Let’s offer some praise to only entity that’s shown any sense in Cruz battle

There is one entity thus far that has shown any sense with regards to the ongoing controversy over whether Texas senator Ted Cruz is eligible to serve as U.S. president.

CRUZ: Still on the ballot

Our very own Illinois State Board of Elections heard a complaint saying that Cruz should not be on the Republican primary ballot come March 15 because he’s really a Canadian – even though his mother is as clearly a U.S. citizen as anyone can be, and she (unfortunately for us) conveyed that sense of entitlement to her son, Teodoro.

OUR VERY OWN state election officials had the sense to quickly dismiss the complaint; the action that resulted in the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court in which oral arguments were heard on Friday.

Of course, there was no ruling of any sort by Judge Maureen W. Kirby in large part because the man who brought about the legal action says he can’t afford to remain in Chicago to deal with the legal wrath he wrought.

In fact, he says he can’t come back to the Daley Center courthouse until early March. All of which makes me think this lawsuit has nothing to do with the legal merits over whether Cruz qualifies as a “natural born citizen” to run for the U.S. presidency.

This crock of a legal issue is something the ideologues want to prolong just as they did the whole argument over whether Barack Obama was really born within the United States.

IT IS SOMETHING they want to toss about to cast aspersions on the senator from Texas (as though there aren’t enough legitimate reasons to think he’s unfit, the ideologues want to make stuff up).

To that end, being able to say a case is pending in the courts that challenges Cruz’ campaign legitimacy is to their benefit. They can use the case’s existence as a piece of hard fact to justify their ongoing arguments.

But the instance judge Kirby comes up with a ruling, it hurts the ideologues. Gee, the judge may actually wind up concluding that the ideologues calling Cruz a Canadian (when he’s more Cubano than anything else) are wrong.

Why do I suspect Picasso statue giggled at thought of legal nonsense that was spewed in court on Friday?

Admittedly, the ideologues would then take the case to an appellate court and start the legal appeals to try to drag this out through the 2016 campaign cycle. But it would be a loss for them.

SO DO I particularly take seriously the existence of this lawsuit – one in which a man who lives near Belvidere in rural northern Illinois is basing a case on the argument that having citizenship from birth because of one’s mother is NOT the same as being a U.S.-born citizen.

Even though my mind cannot comprehend how they aren’t the same. From the day he was born, Cruz was able to stake a claim to U.S. citizenship. Even if his mother physically was in the Alberta, Canada city of Calgary at the moment she went into labor.

To claim otherwise makes one look foolish. And winds up strengthening the presidential case for Cruz – who is more than capable of looking like a fool without anyone else’s help.

But the ideologues want to prolong this nonsense issue, just as how some of them persist in arguing that Obama is less than legitimate in their eyes.

SO WE HAD no ruling Friday on Cruz’ status. Not that anyone should have expected it. This is not the kind of issue that gets resolved in a courtroom in the shadow of that Picasso statue.

OBAMA: The same, but different

This is an issue that will not be resolved by the courts at all. Certain people are going to be determined to believe whatever form of ideological nonsense they want to spew. This will be ongoing regardless of what any court decides.

Perhaps even if Cruz were to somehow win the presidency. They’d still throw the nonsense issue into his face, perhaps even from their new homes in Canada that they'll threaten to move to if Election '16 doesn't go their way.

Only somehow, I’d like to think that Calgary already feels fortunate enough not to have to claim Cruz as a native son, and would probably turn away these ideologue nincompoops as well.

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Altering evidence? Or preserving pieces of a crime scene? That is the question

A civil court jury in Cook County found it within itself to clear the county sheriff’s police of wrongdoing in the way it handled the body of a 20-year-old woman who was killed five years ago in a car crash in the forest preserves near suburban Oak Forest.


That ruling in Cook County Circuit Court came on Friday, and I’m going to have to respect the judgment because I wasn’t there during the civil trial to hear every bit of evidence for myself.

BUT I HAVE to admit that reading the reports that came from the trial make me wonder about the logic of what was repeatedly called police “protocol” to justify the way the cops handled the scene.

This particular lawsuit wound up getting coverage because the woman killed in the auto accident wound up being stripped partially naked when photographers taking pictures of the scene as possible evidence in future criminal proceedings.

The girl’s mother seems to feel her daughter was violated by such acts, particularly since the fact wound up spurring rumors that the girl was somehow naked and having sex at the time of the car crash.

As it turned out, the driver of the vehicle tried claiming the girl was straddling him at the time – claiming that was what caused him to lose control of the vehicle.

BUT INVESTIGATORS WERE able to show that it was impossible for any such act to have occurred. Meaning the driver, himself, was to blame for losing control of the vehicle. He wound up being found guilty of criminal charges and is now serving a prison sentence. The photographs that were the focus of this lawsuit were supposedly key evidence in gaining his conviction.

Sheriff’s police claimed during the trial that their investigators were merely following the standard procedure for gathering up a crime scene (which is what the accident site near 147^th Street and Oak Park Avenue had become). Since crime scenes are never pretty and often garish, it is only inevitable that the evidence would be less than proper.

I don’t doubt that those crime scene photographers wind up seeing grotesque images that would wind up bothering the sensibilities of the deceased’s relatives.

But I never did read anyone explaining just why some of the photographs of the accident scene wound up showing the girl fully-clothed, and others showed her body moved to a tarp placed on the open ground where she was then stripped partially nude.

MY GUT REACTION is to wonder why this wasn’t construed as tampering with a crime scene – somehow altering the reality of what was there. No clear explanation was ever provided that I am aware of, and now I doubt that one ever will.

Not that it seemed to bother the jury that spent a good chunk of the day on Friday resolving the testimony they heard during all of last week. They seem to want to believe the police behaved professionally. Then again, some people will always argue on behalf of the police, no matter how extreme the evidence against them seems to be.

That is the verdict reached by a jury of peers, and it is what will remain as the outcome of this case – unless someone wants to try taking this to the Illinois appeals court and can come up with a specific bit of evidence that was wrongly excluded during the lawsuit’s trial.

After all, merely not liking a jury’s verdict is insufficient reason to justify granting an appeal.

PERHAPS THE MOTHER realizes that, since I read in newspaper accounts during the weekend that she is pleased she was able to publicly say her daughter wasn’t having sex or being naked or doing anything else that might be considered sordid at the time of her death.

For her sake, I hope she is capable of getting on with her life – which for the past five years and for the remainder of it will be without her daughter.

No amount of money that she might have received from Cook County as a financial reward from her lawsuit would have brought her daughter back.

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Lawsuits won't defeat bigots

What should we think of a gay couple who is upset that the child they went to great lengths to conceive has turned out to not be white enough to fit into their lives?


It ought to be evidence that WASPs should quit thinking that the whole rest of the world is somehow ganging up on their desired way of life. We're all so different that we ought to quit thinking in terms of people being "us" and "them."


THIS THOUGHT HAS been running through my head ever since I read a Chicago Tribune account of a lawsuit filed against a Downers Grove-based sperm bank by a lesbian couple who contracted with them to enable one of the ladies to become pregnant so they could raise a child.


Midwest Sperm Bank complied with its end of the contract, although it seems that someone misread a "3" for an "8," resulting in the couple not getting the exact sperm donor they thought they were ordering.


They wound up receiving sperm provided by an African-American man. The resulting baby is clearly biracial.


The couple contends they have no racial hang-ups. But they say the predominantly white Ohio community they live in (one with a 98 percent white population where the nearest big city is Canton -- home of the Football Hall of Fame) is not a racially tolerant one.


THEY CLAIM THE sperm bank's screw up has resulted in conditions where the child will face hostility and intolerance.


I don't doubt the women are correct about what will happen. For while biracial people and gay couples and just about everybody else who doesn't fit into a 'straight white' lifestyle can now be more open in their existence than in the past, there are those who are willing to keep the old prejudices alive -- and who think that it's everybody else who's screwed up for not back their hostility.


But I can't exactly be all that sympathetic about the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, particularly since there isn't any place in this nation that's entire exempt from the bigotry of old.


For the record, the sperm bank says it was a matter of a hand-written label being misread. The Chicago Tribune reports that they have refunded the money the couple paid for the sperm -- which is generous in that it realizes the desired effect was not provided.


BUT I'M NOT convinced anyone needs to be more sympathetic than that.


I wonder how realistic it is to expect much more. I wonder how much hostility the couple itself experiences living in that community. Since I doubt there is a place that doesn't mind gay couples, but has hang-ups about biracial people.


Then again, there are those among the nitwits of our society who are willing to overlook certain differences if the underlying nature of a "white" community is maintained.


Of course, it should be noted that the mother has her problems in reaching out to African-Americans for support. She says in her lawsuit that she is "not overtly welcome" when she goes to nearby black neighborhoods to find people who can cut her daughter's hair.


THE WOMAN IN her lawsuit says she has been advised to move to a community with a more diverse ethnic and racial population so that her child will not stand out so much.


Of course, she'd probably be wanting to do that just to avoid hostility due to her life partner.


Although the reality is that there isn't any place where one won't run into numbskulls who are going to have their hang-ups about people who aren't exactly like themselves.


The real lesson that couple ought to be teaching their daughter is to realize her own self-worth, and to know that all the people harassing her are really pointing out their own shortcomings in life.


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