Seems to me one of the first things detectives would do is check all the phone traffic into and out of the Larsen home the weekend she disappeared, yet evidently they have yet to do that.   Instead they rely on dumb luck -- Detective Sarah Linden happening to notice on her morning run that a casino ferry boat has the name "Adela" --- the "person" Belko indicated Rosie was talking to the night she was murdered.

Also high on the agenda would be to check out the possible sources of the very expensive shoes working-class Rosie was wearing that night, yet Linden and Holder have conveniently failed to follow up.

And the cabbie?  Most taxi drivers are avid news consumers, and you're going to tell me not only did police fail to make routine checks of the cab companies, but this one driver didn't see Rosie's picture in the paper or on TV and say, "Hey..."

It now looks like the killer is a person of some means who is connected in some way to the mayoral race (given that Rosie's body was found in the trunk of a Richmond campaign car).

Councilman Darren Richmond is now No. 1 on the AMC suspect tracker (boosted by discovery of a video showing Rosie greeting him warmly at a campaign event), but I suspect he is the last of the red herrings strewn in our path, and the real killer is someone who wants to make it look as though Richmond is involved:  A jealous Gwen? Maybe, but right now I'm looking at incumbent Mayor Lesley Adams or his top aide Benjamin Abani. Long-shot looks: Oddball entreprenuer Tom Drexler, whose presence in this story is peculiar and therefore must not be as irrelevant as it seems; Michael Ames, Jasper's wealthy father, who had some obviously awkward connection to the Larsens.

Other thoughts:

Really, your 13-year-old is acting up under light adult supervision so you move him into a motel room with virtually no adult supervision?

Remember that school-project movie that looked portentous in one of the early episodes? I'm guessing that comes back into the story again.

I don't see any way out of Stan having to spend a good long time in the slam for nearly killing Bennet if he's the basically sympathetic, distraught father we think he is.

Gambling: Stan used to be a mob enforcer for gambling debts; Rosie went off to a casino; Darren bet his entire campaign on one basketball shot.

Jack's father is...dead? Linden's stygian past tells us...what?

Your thoughts?

The Chicago Daily Observer is reporting that its founder and editorial board chairman Tom Roeser, who retired just last week from his weekly radio program on WLS-AM, has died.

More coverage:

Tribune

Sun-Times

Robert Feder

A roundup of state and local news-review and weekly political chat shows. Descriptions provided by the broadcast outlets in most cases:

Chicago Tonight: The Week in Review (WTTW-Ch. 11): Rod Blagojevich, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. take the stand in the Blagojevich retrial. The Mumbai terror trial here gets international attention. ComEd gets its controversial rate hike approved. The legislative session is scheduled to end soon with redistricting and the state budget still unsettled. And in sports, a late game collapse dooms the Chicago Bulls' season. Host Joel Weisman with Charles Thomas, ABC-7 News, Bruce Dold, Chicago Tribune, David Greising, Chicago News Cooperative and Dan McGrath, Chicago News Cooperative

CapitolView WSEC-TV, Springfield: Host Bernie Schoenburg (Springfield State Journal-Register) with Kevin McDermott (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) Mike Lawrence (Statehouse columnist and former director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute). On this week's agenda- Blagojevich takes the stand, redistricting maps are released, workers comp & education reform could become reality, and pension changes could happen as well. On Facebook at CapitolViewPolitics.

From our story today, Opponents and defenders of civil union bill square off in protests:

Rev. Hiram Crawford, pastor of Israel Methodist Community Church on Chicago's South Side, one of several speakers at a rally sponsored by Americans for Life, invoked civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in saying marriage must be restricted to a man and a woman. "Dr. King was a family man, and he understood the value of the family," Crawford said.

With all due respect to King and his many achievements, he's probably not the guy you want to be quoting on marriage or holding up as the example of an ideal family man.  See Snopes and About.com for well sourced discussions of this issue, and The Griot for how to keep it in perspective:

The idea that King's memory as a great American patriot is tarnished by his infidelity is both illogical and problematic. A great man is not defined by his weaknesses, but by his strengths. Regardless of what Dr. King may have done during the course of his marriage, those actions are almost completely disconnected from the manner through which he inspired billions with his courage and led people of color to the life we share today....being perfect is not a requirement for being great ... he was as complex as the rest of us, and ... his life as a public figure was hardly a reflection of the entirety of his existence.

Right. And my sense of King is that he would have no truck with those who wish to marginalize and deny rights and dignity to gay people; certainly his overall message was one of inclusion and freedom

From What Did He Just Say? --Meet Rep. Joe Walsh, the biggest media hound in the freshman class.in Slate:

Since being sworn in less than six months ago, [Northwest surburban Republican U.S. Rep. Joe] Walsh has appeared on prime time cable news or Sunday shows 28 times. When Congress is in session, he can appear more than once a week. What the cable bookers get is an excitable, handsome freshman who will say anything....Walsh has a gift for saying out loud things that many Republicans believe but won't say...A lot of Sarah Palin's appeal is based on a revanchist idea that she was blistered by a media that wanted to protect Obama at any Republican's expense. Walsh is the conservative who's absorbed that lesson and figured out that if you talk enough, the spotlight finds you.

Late?
Me?
Why yes
By five years
But it's new to me
A haiku-like form called "The Fib."

From Gregory K. Pincus' blog, April 2006:

Why just haiku? I wanted something that required more precision. That led me to a six line, 20 syllable poem with a syllable count by line of 1/1/2/3/5/8 – the classic Fibonacci sequence. In short, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, then keep adding the last two numbers together for your next one. It’s a wonderful sequence, and it’s one that is repeated in nature (most famously in nautilus shells). Heck, some folks use it in knitting and music,… and, as much as I’d like to say I invented a new form of poetry, these sequences have been part of various poetic structures since before Fibonacci’s time. However, "the Fib" is my take on the idea, complete with a wicked cool name, if I say so myself.

The map, below, of the proposed new U.S. Congressional districts in Cook and collar counties is very disturbing. It was drawn by Democrats in order to make trouble for Republican opponents, for the most part (See Rick Pearson's analysis here) . And though I realize that Republicans would have drawn an equally cynical map were they have held all the map-making cards this year (and that they will draw an equally cynical map when, down the line, they hold all the map-making cards), I'm still struck by the angry, admittedly naive thought that this is not the way it should be.

Ideally, districts would be as close to square as common sense and cartography allows -- drawn systematically by colorblind, party-blind computers. I'm not even a fan of gerrymandering to assure that geographically disconnected ethnic and racial groups get proportional representation; in fact, I'm not even sure that all this creative boundary manipulation actually makes these groups politically stronger.

But anyway, here's the state-wide map:

I was cc’d on the following correspondence:

To: Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune
From: The Month of May Promotional Board

  We write in regard to your your deeply monthist commentary, "Alas, May looking like a yawner," published in the May, 1, 2011, Chicago Tribune.

On that day you wrote, "the first week of May seems doomed to dullsville," playing into the offensive stereotype of May as an anodyne span in the yearly calendar known mostly for flowers -- yawn -- and TV season finales .

True, we at the Month of May don't have major national sports championships to offer, graduations, exciting premiers.  You wrote, "So what's an excitement junkie to do?"

Well, how about enjoying the biggest news story of the year so far? Osama bin Laden captured! May 1! Boo-ya!

How about following news of the worst tornadoes and Mississippi River flooding in a generation?  Watching Oprah Winfrey's star-spangled swan song? A spectacular if ultimately disappointing clash between the Miami Heat and the Chicago Bulls in the NBA semi-finals, complete with a gay-slur controversy to feed the commentary beast?  The inauguration of Chicago's first new mayor in 22 years?

Shall we go on? Try to stop us!

Landmark school reform in Springfield. Wild tumult and jockeying for position in the GOP presidential field.  The opening of a terrorism trial in Chicago that's drawing international attention. The Rapture that wasn't. The re-instatement of Father Pfleger.  President Obama angering Israel with his reference to 1967 borders and the Republican party angering huge swaths of the electorate by clinging to the deeply unpopular "Ryancare" proposal to end Medicare as we know it.

Finally, the Month of May was proud to present former Gov. Rod Blagojevich taking the witness stand at his federal corruption trial, easily the most interesting development in this case since he was frog marched out of his home in December (a predictable, stressful and overrated month, in our opinion) of 2008.

May -- slogan "How May we entertain you? (TM) -- more than came through for excitement junkies.  An apology and retraction are in order. When May we expect those, pun intended?

To: The Month of May Promotional Board
From: Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune Nostradamus impersonator

I understand your frustration over my comments about your normally remarkable level of mundanity. But while my prognostication may not have been entirely accurate, I think you overlook two very crucial points.

1)      I am wholly responsible for the killing of the most wanted terrorist in the history of the world. Say what you will about our intelligence community, but there is absolutely no way we would’ve taken out Osama bin Laden if I had not publicly predicted a dull May. It’s called “irony,” and God is a huge fan of it – that’s a scientific fact.

2)      Even the worst players occasionally make a basket. How was I to know that this would be THE ONE MAY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD during which exciting things would happen. I mean, c’mon. That’d be like predicting an unknown governor from Alaska who doesn’t read books would be picked as a vice-presidential candidate. Puh-lease!

So on these grounds, I refuse your request for a clarification. I will, however, commend you on your flowers. They’ve been quite lovely this year.

Respectfully, Rex

p.s. I don’t like to stir up trouble, but June says it thinks you’ve put on weight

The new Sarah Palin documentary is titled "The Undefeated," even though, of course, she and her running mate John McCain were defeated in November, 2008. Wags around the web have been suggesting other titles, such as the ones below (None of these are mine):

Mooseferatu

To Kill And Field Dress A Mockingbird

Must Hate Wolves

Children of a Lesser Todd

 Citizen Vain

The Devil Wears Mukluks

 There Will Be Blood Libel

In What Respect, Charlie Brown?

The Shawshank Refudiation

Kiss of the Snider Woman

Blazing Prattle

Desperately Seeking Syntax

 A Room with a View of Russia (or) From Within Sight of Russia With Love

Mama Grizzly Dearest

 Birthers of a Nation

Close Encounters of the Third-Rate Kind

Nightmare on Elk Street

The Dumb Luck Club

I Know That You Quit Last Summer

Death Panel Becomes Her

Honey, I Exploited the Kids!

No Country For Newspaper Reading

The Goodbye Governor

Follow this trend on Twitter here or read the hundreds of postings at BalloonJuice.

For minute-by-minute hilarity and information from reporters in the courtroom, follow the #Blagojevich action on Twitter.

You don't have to have an account or know much about Twitter to keep up with the snappy dispatches. And if you've never seen how this medium works for covering live news events, this is a great opportunity.

I like to sample new TV shows, so this morning I went to the DVR to get it to record today's "Windy City Live," the new, local replacement for "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which I understand went off the air this week after having been on for a while.

The default option on my DVR from Dish Network is to save all new shows for any program I put on my recording schedule, as though I'm proposing the viewer's equivalent of marriage, not a lunch date.

OK, so what's your pet peeve today?

If it's demagoguery to envision the most dire consequences of your opponents' position, then what can we say about this...

as a response to this:

In Sunday's print column I will note with pleasure that the box office failure of "The Beaver" suggests that Americans will not easily forgive actor Mel Gibson for his racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, anti-gay rants and his recent no-contest plea to charges of domestic violence; that we don’t wish to reward him with our attention and our money.

If you wish to add your thoughts, do so below.

Thursday, for the first time I can remember, I felt genuine admiration for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Not for the hilariously tedious and tediously hilarious story he told of his rise from mediocrity and humble roots to mediocrity and great power, but for the venue in which he dared tell it: A witness box in a federal courtroom.

 It took guts for him to rise from the defense table, cross the floor, raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth so help him God. Guts I didn't think he had.

Guts that belied my image of him as the chirping little coward and grade-A phony who declared his utter innocence in sound bites and superficial interviews, but declined to sit for tough interviews or take the stand in his first trial last summer.

I dined out — literally! — on my lonely prediction a year ago that he'd never testify under oath despite his repeated insistence that he couldn't wait to do so.

Yes, he can be charming and earnest. Blagojevich works a room and connects with people as well as any politician I've ever seen. He rode that natural talent to a series of electoral victories.

But his gift of gab also is his curse. He tends to babble and free-associate the way verbally overconfident people do, besotted by his ability to control any conversation with bluster and misdirection. However, witnesses under cross-examination have no control of the conversation and must answer the questions they're asked instead of the questions they wish they were asked.

Also, Blagojevich tends to wilt under pressure. With just a few accusatory questions on last year's "Celebrity Apprentice," host Donald Trump turned him into a stammering schoolboy. Even former syndicated talk-show host Bonnie Hunt made him look like a weasel.

All of that's ancient history now. Throw out all the comical, evasive news conferences, the feckless public-relations campaign that had his wife, Patti, eating bugs in the rain forest for the opportunity to explain her husband's innocence on national TV to former Detroit Piston John Salley and even the testimony of all the witnesses so far in Blagojevich's first and second trial.

Blagojevich hit the reset button on all of it (except the one pesky conviction last year for lying to the FBI) when he took the stand Thursday. He chose to bet not his life but certainly extended years of it on his ability to cast in a non-criminal light his own disturbing words as caught on surveillance recordings.

Note I didn't say "innocent." The Blagojevich heard on those recordings is, at best, a selfish, scheming, greedy opportunist who frequently looked for ways to use his official power for personal or political advantage.

His repeated declaration, "I did nothing wrong" may or may not be true in a legal sense. The jury will decide. But contrition rather than defiance would be a refreshing change.

Under the gentle guidance of his defense attorney on direct examination, our logorrheic former governor opened by telling his life story in a series of rambling, quirky answers filled with literary quotes, odd admissions and memorable one-liners. Twitter, which was the place to be if you weren't in the courtroom, was on fire with 140-character dispatches from the viewing gallery.

That testimony, on its own, didn't take a lot of guts. Those who've read his book, "The Governor," or who listened to the weekly talk show he hosted on WLS-AM radio leading up to his first trial are familiar with his self-serving narrative of virtue and grit. Those who watched his career are familiar with his aw-shucks charisma and boyish affability.

What took guts was offering that testimony knowing that prosecutors were taking in every word, comparing it to his voluminous public remarks and to his words caught on tape, and preparing to question him carefully and relentlessly when it's their turn to cross-examine him next week.

What took guts for Blagojevich was backing up his repeated drive-by protestations of innocence with a decision to go head-to-head with his accusers on their home field. Up until literally five minutes before he began testifying, I was sure he didn't have it in him.

Even if he has truth on his side, taking the stand is a bold move.

Desperate? Reckless? Nutty? Perhaps.

But admirable? Certainly.