Since the Sun-Times won't say it, we will: We call bullshit, Dan Schmitt. Schmitt is the producer who's responsible for putting Top Chef Stephanie Izard's face on a logo for a public access show from Tony Peraica's campaign called, "What's COOKing With The Republicans?" Not only is it the weakest and most drawn out use of a pun for political purposes in recent memory, but it's just not possible that you would create a "cooking"......

Photo by jlurie The 6-year-old boy who was attacked by pitbulls on Friday evening remains hospitalized after undergoing plastic surgery. Six people were hurt, four critically, in a West Side car wreck Saturday night. The head-on collision happened just after 11 p.m. at the intersection of North Cicero and West Iowa Street. Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica and Assistant State's Attorney Anita Alvarez participated in a State's Attorney candidate forum for 200 students on Saturday.......

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has fired off a letter to Tony Peraica's office, a bit peeved over a door-hanger flier that he feels implies his endorsement of Peraica in his run for State's Attorney. The flier has the tag line "U.S. Attorney's Office Needs Help Fighting Corruption in Cook County" underneath photos of the two men. Fitzgerald's letter emphasizes that he has not endorsed any candidate, and especially not one that "[he did] not believe......

Nom-tastic photo by chicagodom A body was found this afternoon in Lake Michigan, near North Avenue Beach. Police have not released the victim's name nor any information relating to a possible cause of death. More on Monday's Logan Square liquid attack: authorities believe the liquid may have contained sulfuric acid. They also possess a surveillance tape they hope will help identify the attackers. As if the Sox fan beating wasn't bad enough: three Cubs......

Cook County Commissioner and State's Attorney candidate Tony Peraica called on the county board to rescind the one percent sales-tax hike, only to get beat down by Bill "Hog Nuts" Beavers. In a press release, Peracia said: This destructive tax was passed last February by only one vote. Instead of raising taxes on the suffering taxpayers of Cook County, we need to cut spending by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars. We hope......

Juvenile Detention Center Director Earl Dunlap faced harsh words from County Commissioners yesterday on everything from his communication with the board to the way he dresses. Dunlap says Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center is severely understaffed, and that because the hiring process is complex and overly bureaucratic, he needs more money to spend on overtime for current employees and for a private security firm to fill in the gaps. Tony Peraica was none too......

Cook County Commissioner and GOP candidate for state's attorney Tony Peraica took a swipe at his opponent, Democrat Anita Alvarez yesterday. "It reinforces to the citizens of Cook County that what we have is corruption on steroids that is prevalent at all levels of government," Peraica said, referring to a photograph of her on the front page of last week's El Dia, a Spanish language newspaper. That photograph, taken during a fundraiser at a Southwest......

Photo by Katherine of Chicago Does anyone have an Alphabet Pal? Because this NBC news video of how Alphabet Pals curse if you press the F and M keys at the same time bleeps out the possibly offending utterance. Argh! [NBC 5] Chicago Sky coach and GM Bo Overton resigned today, just days after gossip on the Chicago Sky fan message board called him a sexual harrasser. The team won't discuss the specifics of......

With Friday's budget deadline looming for Cook County, Todd Stroger is finding himself in a very uncomfortable position. Stroger has been http://chicagoist.com/2007/10/01/cook_county_sal.php">pushing to raise the county sales tax to 2 percent from .75 percent, a proposal that was taken off the table by commissioners Monday in hopes that they could find a compromise to fund county services without the hike. The majority of the county board wants to cut spending, preferring to pass only a......

It wasn't just Presidential candidates that were running for nominations in yesterday's vote. A handful of local Democrats and Republicans also ran for their party's spot on the November ballot as well. Prosecutor Anita Alvarez won yesterday in a six-way Democratic primary for Cook County state’s attorney where no candidate had the edge going in. She'll face Tony Peraica, a Cook County commissioner from Riverside who ran unopposed in the Republican primary. Eugene Moore will......

Was it an over-eager desire to do our civic duty? Was it a whim? Or did we just want to check out what was inside the building in Welles Park? Who cares - our primary voting is done! Reasons aside, now might be the best time to get your voting done and out of the way - for us, it was a simple 5 minute process. You're in, you're out, you're done. The election officials......

The Board meeting we went to a few weeks ago was excruciatingly boring, but some parts got cattier than a sorority house during period week. Looks like that was the theme yesterday, too, when things really got ugly at and after the meeting, with Bill Beavers leading the charge. But he wasn't the only one--lots of people got in on the action. Liz Gorman on Tony Peraica: "loser," "pathetic, pathological liar," "abusive weasel," "no man,"......

Chicagoist wasn't the only one reminiscing about Harold Washington this week. With the Cook County Commission deadlocked over the budget, County Commissioner Bill Beavers lashed out at the opposition in a press conference yesterday, saying that if Stroger were white, his budget proposal would pass. “This is a remake of the Harold Washington days with the 29, 21,” Beavers said, adding “it’s basically dealing with who’s going to control the county, white or black.... If......

Tony Peraica, Cook County commissioner and state’s attorney candidate, is having the worst week ever. As if being a homophobe right-winger in Cook County wasn’t bad enough, now the rest of the local GOP combine has turned against him. Joe Birkett, Judy Baar Topinka’s running mate for lieutenant governor, is backing Mary McMahon, an assistant state’s attorney in Democrat Dick Devine’s office, as the GOP candidate for State’s Attorney. This after he spoke at a......

Crook County Board President Todd Stroger unveiled his $3.2 billion budget Wednesday. Stroger has struggled to give the appearance that his government is small and fiscally responsible, eliminating about 735 positions over the last three fiscal years, and reducing 1,800 positions from this year's budget. Now he claims that bringing the county's tax take to $888 million by 2009 — by tripling the county sales tax and doubling gas and parking taxes — is necessary......

It seems like Cook County politics becomes more and more like a bad soap opera every time we open the newspaper. While Todd Stroger is threatening more cuts and tax hikes to cover the tab on the bloated executive payroll, Tony Peraica is giving speeches about prosecuting the crooks. Forrest Claypool wrote an op-ed piece earlier this week about the disaster that the County's health care system has devolved into, and Todd Stroger won't even......

Now that Tony Peraica has thrown his hat in the ring for Cook County State's Attorney, and Luis Gutierrez has been worshipped in seeking a ninth term, we now have a whole flock of Democrats and Republicans lining up to beat the shit out of each other over Dennis Hastert's congressional seat. Addressing a crowd of supporters last Friday from the steps of the Kendall County Courthouse, where he launched his national political career, Hastert......

In other news, Blagojevich says that he will cut $500 million from the budget and spend more on a health plan he favors. Yesterday, Cook County Commissioner and once and future candidate for Board President Tony Peraica announced that he would run for Cook County State's Attorney in 2008, which current three-term State's Attorney Dick Devine will be vacating at the end of his term. "It's time for Cook County to have a State's Attorney......

Remember when all the county hacks on the payroll were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, crying about how Forrest Claypool was going to destroy Cook County by laying off everybody? Remember when progressives and reformers were begging people to vote for Tony Peraica and all the DINO pork-choppers were saying that he was Ronald Reagan reincarnated, hell-bent on destroying the social safety net of Cook County? We hate to say we......

Although the week is shorter, that doesn't mean that there hasn't been political news out there to round up! This week, we're making a special dedication to Chicagoist's favorite bad guy, the man that makes us the national butt of every political joke in town, the guy that represents everything that is wrong with our local political system, Todd "The Toddler" Stroger. Without further ado, let's take a gander at his follies and foibles, and......

Mike Quigley would have you believe that he supports good government for Cook County. He came into office in 1998, the lone reformer on the bloated and corrupt board. By his second term, he found brotherhood: joining forces with Forrest Claypool, Larry Suffriden, and Tony Peraica, they managed to form an alliance and win some victories against John Stroger's Machine. In 2005 he threw his hat in the ring to challenge the former County Board......

Has Cook County politics become so cynical, so corrupt, and so arrogant, that it just doesn't matter anymore? If recent calls for an investigation of $500,000 that is "missing" from the county budget are any indication, we have to wonder if there is a light at the end of the tunnel for both taxpayers in Cook County and the people that use the services that the county finances. Tony Peraica, the Republican that was supposedly......

When we read the news about what's going on with Cook County these days, we just want to pull out our hair and scream. What the fuck is going on!? We remember all the bullshit that opponents of Forrest Claypool and Tony Peraica spewed about job cuts and budget slashing during last year's election, and how everyone was saying that if a Republican ran the county it would go to hell in a handbasket. Three......

Much has been made about this being the year of change here in Chicago. In November Democrats took control of Congress, harnessing voter dissatisfaction and promising change. And while the main attractions on the reform ticket, Tony Peraica and Jesse Jackson Jr either lost or decided not to run, many pundits are predicting that as much as 30% of the City Council could change in late February. It seems that some candidates believe in miracles,......

The plot got a little thicker yesterday, as it was revealed that the piece of real estate that the FBI used in its bribery case against Arenda Troutman isn't even in her ward. One thing you can say about her, though, she's definitely willing to work to earn her bribe money. Free on bail as she awaits trial, Troutman went to the city council meeting yesterday, earning breathless reports from Bernie Stone about what he......

Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool...

While we were busy obsessing over Ward politics and aldermanic races, all kinds of newsworthy events happened in the spectator sport of local Chicago politics. Lets take a look back at the week so far: Todd Stroger is asking Cook County's elected officials for budget cuts, in an attempt to trim the deficit. Facing a nearly $500 million shortfall, Stroger is asking Sheriff Tom Dart, State's Attorney Dick Devine, and Clerk of the Court Dorothy......

President-select of the Crook County Board Todd Stroger is backing off a campaign promise to fire the county's controversial patronage chief, Gerald Nichols, who was suspended from his $114,000-a-year job in the wake of a federal probe. Stroger had vowed during the campaign to fire Nichols, and many expected him to do it immediately as a sign of commitment to reform. Instead, Stroger said Tuesday that he would lift the suspension on Nichols and bring......

Jobs come and go. Like the economic pundits keep saying, the vast majority of people are going to switch jobs and careers several times over their lifespans, and that will only happen more often in the future. We ourselves went the temp agency route for a while; an eight-week long stint here, a two-month-plus gig there. We worked at a few places for only a couple days. However, we don't remember receiving an unuusally hugeass......

In case you missed it, there was an election yesterday. Chicagoist hopes you got out and voted. And after we rocked the vote, we rocked the Daily Bar & Grill at a special election night happy hour; you should have been there. That said, it was an exciting day: The Democrats have taken the House, but the Senate is still a toss-up. And yes, that means that Nancy Pelosi will be the new Speaker of......