What does this refer to? Look up something on past Illinois governors and corruption...there is a history of it. Tell what you found.

No Cake for Adolf

A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake.

Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.

Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.

"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."

The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said Tuesday.

Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."

The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.

"Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."

He said about 12 people attended the birthday party on Sunday, including several children of mixed race.

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."

What do you think about the store's policy?

MID QUARTER BREAK

all postings from here to the end the quarter will count for your LAST 7 blogs of quarter 2...government is almost over and your senior year is almost half over as well...wow! where does the time go..................

Politics and Perks

Does Congress really want to ban privately funded travel?

Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel is a lovely luxury getaway. Nestled in the bluffs above a sandy beach in Kona, Hawaii, the hotel is perfect for weddings and honeymoons--and apparently for members of Congress attending conferences. Last January, the American Association of Airport Executives paid $40,000 for Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who is on an aviation subcommittee, four other lawmakers, and the wives of some of them to go to Kona for a five-day get-together on aviation issues. The list of sponsors included contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. "You'll have an unparalleled opportunity to discuss your ideas and concerns with aviation industry leaders and Washington decision makers," the association said in its invite.

That's the kind of special access that worries government watchdogs. While the excursion was legal, such privately funded jaunts for lawmakers illustrate how interest groups use trips to gain influence in Congress--by paying for members to attend and by providing lobbyists with access to lawmakers. "At dinner ... you are sitting across from a lobbyist from Exxon Mobil or Verizon, and later they pick up the phone and call you and say: Hey, didn't we have a nice time in Italy ... oh, and by the way, you're going to support us on our bill, aren't you?" says Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause.

Members of Congress have received almost $20 million from private groups to travel since 2000, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan research group. More than 600 members of Congress have made over 6,000 privately funded trips since 2000. In January, for instance, the Aspen Institute paid about $86,000 for 12 lawmakers and spouses of many of them to go to Punta Mita, Mexico, for a conference on U.S. policy in Latin America. In August 2003, Century Business Services, the parent company of the lobbying firm Kessler & Associates, paid $30,000 for six lawmakers to stay at the Ashford Castle in Ireland for a trade seminar.

Who can bring and end to these kinds of trips and the influence that may result from them? Only Congress itself. They would have to pass a law limiting or banning these kind of trips. In 2005 , a ban on privately funded travel was proposed in Congress--it was defeated. Resistance was and remains strong.

What do you think? Does Congress want to ban privately funded travel?

Parents pay lobbyist to fight school closings

Parents on either side of a decision to close four elementary schools in southeast Oakville have drawn lines over influence and affluence.

The Clearview Oakville Community Alliance claims fat-cat rich parents have hired a high-priced lobbyist to fiddle with the Halton District School Board's plan to close the schools in 2010.

It's an unfair fight, says Michelle Sloane, president of the Clearview alliance. The group says closing the schools and building a new one will mean better quality education for all students in the area.

Particularly galling, she said, is a boast by their opponents of a $50,000 to fund the fight.

"We know the fight cannot be to overturn the decisionto close schools made by the district," Sloane said. "The only fight, logically, is to delay everything, unless they find some legal hitch (in the process).

"But to hire a lobbyist firm from downtown – and supposedly this person they've hired is extremely good at the education side of things – we don't have funding to do that. We have to be our own lobbyist.

"It's a scary fight," said Sloane, who won't reveal how much money her group has raised. "We just feel that they have the means that we don't. We are concerned that because they have the ability to hire big time Bay St. lawyers and big time Bay St. lobbyists, that they may have the ability to influence somebody that we don't have the ability to do.

"We're not jealous. We're concerned. We're at a different income level."

Mark Caskenette, an executive member of Oakville Residents for Public Education, said concerned parents who belong to his group have never said that no schools should be closed as population demographics change in Ward 3.

But he said they never imagined that four schools would be shuttered.

"We're not opposed to closing schools," Caskenette said. "What we opposed was a process that we believe was flawed, that lacked openness and transparency."

He said the board didn't provide a review committee of parents and school officials with a selection of scenarios to deal with dwindling student numbers in some schools and how students would be redistributed within the ward.

"It seemed to be a process with a foregone conclusion," Caskenette said. "Our perception was that there was a bias to build a school in Clearview."

He said his group has no specific recommendation about which schools should be closed.

"We've tried to be open-minded," he said.

"What we say is that the process has been flawed. We want to revisit and come up with a solution that satisfies the whole community."

Recount Update

U.S. Senate Race Recount--Most Recent Update

Al Franken (DFL)	1,197,965	Contesting 3,197 ballots
Norm Coleman (R)	1,193,307	Contesting 3,311 ballots
Current Lead	4,658
Net gain from Nov. 4 count	+10 Franken
Learn what numbers mean	See recounted votes by precinct or county
Ballots Recounted: 98.88% Precints Reporting: 99.37% 8:00 p.m. - 12/04/2008

Fla. Congresswoman Hangs Up On Obama, Twice

When a man sounding remarkably like President-elect Barack Obama called a Florida congresswoman Wednesday, she assumed it was a crank call. So Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hung up. But, the Miami Herald reports, this was no prank. "I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me," Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. "They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punked."'

The call came about 1 p.m. Obama congratulated her on her re-election, saying he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. The conversation lasted about a minute when she cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and that he was a better impersonator than the guy on Saturday Night Live, she said.

Then Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, called the congresswoman to tell her it wasn't a joke. But she hung up on him, too. It took a call from Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama really did want to talk to her. When the two finally talked, Ros-Lehtinen said she and Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated him for his victory despite how hard she campaigned for his opponent, Sen. John McCain. He didn't even blame her for mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said. "He laughed a lot, saying in Chicago they do it all the time," Ros-Lehtinen said. "He said, 'I don't blame you for being skeptical."'