“Until 1982, Illinois Representatives were elected from 3-seat districts”

I heard about that. What or who stopped it?

A state constitutional amendment passed by referendum in 1980. It was pushed by Pat Quinn (the present governor) who had a long career as a maverick and gadfly.

It was supported by most Illinoisans because it got rid of a lot of hack politicians. Most of the third-seat Representatives (elected from districts dominated by the other party) were hacks or crooks. Some were tools of the district-dominant party, which could manipulate the voting to pick the minority-party nominee and winner.

I supported it myself.

sleeeepy – No sh*t. It also was not written by Romney. It also does not address what Obama and Sebelius actually did in response. Stop lying.

But anyway, right now:

The United States Supreme Court has got 6 Catholics and 3 Jews on it and 0 Protestants.

The President of the United States is a black Protestant, if you can really fairly call the church he used to belong to Protestant at all. He has got a fairly eclectic background, and attends Passover Seders in the White House with one of his daughters asking the 4 questions.(!) Yes, it’s true. If it wasn’t for politics, he wouldn’t belong to, affiliate with, or attend, any church at all.

The Vice President of the United States is a Catholic.

The Speaker of the House is a Catholic.

The Senate Majority Leader is a Mormon.

The other major party nominee for President is also a Mormon.

The Vice Presidential nominee is a Catholic.

Even if we go to the heads of the minority parties in both houses of Congress we still have difficulty.

The House Minority leader (Pelosi) is a Catholic.

Finally with Mitch McConnell you do get a Protestant.

13 people and only one Protestant or two.

The odds of this happening without discriminatory intent…???

As the New York Times has written:

A Historical Benchmark

(this looks a little different than what Milhouse told me – I see target=”_blank” also here.)

Justice Scalia is from Queens

Justice Ginsberg is from Brooklyn

Justice Sotomayor is from the Bronx

Justice Kagan is from Manhattan (BTW, she never married because she wanted to marry Eliot Spitzer years back, and she may still be in love with him)

Staten Island is out in the cold!

Until 1982, Illinois Representatives were elected from 3-seat districts

I heard about that. What or who stopped it?

We used to have City Councilmen elected at large from each borough (besides all the others)

You could vote for only onbe but two got elected.

They were usually a Democrat and a Republican but from Manhattan one could be a Liberal. It got stopped when somebody took took it to court on the grounds that one per borough didn’t fit with the 1962 Baker v Carr and other reapportionment cases.

The Supreme Court had said districts had to be drawn approximately equal in population. Once they did that for Congress, they extended that to every districting in the Unioted States, except the United States Senate, which was in the constitution.

You know, Senate elections are actually more competitive than House elections – there is no gerrymandering. The office is more important than the average House seat. Senate rules make each Senator important right form the start. The malapportionment evens out, and the average Senate race doesn’t cost so much. In New York we don’t have a serious Senate race, but they are serious in other states.

The 2000 presidential election decision was somewhat based on the same equal protection rule except that the Supreme Court said it shouldn’t be a precedent. How can you say that?

Anyway Staten Island is much smaller in population than the other boroughs – you know now, it’s the only borough not to have a United States Supreme Court Justice come from – so the city councilmen at large really couldn’t stand.

It wasn’t too long after we lost the City Councilmen at Large that we also lost the Board pf Estimate. Each Borough President had had 1 vote and the three top citiwide elected officials – the Mayor, the (misnamed really) City Council President) and the Controller had 2 votes (unless it was maybe 2 and 4 respecvtively but the mathematics is the same)

Paul O’Dwyer had not too long before succeeded in giving the City Council President the additional duty of Ombudsman, so the City Council President became the Public Advocate in the 1989 Charter amendments.

A Public Advocate is what every elected official pretended to be (constuituent service)

The only elected official who doesn’t really do constitutuent service is the Public Advocate although some candidates have wanted to.

Obama is the product of Chicago machine politics, black and white. Mayor Richard M Daley is the son of Richard J Daley (of the Democratic convention of 1968, the police riots and the Chicago 7) His brother William M. Daley, formerly Obama’s chief of staff and now and forever of J.P. Morgan Chase. Mayor Richard M Daley made Bill Ayers Citizen of the Year in 1997!
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And if you’re going to accuse me of anything back it the f- up.

sleeeepy or whoever you are–the point was (and is) that your pretending to be an expert, a sage, a knowledgeable analyst on Chicago politics past and present is being rebuffed and challenged.

Your attempts to segue and threadjack into another topic altogether are also being rebuffed.

Do you think your musings, cuttings and pastings, and insults have convinced even one person who reads here as to the heretofore unappreciated glories or merits of your extreme and failed leftist European socialist model?