http://mopolitical.blogspot.com/2008/03/who-is-molly-williams.html

Bars and restaurants don’t have to enforce the Illinois smoking ban. Light up at your own risk.

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/031908/REG_BG3IPNK3.033.php

Funny, I just posted a question on Jason Rosenbaum’s blog earlier today asking the same question. Does anyone know?

So even if 200 patrons are smoking at the slot machines, as long as the Casino Queen’s employees do not smoke inside, no ashtrays are out, and signs are posted, the Casino Queen will be in full compliance with the Illinois smoking ban. The Casino Queen does not even have to further inform smoking patrons about the smoking ban. I haven’t seen this story in the Post yet.

Bill,
I think what you are saying is a big leap. The ruling seems to say it is not upon the bar owners to enforce the law. It doesn’t say that the actual smoker won’t be charged.
I think this will not be an issue in the small corner bar. I think this will still be an issue in larger places that attract a more diverse crowd. After all, you only need one person to complain and bring in authorities to enfoce the ban. And, I don’t think the Queen wants to push the same state gov’t that regulates them.

I am a member of a local congregation of the United Church of Christ, the national denomination with which Obama’s church is affiliated, and I voted for Obama on Super Tuesday. But I am beginning to have a little “voter’s remorse” after his response to the brouhaha over his retired pastor’s comments. I have to think Obama was a bit disingenuous in claiming he wasn’t present for any of the sermon excerpts being “looped” in the media. The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 brought more Americans to church the following Sunday than any other recent Sunday (other than Christmas or Easter). That was the Sunday when Rev. Wright delivered his “GD America” sermon. Obama, then still in the state legislature, wasn’t busy running for president then. Wasn’t Obama, like so many other Americans, at church that Sunday? And if not, why not? I don’t pretend to hear every word of every sermon at my church, but weren’t those particular lines of Wright, so repetitive in nature and expressed in the forceful manner we have witnessed on the tapes, pretty hard to sleep through?

Oracle - A little disengenuius? You think? Oh, he was there and he knew all about it. I read the book “Obama” by David Mendell of the chicago tribune and Obama and Wright are as thick as thieves. I do applaud the PD today doing an expose on Black Liberation Theology which is rooted in Marixm which Obama studied as a young man in college.

As a white person, I was insulted that he used the term “typical white person.” Really? Just what is that? Is he racially profiling me? I thought we were supposed to judge individuals on their character and not the color of their skin. Apparently I have now been lumped in wth a bunch of clods.

I have one thing to say to Rev. Wright. Those who point the finger of blame at someone else have three fingers pointing back at them. After hearing what is being said at these “black” churches, I can’t help but wonder if that in itself might be part of the problem in the black community.

That’s just my opinion, so let the name calling begin by my associates on this blog.

The words of Thomas Sowell:

Best-selling author Shelby Steele’s recent book on Obama (”A Bound Man”) has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks — especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons.

Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago — even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white — in Chicago.

Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why.

But now that Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together. Yet the past continues to follow him, despite his attempts to bury it and the mainstream media’s attempts to ignore it or apologize for it.

Steele depicts Obama as a man without real convictions, “an iconic figure who neglected to become himself.” Obama has been at his best as an icon, able with his command of words to meet other people’s psychic needs, including a need to dispel white guilt by supporting his candidacy.

But president of the United States, in a time of national danger, under a looming threat of nuclear terrorism? No.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc

St Louis Oracle, the United Church of Christ is different than Obama’s Trinity Church of Christ.

No it’s not, Walker. There is a denomination called Church of Christ, but that’s not Obama’s church. Obama’s church is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. It’s a rare predominantly black church in a predominantly white denomination. It’s also the UCC’s largest congregation. Check out the UCC’s national web site at ucc.org and also Obama’s church’s web site at tucc.org.