Goofy behavior only making the winter blues feel bluer yet

During the election season, it's harder to find either the space or time to spend on a single issue. Thus I find myself irked, scratching my head or laughing over a number of issues this week, none of them shining any sun on a gray winter season.

Pot calling kettle black: There's something about the illegal immigration issue that tends to make idiots of otherwise rational people. This week, the guy who would have been wiser to keep his fingers away from the keyboard was Elgin Mayor Ed Schock.

A local anti-immigration group recently sent out a citywide survey and asked the city council to answer a number of questions about the issue. Council members did so grudgingly, in a carefully organized, thoroughly scripted series of supposedly individual responses, mostly making city residents snort and ask, "Who do they think they are fooling?"

But the Association for Legal Americans, co-chaired by Elgin businessman David White and former School District U-46 board member Doug Heaton, have the tenacity of bulldogs. When they offered to let council members read the comments of survey respondents, comments also forwarded to me, only a couple took them up on it, Schock not among them. Thus, they began sending a survey comment to each council member every day via e-mail.

And in a response worthy only of Carpentersville, Schock and apparently others initially told them not to send any more e-mails. Then Schock changed his mind and offered this comment, which I can only call Bill Sarto-esque: "I am temporarily suspending my declaration to not respond to your e-mails anymore. I have responded to dozens of e-mails on this issue. I do not respond to scripted, mass-produced communications."

To which, of course, Heaton, being a sharp guy, responded: "Well, this administration sure knows how to give 'scripted' responses, now don't they?"

Gotcha, Ed.

Winter leaves: Having not done their leaf-pickup job the week of Thanksgiving only to fall prey to a late leaf drop and then early snow, Elgin public works employees found themselves out trying to clean up an icy, leafy mess this week. How about the city quit talking around this problem and actually do something about it? Now, not a week before next fall's leaf pickup season. Hire out the work to more willing or efficient private contractors if public works can't -- or won't -- do it properly. Reduce employee ranks, if necessary, to pay for it. Institute leaf pickup day or season parking bans if necessary. But quit making excuses and quit threatening to drop the service. As one out-of-town colleague put it the other day, "We can put a man on the moon, but Elgin can't pick up a few leaves." It's embarrassing. And aggravating. And not rocket science, but a simple matter of "want to."

Just wondering: If Veronica Wolski had lost $4,000 instead of winning that amount, would the Grand Victoria casino have let her off the hook for the debt simply because she was listed on the "do not admit" list? I very much doubt it, but that's the excuse the casino used for not paying out her winnings, despite the fact it was its responsibility to keep her from playing in the first place. Once she put the money on the table, there was an implied contract in place -- win or lose. They failed to keep her out. She won. They reneged. Or so it seems to me.