-By Warner Todd Huston
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, senior Illinois Senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, expressed his doubt as to whether bloggers deserved Constitutional protection for their work online.
On the May 26 broadcast of the Sunday show, Durbin told host Chris Wallace that he wasn’t sure if bloggers or “someone who is Tweeting” should be given protections under a media shield law.
Durbin noted that he was not prepared to ask for a special counsel to investigate Eric Holder and his snooping on the business and personal phone calls of nearly 100 reporters of the Associated Press, but he went further to question just who a media shield law would cover.
But here is the bottom line–the media shield law, which I am prepared to support, and I know Sen. Graham supports, still leaves an unanswered question, which I have raised many times: What is a journalist today in 2013? We know it’s someone that works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who is tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection? We need to ask 21st century questions about a provision in our Constitution that was written over 200 years ago.
Durbin did not go on to attempt to clarify what those limits should be.
Dem. Senator Durbin Not Sure if Bloggers Deserve Constitutional Protection”
Jeremy Segal was filming the protesting Chicago Teachers downtown on Monday trying to get a few questions in with Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis and agitator Rev. Jesse Jackson when operatives for the union began to push him, manhandle his video equipment and punch him in the chest.
Many thought that conservative activist Adam Andrzejewski was going to announce that he would be running for Illinois State Treasurer this afternoon, but he pulled a fast one on everyone with his announcement on March 19 at the University Club in Chicago.
This year the Violence Against Women Act is getting some stronger penalties for stalking, assault, and other crimes. With all these new provisions, one wonders that if this law were around 15 years ago, how it would have hit good old Congressman Bill Foster, a man who is guilty of abusing his wife?
A survey of news coverage by the big three networks of the indictment of former Chicago Democrat Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. was sparse to non-existent for the first three days after the indictment was made public. Even when his trouble was reported, the fact that he is a Democrat went unmentioned.
I had a few minutes to speak privately to Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam (R, 6th District) about the upcoming State of the Union speech that the President will give tonight and as far as Roskam is concerned the speech tonight will be nothing but a “highly charged and very, very political” speech that won’t contain many actual solutions.
We do a lot of carping on blogs and in the media about what our Representatives in Congress do, of course. But once in a while we should praise them when they get together and do something right.
After a vote on January 8, Illinois is set to join only two other states, New Mexico and Washington, to allow illegal immigrants to apply for state drivers licenses. A third state, Utah, allows illegals to drive on temporary permits.
Illinois is the only state in the Union that does not allow some sort of concealed carry statute for its law-abiding citizens. Illinois is also home to the city with the 
Withchunt: The Chicago Sun-Times once again revels in its partisanship by demanding the public release of the medical records of Senator Mark Kirk while ignoring the records of Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Illinois ranks at the bottom of the nation in nearly every single category of rankings of successful states and now the Land of Lincoln can rack up yet another great failure. Illinois’ Governor, Pat Quinn, has received the grade of “F” in a new “fiscal report card” of the 50 states’ fiscal health.
Brad Schneider is running for Congress in Illinois against 10th District incumbent, Republican Robert Dold. Schnedier claims he’s a “businessman” and is running on the pretext that, according to his campaign literature, he’ll “bring his business expertise to Congress.” Yet, this “businessman” has reported no income at all for the last three years from the very small business he claims is his primary occupation. 
This is a perfect example of Old Media “gotcha” reporting. On July 3, the Washington Post 
The Illinois Republican Party held its 2012 Party Convention this weekend. On the docket was addressing some asked for rules changes and picking a slate of delegates to the GOP national convention to nominate Mitt Romney to carry the Party’s banner in the upcoming presidential election. My ultimate analysis is that this was a status quo convention, but signs show that the status quo might not be too long for this world.