.
Feedback

Senate Kills GOP Plan to Reverse Obama’s Birth Control Rule

Here is a roundup of political news.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin voted with 50 other senators Thursday to reject 51 to 48 a controversial amendment sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would have overridden the Obama Administration's new contraception coverage rule and allowed any employer to refuse to cover any kind of health care service by citing "moral reasons." Three Democrats, Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) voted with Republicans in favor of the amendment, and only one Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), voted against it, according to Huffington Post.

Illinois’ Republican senator, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, did not vote. He is still being hospitalized after suffering a stroke.

Although Obama's contraception mandate includes a broad exemption for churches and faith-based employers, Senate Republicans argued on Thursday that requiring any employer, even a non-religious one, to cover health services that they oppose is an attack on religious freedom.

State Commission Endorses Anti-bullying Bill

The Associated Press reported that the Illinois Human Rights Commission is endorsing legislation that would require a statewide bullying-prevention policy. Commission chairman Martin Castro said earlier this week that the panel also voted to join the Prevent School Violence Illinois Commission.

The legislation, sponsored by Chicago Democratic Rep. Kelly Cassidy, would require school districts to adopt guidelines to prevent bullying and cyberbullying by the start of school this fall.

14th Congressional District Dem Candidates Give Their Opinions

Two Democrats vying for their party’s nomination in the 14th Congressional District addressed questions from interested residents last week. The League of Women Voters of Central Kane County hosted the candidates in a forum at Batavia’s City Hall.

Dennis Anderson of Gurnee and Jonathan Farnick of Woodstock will square off in the March 20 Illinois primary in the hope of challenging Republican incumbent Randy Hultgren for the 14th District. To read the answers to questions the League asked, go to .

Sparks Fly in 11th District Democrats Debate

The three Democratic candidates running in the new 11th Congressional District squared off in a debate last week, answered questions from the audience, and spent much of their time spiritedly outlining the differences between them. Read more in .

Grabowski Calls His Primary Opponent a Plant for the Other Side

Richard Grabowski, Hometown resident and 3rd Congressional District candidate, has released a blistering press release charging that his main challenger for the Republican primary nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Dan Lipinski, Western Springs’ Jim Falvey, is a “fraud” and a “Democrat in Republican clothing,” reported.

Naperville Chamber Endorses Jeanne Ives for State Rep

The Naperville Area Chamber Political Action Committee (NACPAC) has endorsed Jeanne Ives for election to the Illinois State House along with eight other candidates for local office for the March 20, 2012 primary, reported .

“To earn the endorsement of the Naperville Area Chamber Political Action Committee a candidate must demonstrate that they understand how government can help or hinder job creation and economic growth,” said Joe Dunn, Chairman of NACPAC and who previously represented Naperville in the Illinois House.

School Board President Endorses Jim Durkin

Mike Aurelio, president of the Board of Education, announced Monday that he is endorsing State Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) for re-election in Illinois' 82nd District. Read for details.

Newsletter & Alerts

Get the best stories each day and important breaking news

Subscribe

Not from Elmhurst Patch? Find your Local Patch »

Independence666 March 4, 2012 at 03:24 pm
Mr. Obama and his cronies are systematically dismantling the US Constitution while congress and much of the American public are too powerless and/or clueless to stop him. It will be interesting to see where this kind of behavior leads us. I'm an older person now, so hopefully I'll be long gone by the time the chickens come home to roost. However, I feel sorry for the younger folks who will be subject to a super powerful quasi-socialist American government in the generations to come. All I can say is good luck my young comrades.
James Heartferd March 4, 2012 at 05:01 pm
I urge the readers to look up James A. Dorn,Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute. In his essay based on his Chautauqua Institution lecture of August 18, 1995, which was reprinted, with minor revisions, from The Freeman, March 1996, explains why our country is doomed for failure, thanks to our socialist leaders. Here are a few, lines from The Rise of Government and the Decline of Morality. Government and Morality The growth of government has politicized life
and weakened the nation’s moral fabric.Government intervention—in the economy, in the community, and in society—has increased the payoff from political action and reduced the scope of private action. People have become more dependent on the state and have sacrificed freedom for a false sense of security. “Under the pretense of morality, politicians and advocacy groups have made the ‘right to welfare’ the accepted dogma of a new state religion, in which politicians are the high priests and self-proclaimed ‘benefactors’ of humanity.
James Heartferd March 4, 2012 at 05:39 pm
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. – Ronald Reagan
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower Dick Durbin and the Obama puppets believe on Six Miracles of Socialism: There is no unemployment, but no one works. No one works, but everyone gets paid. Everyone gets paid, but there is nothing to buy with the money. No one can buy anything, but everyone owns everything. Everyone owns everything, but no one is satisfied. No one is satisfied, but 99 percent of the people vote for the system. Democracy is another word for Demo-crazy, they are undercover Socialist. Now the difference The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government … – US Constitution, Article 4, Section 4 The word "Democracy" cannot be found in the American Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution, or in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, or the Constitutions of any of the States. The Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals. It does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government. It is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government. – Ayn Rand Let us be wise.
Doremus Jessup March 4, 2012 at 06:47 pm
Mr. Heartferd,
Just curious here, didn't Dagney Taggart, the heroine of Atlas Shrugged, have sex with three different men in that book by Ayn Rand? I know she didn't get pregnant in the book--must have been because she was wealthy enough to afford birth control. I guess as long as people have enough money they can afford to have protected sex and the poor should just abstain from it. I know Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction but maybe you can spare us the long-winded advice on the U.S. government from an author that was born in Russia. Most of us live in the real world. Furthermore, I urge all writings from the Koch-brother-founded Cato Institute to be printed on toilet paper so at least it will be good for something--just not made by Angel Soft because I boycott all Koch Brothers products and I urge all readers to do the same.
concerned citizen March 4, 2012 at 07:46 pm
Agreed Doremus. We should all be boycotting the Koch brother products. They are as Anti-American as I have ever seen.
On the same lines.....Who sees the irony in not providing birth control to those who need it, and at the same time not wanting to care for those children of poverty through welfare and medicaid? There is also the fact many never mention, vasectomies and male erectile dysfunction medicine is covered by insurance, but not birth control for women. The hypocrites amaze me. The stupidity disgusts me. It is narrow-minded thinking and greed that could ruin this country, not socialists.
Independence666 March 4, 2012 at 11:28 pm
You folks obviously don't get it. This is a religious freedom issue. In this instance, the quasi-socialists are simply using birth control as a vehicle to take away more of our constitutional rights.
James Heartferd March 5, 2012 at 04:21 am
Ayn Rand on Objectivism: Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. .
James Heartferd March 5, 2012 at 05:24 am
Yes, maybe we should try and learn from someone that has experienced the evils of goverment take over. Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and—in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.
Stupidity? Narrow- minded? Birth control? Toilet paper? The question that we must ask ourselves, do we want to be free or be ruled by the goverment. It appears that you don't get the danger on the horizon. Sorry but your reasoning is flawed. Usually those flaws can be traced back to identifiable fallacies. Not all flaws, however, can be technically labeled as fallacies. Some of these flaws might represent very specific errors in the reasoning process while others are better described as flaws in a person's attitude or how they approach the subject matter generally. So let's try critical thinking please. Critical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions. Critical thinking is commonly understood to involve commitment to the social and political practice.
Stewart Levine March 5, 2012 at 09:07 am
sometimes i think that it would be better if we paid these people to not pass new laws and not do anything because it seems the more they do the worse it gets.
Stewart Levine March 5, 2012 at 09:24 am
if you compare this country today to the way it was 50, or 100 years ago, sure we have come far, and have made great accomplishments but many rights have also been lost, and we seem to have a nanny state that wants to pass little laws every where they can to try to dictate things that were never ment to be dictated in the united states of america.
Independence666 March 5, 2012 at 09:46 am
Agreed. This is he result of having professional politicians in office. Serving in any branch of government should be a temporary part time job, and all should be compelled to take the Hypocratic oath "first, do no harm". We have folks who have been."serving" for 30+ years. It's no wonder they've lost touch with real life in America.
Note Article
Just a short thought to get the word out quickly about anything in your neighborhood.
Share something with your neighbors. Write a new post... What's up? Make an announcement, speak your mind, or sell something
Jamie June 18, 2013 at 09:08 pm
There have been some negativity lately surrounding C-F, but it is really only community involvmentRead More like the one in this story that will make the school even better.
Jim Court June 17, 2013 at 11:56 am
Claire, You present a very well thought out understanding of TIFs and your logic is impeccable.
Patty Pistone Fritsch June 17, 2013 at 02:23 pm
Can we get the name of the shelter, we work with a shelter in Oak Park, that may be able to save aRead More few of these little pups before its too late for them!
Geneva Vikings June 17, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Patty...it's Casey's Safe Haven. Reach us atcaseysdogs@yahoo.com. Any help would be great!
People Amaze Me June 14, 2013 at 08:41 am
I agree with you but I don't know if we as just citizen's can do anything to stop that practice. IRead More wish that each cyclist had to have a license, and that it was enforced by laws and police, on the bike so that people could report occurrences and have the person receive a ticket just like a person driving an auto. That would make sense.
Jennifer MacKenzie June 14, 2013 at 08:43 am
A couple of years ago, Villa Park installed "State Law- must stop for pedestrians" signsRead More on the roadways where the Great Western and Prairie Paths cross. I saw a big increase in path users barreling across the streets with no regard for the stop signs on the path.
People Amaze Me June 15, 2013 at 04:11 pm
I was really hoping that the Elmhurst Police would sound in on this info-I do understand kids willRead More be kids, but if one of them is hurt, that adult driver will need to live with that for the rest of their life-so let's come up with a solution for both bicyclist and cars to be in harmony. I really think that a step up in enforcement in the bicycle laws would help-just like the drunk driving laws-believe me the bicycle laws are just as important.