Leroi Moore, saxiphonist for Dave Matthews Band, passed away yesterday.

I'm not really sure I have anything to say.  :-(

Wednesday, August 20, 2008.

I'm not sure I want the UI getting in the middle of a Presidential election.  Why would they be unwilling to release records like this?  Isn't that the whole point of having them at a public institution? Is there a harmless explanation I'm missing?

In the process of tracing down the Obama-Ayers connection, I located a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These documents are the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman (almost surely at Ayers’s behest). Although the library initially promised me access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, top library officials mysteriously intervened at the last minute to bar access. There followed a struggle between myself and library officials over my right to examine the documents....

I need public help to gain access to this critically important repository of information... Please consider contacting the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White, to ask him to take immediate public steps to insure the safety of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to release the identity of the collection’s donor, and above all to swiftly make the collection available to me, and to the public at large. You can find an e-mail link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White’s offices can be found here .

Of course, this is related to a larger problem surrounding Obama:

Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork related grants distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm's clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor...

The new politics looks an awfully lot like the old politics, doesn't it?

UPDATE:  More here.  This is not the sort of attention I want the UI to get.  Why not just release the documents?

I was just briefly on campus this afternoon, and it looks like there are already a bunch of students who have returned to campus.  I love this time of year, and I love the energy that the students bring when they return.  (Plus, returning students means the return of football!)

Welcome back, students!  We missed you.

A trustee in Rantoul is pushing for a ban on certain dog breeds.  From the N-G story (http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2008/08/19/rantoul_village_trustee_proposes_banning_certain_dog_breeds)

A Rantoul village board member wants to ban pit bulls, Rottweilers and Doberman pinschers from the village and set limits on the number of other dogs residents will be allowed to have.

Rantoul Trustee Chuck Smith proposed the ordinance after a village inspector found 19 pit bulls inside a single family home in Rantoul.

"I'd like to ban certain breeds and set limits on other breeds," Smith said on Monday. "We need to ban pit bulls, Rottweilers and Doberman pinschers based on the reputations of the animals, not the owners."

Smith proposed the ban after the 19 dogs were discovered during a routine inspection of a rental property at 525 N. Ohio Ave. on July 18. Village utility records list the occupant's name as Debra Lenington, according to Dan Culkin, the Rantoul village chief inspector.

OK, so this guy wants to deal with animal hoarding by banning specific breeds?  This is just a really bad idea.

Today's News-Gazette:

Though a racial and economic achievement gap is still evident in Prairie State Achievement Exam scores, and though many of the scores don't meet or exceed the testing benchmark of 62.5 percent, the high school's students have shown enough growth in their test scores in every category to qualify as passing.

The rising scores, as well as the school's new rating, provoked joy from many of staff member.

"It means what we are doing as a team works. It's awesome!" dean Stephanie Price-Hammond said to the group of teachers hearing the news Monday.

The passing scores also mean the school does not have to restructure this year, though staff plan to go through with the planned changes anyway, including adding more time to the school day for freshmen and sophomores to work with teachers in subjects where they need help.

Discuss.

I'm really late in posting this, but I saw it and immediately thought about it in relation to a discussion we had on here recently:

An auction to benefit the Charles W. Christie Foundation raised nearly a record price per acre for Champaign County farmland – but not quite.

Dr. Adolf Lo and his wife, Renee, successfully bid $32,000 an acre for 61.7 acres northwest of Champaign. The land is on the southeast corner of U.S. 150 and Duncan Road – directly south of the Rockwell Automation and Midwest Underground Technology plants and not far from the Interstate 57/Interstate 74 interchange.

Discuss.

Eight of them?

Students, parents and teachers will see new faces in the principal's office at many Champaign schools when classes begin this week. Four of the district's 11 elementary schools have new principals, as does one of its three middle schools and both its high schools. The district's new academic alternative program has a new leader as well. The News-Gazette's Jodi Heckel takes a closer look at each of the new leaders.

My favorite response, from Joe Williams at Central:

What is your No. 1 goal for this position? Without a doubt, the No. 1 goal is to develop a strong collaborative culture focused on student learning, using best practice research within the context of our current reality. This is a dynamic process that, if implemented authentically, will improve the level of student learning for all students.

That's a lot of buzzwords.

Those who know my track record with regard to predictions will laugh, but my random, clueless pick of who Barack Obama will choose as his running mate is Hillary Clinton.  What's your guess?

Tuesday, August 19, 2008.

A group of college presidents, chancellors and assorted other campus dignitaries are part of something called the Amethyst Initiative.  Their goal is to lower the drinking age to 18 in an effort to eliminate binge drinking.  No U of I signatories, but Nancy Cantor signed. 

Not sure how or if this will solve the problem.  I'd personally like to see a little more attention given to the Illinois statute which allows those under the age of 21 to drink in their own homes with their parents.  It seems if parents did more modeling of responsible drinking, and the minors actually practiced it before going to college, perhaps the rush of illegal drinking would lose a little of its lustre.  

Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones will announce his retirement, perhaps as soon as today.

By far, whe most important vote any State Senator takes is the vote for the leadership of their caucus and of the Senate as a whole.  With Jones out of the picture, it will be interesting to see who earns the support of our State Senator, Mike Frerichs, as he looks towards a re-election campaign in 2010.

UPDATE:  Tom Kacich has reaction from Sen. Frerichs, who isn't pledging support to anyone just yet:

Frerichs said he wants a new Senate president who will pledge to three things: an understanding of downstate values and concerns, an interest in higher education and a pledge to give individual senators more power, including opening up the budget process and allowing more legislation to reach the Senate floor.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  There is water at the bottom of the ocean:  Jones hopes to appoint his son to his seat.  I love Illinois.

Monday, August 18, 2008.

Friday, August 17, 2007.

Today's News-Gazette:

The city is proposing to rezone scores of properties in east Urbana to prevent owners from replacing older homes with small apartment buildings.

The Urbana Plan Commission will consider a wide-ranging proposal to downzone 154 properties at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the City Building, 400 S. Vine St.

A Champaign real estate professional, who with his family owns a house that would be rezoned, said he thinks the proposed downzonings will discourage investment in Urbana. But a leader of an organization in the neighborhood says most residents want the changes.

Discuss.

Friday, August 15, 2008.

In May  2007, Pelosi invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funds to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle. Follow the money. (M. Malkin blog info)

Toys for Troops is gearing up for another outstanding effort, and they need help:

When U.S. soldiers are injured on-duty, they are fl own, via MedEvac, to The Warrior Transition Battalion in Fort Gordon, GA. Family Services there contact the spouses and parents, and arrange for them to meet their loved ones stateside. The family members are often distraught, and leave home without remembering to bring baby’s favorite teddy bear, or their own toothbrushes. They face hours in waiting rooms before they get a chance to see their soldier or to talk to physicians.

We hope to make the arrival and the time in those waiting rooms a little more comfortable for these family members. We will supply the WTB with 200 bags, fi lled with nonperishable food, toiletries, and toys and activities to occupy both the adults and the children.

After our fi rst shipping we will maintain that inventory as needed. There are currently 420 soldiers at the WTB in Fort Gordon, with 3 infl uxes a week.

We hope that you’ll join us!

They're doing a "Care Pack" event on Sunday, September 21 at 2 PM at the Chanute Air Museum in Rantoul, and at various other locations.  There's lots more information here, and I'm sure that local blogger Gnightgirl, who founded Toys for Troops, will have ongoing updates on her blog and on the TFT website.

Please help out if you can.

Regardless of how one feels about testing, it's certainly better to beat the national average:

According to data released by ACT, the makers of the same-named test of college readiness, the average ACT score of a student in Illinois is 20.7 of 36 possible.

But in Urbana, Champaign, St. Joseph-Ogden and several other high schools, the averages surpass the state's.

In Urbana, for at least the eight years that Principal Laura Taylor has records, students have scored higher than the state average. This year, the class of 2008 averaged 21 – the same as the national average for the test, and a score she attributes to the school's "very strong college-prep curriculum."

Taylor said the school did not yet have an average score for the incoming seniors in the class of 2009, but would have it available soon.

Both Champaign high schools have scored higher than the state average since 2004, said Assistant Superintendent Beth Shepperd.

"We're very proud of that," she said.

The average score for students in the Centennial Class of 2008 was 21.6, and for Central students it was 20.9.

In addition, all Illinois students are required to take the ACT, which impacts how we do against the national average.  We too often focus on our local schools' deficiencies, and forget to mention good news like this.

Illinois has long been one of the most anti-rights states in America when it comes to the Second Amendment, but now there's a push for county ballot questions asking for concealed carry laws, and one such referendum is on the ballot in Winnebago County (Rockford).

Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states without some form of concealed carry and Winnebago County is considering a county law that would allow people to carry if they received a permit from the Sheriff, but a state law would be a far better alternative.

Good stuff.

(Hat tip:  Instapundit)