Too much is decided by too few
A key leader in the Illinois Senate believes that "too much testosterone" is the cause of many of the problems at the state Capitol.
Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson, a Democrat from Crete, said the long legislative session could be broken with a woman's touch.
"If I was in on those meetings, things would not be going that way. Too much testosterone in there, if you know what I mean," she said. "Men don't want to compromise because they feel then that they lose something, where women want to compromise because that's a win-win for everybody."
The men at the bargaining table are Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich; Senate President Emil Jones, a Chicago Democrat; House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat; Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, a Greenville Republican; and House Minority Leader Tom Cross, a Republican from Oswego.
Halvorson's comments may or may not be true about that group of men, but it seems a bit unfair that she included all men in her stereotype. Imagine for a moment that a man had said something similar about women.
But hidden beneath her overblown rhetoric is a good point. There is not enough involvement in the budget process in the state of Illinois.
Resignation in order
Glenn Poshard was a fine state senator, an honest, hardworking congressman, and he probably would have been a solid governor (he was defeated by the now-convicted George Ryan). But it's becoming obvious that his academic transgressions, some more than 30 years old, will handicap him as president of Southern Illinois University. He needs to step down before he causes further harm to the university's reputation.
The effort to dispute allegations that he plagiarized parts of both his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation undoubtedly will prove futile. There is little doubt he lifted material from other sources, without quotation marks or citations, in both publications. For a student, that's grounds for severe punishment, including revocation of a degree. For a college president, it's inexcusable and embarrassing to the institution.