination.

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When the election is over in November, Gov. Pat Quinn has a future in the restaurant industry. And the way he's weaved and waffled since he's been placed in office, he should open a waffle house, except they already have Waffle Houses across the nation which serve tasty breakfasts, including yummy cheese grits.

The guv's latest move is changing his mind on the early release of prison inmates. He or his prisons chief whom the governor so elegantly threw under the bus the other day, need to rethink letting his mopes out early, especially into an economy where working folks can't get jobs, let alone ex-cons.

The governor let out 1,000 inmates just in time for the Christmas holiday. If he was hoping for primary votes from the former prisoners, he should be prepared for a backlash from ordinary citizens who don't taken kindly to putting these guys back on the streets. Especially if the governor's line is we have overcrowded prisons, but there's an empty one in Thomson ready for Guantanamo Bay detainees to check in.

Between the low-level releases and the meritorious good time provisions, it's time for the governor to revisit Criminology 301. And be prepared to defend his prison decisions and his waffling.
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