CHI TRIB LIVES! . . . 9/26/03, feast of N. Amer Martyrs, Sts. Isaac Jogues, John de Brebeuf & Companions, all S.J., Chi Trib's day to shine, in that its people exposed the Duff Family Pseudo-black some time back for posing as minority contractors and the Dist. Atty. announced indictments. Columnist Jn Kass crows on Don & Roma, and his enemies have no grounds to gainsay him. I take back at least 5% of what I have said about Chi Trib.

Seriously, folks, it's a Day to Remember for the once world's greatest newspaper, which is doing more than shooting loafing street crews, an important element of municipal investigation in the Colonel's day, a long time ago. Kass has been on the case, and now he can write in his sleep the column that zeroes in on Mayordaley II as Foney Baloney. Let us hear it for him and his ilk on the other side of Michigan Avenue.

THIS PLOT BE THICK . . . And let us hear it for Republicans and Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, without whom we would not have a D.A. who would go where his duty pointed him in re: Daley and Friends. Glory be to God for not necessarily intended consequences.

This is why Daley et al. plump constantly for Dem victories, including Bill as Gore campaign mgr. going to court in Florida. Bill was standing up for the Family as much as anything else.

In more ways that one: A caller to Don & Roma (WLS-AM, a.m. drive-time) said Mme. Duff is related to Rich on his mother's side. She would be Patricia Green Duff, 75, indicted with her son, a figurehead black man, and others. She is listed as president and sole owner of Windy City Maintenance, the allegedly fraudulently minority-owned company that "sprang from nowhere to garner approximately $100 million in city-related work since Mayor Richard Daley took office," per Chi Trib.

Her husband, John Duff Jr., 78, is former director of Windy City Maintenance and former executive in a liquor union known as Local 3. "He has been tied to organized crime, and in 1982 pleaded guilty to federal charges of embezzling union funds," again per Chi Trib.

Did we think the Duffs sprang from nowhere on the political scene? Blood tells. Tribalism will out. The saga of politics Daley-style goes on and on and on.

CLOSER . . . And by the way, this trenchant critic sharply distinguishes between hard-news-oriented city-side reporting by Chi Trib and the me-too liberalism that shows in national political and cultural coverage, where former elite-college students of tenured radicals hold sway.

There. Got that off the old chest.