Supporters say they're close to passing gay marriage in Illinois

SPRINGFIELD — Gay marriage supporters said today they have moved to “within striking distance” of collecting enough votes to pass a bill in early January.

Sen. Heather Steans and Rep. Greg Harris unveiled plans to take up the measure in the closing days of the current General Assembly before a new set of lawmakers are sworn in Jan. 9.

The legislation would allow same-sex marriage and protect the right of religious institutions to either consecrate or not consecrate such weddings, but church leaders from a variety of faiths have rallied staunch opposition.

Nine states allow gay marriage, including three states --- Maine, Maryland and Washington --- that approved legalizing gay marriage.

Both Steans and Harris said the ballot-box victories elsewhere last month represent a “sea change” that they are seeing among colleagues in Illinois. The two Chicago Democrats said they plan to put up the same-sex marriage bill for a vote and indicated they wouldn’t do that without believing it would pass. Still, they remained cautious.

Steans said the two “don’t want to lose the momentum” and “we want to do it now.”

“Public sentiment is moving fast on this,” Steans said, pointing out support from Gov. Pat Quinn, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and President Barack Obama. “It’s just a wave now. It’s moving very quickly.”

The two have to muster 60 House votes and 30 Senate votes. If that happens, Quinn has indicated he would sign the bill into law. Such a measure would take effect in the summer, the lawmakers said. The measure also would recognize gay marriages performed in other states, they said.

Harris said constituents have made arguments to a growing number of lawmakers, raising questions like, “Why would our state treat our lesbian granddaughter with less respect than our straight grandson?”

The gay marriage push comes after the state first allowed civil unions for same-sex and heterosexual partners in 2011. Opponents of civil unions predicted that fight would open the door to making gay marriage legal in only a matter of time, but the timetable for action is moving quicker than many foes may have anticipated.

Opponents cite religious concerns, saying the sanctity of marriage should be protected and the institution be defined as between a man and a woman. But Harris has said the question for Illinois has turned from whether the state would pass gay marriage to when.

On Monday, Quinn said he hopes lawmakers would send him the gay marriage bill in January. But Harris had cautioned that the legislative agenda is filling up with so many big-ticket items like pension reform and casino expansion proposals that there might not be enough time and room for gay marriage to be taken up. Harris also wanted to make sure he had the votes to pass the bill before going forward on such a contentious issue.

But with dozens of lame-duck lawmakers available to cast votes more freely as they prepare to walk out the door, they may be able to provide enough support to pick up the final votes needed to pass the gay marriage bill.

Quinn called the House the “key arena at this time” and urged lawmakers sitting on the fence to “vote their conscience.”

rlong@tribune.com

Twitter @RayLong

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Media mogul and banker Allbritton dies at 87

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Joe Lewis Allbritton, a media mogul and owner of the scandal-plagued Riggs National Bank, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Houston. He was 87.

Allbritton died of heart ailments, said Jerald Fritz, a senior vice president of Allbritton Communications.

Allbritton’s media empire included newspapers throughout the U.S. Northeast and ABC network affiliates. Allbritton’s son, Robert, recently founded the influential political publication Politico.

But Joe Allbritton, a Mississippi native, was famously known for owning and running Riggs, the Washington-based bank that had been a dominant force in diplomatic banking in the nation’s capital.

Allbritton’s banking career was tarnished when it was revealed that Riggs bank failed to report suspicious activity in the accounts held by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Equatorial Guinea officials.

Riggs bank pleaded guilty in 2005 to violating anti-money laundering laws and was fined a total of $ 41 million.

Allbritton did not seek re-election to Riggs’ board of directors and the storied bank was eventually acquired by PNC Financial Services.

Allbritton is survived by his wife, son and two grandchildren.

(Reporting By Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Eli Lilly to Conduct Additional Study of Alzheimer’s Drug

The drug maker Eli Lilly & Company said on Wednesday that it planned an additional study of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug that failed to improve the condition of people with the disease, saying that it remained hopeful about the drug’s prospects.

The newest study is expected to get under way in the third quarter of 2013 and will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. Lilly released results of two clinical trials in August that showed the drug, called solanezumab, did not significantly improve either the cognition or the daily functioning of people with mild and moderate forms of the disease. But despite that failure, the results also gave some reason for hope: when patients with mild Alzheimer’s were separated out, the drug was shown to significantly slow their decline in cognition.

In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it decided not to pursue approval of the drug based on existing study results after it met with officials from the Food and Drug Administration. A Lilly executive said, however, that the company was still optimistic.

“We remain encouraged and excited by the solanezumab data,” David Ricks, a senior vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in the statement. “We are committed to working with the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities to bring solanezumab to the millions of patients and caregivers suffering from this devastating disease who urgently need this potential treatment.”

The Lilly drug is the second Alzheimer’s treatment to fail in clinical trials this year. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson stopped development of a similar treatment, bapineuzumab, after it, too, was not shown to work. Both drugs target beta amyloid, a protein in the brain that is found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Lilly shares closed at $49, down 3.2 percent.

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Illinois foreclosures up for 11th month

Foreclosure activity in Illinois posted the 11th straight year-over-year increase in November, but compared with a month earlier, filings are trending in the right direction, according to new data released Thursday.

RealtyTrac said the 13,520 properties within the state that received a foreclosure notice last month was a decrease of 9 percent from October but up 9 percent from November 2011. last month's activity, which equated to one out of every 392 homes in the state receiving a notice, gave Illinois the nation's third-highest state foreclosure rate, surpassed by only Florida and Nevada.

In the Chicago-area counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake and Will, almost 11,000 homes received a foreclosure notice in November, a decrease of 10.5 percent from October's level of activity but up 1.6 percent from November 2011

Most of that activity was in Cook County, where about 2,299 homes received initial notices of default, another 2,651 homes were scheduled for court-ordered sales and 2,086 homes were repossessed by lenders.

Among the nation's metropolitan areas, Rockford and Chicago ranked 11th and 13th, respectively, in terms of their foreclosure rates.

Nationally, the number of homes that were repossessed by lenders and became bank-owned rose on a year-over-year basis for the first time  since October 2010, the company said. In November, more than 59,000 homes across the country were repossessed, an increase of 11 percent from October and 5 percent from November 2011.

"The drop in overall foreclosure activity in November was caused largely by a 71-month low in foreclosure starts for the month, more evidence that we are past the worst of the foreclosure problem brought about by the housing bubble bursting six years ago," said Daren Blomquist, a company vice president. "But foreclosures are continuing to hobble the U.S. housing market as lenders finally seize properties that started the process a year or two ago, and much longer in some cases."

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Police: Oregon mall shooter used stolen rifle

The gunman who killed two people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Oregon mall was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle from someone he knew, authorities said Wednesday.

Jacob Tyler Roberts had armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at a Portland mall on Tuesday, said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.

The sheriff said the rifle jammed during the 22-year-old's attack, but he managed to get it working again. He later shot himself. The sheriff said authorities don't yet have a motive.

A law enforcement official has told The Associated Press the shooter did not have a criminal record. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Two people — a 54-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man — were killed, and another, Kristina Shevchenko, whose age could not be confirmed, was wounded and in serious condition on Wednesday.

The shooter, who wore a mask, fired randomly, investigators said. People at the mall were heroic in helping get shoppers out of the building, including off-duty emergency room nurses who rendered aid, Roberts said.

In response to previous mass shootings elsewhere, the first arriving officers were trained to form teams and go inside instead of waiting for SWAT. Employees at the mall also received training to handle such a situation.

“This could have been much, much worse,” Roberts said.

The first 911 call came at 3:29 p.m. Tuesday. The first officers arrived a minute later. By 3:51 p.m., all the victims and the gunman and rifle had been found. Four SWAT teams spent hours clearing the 1.4 million square-foot mall, leaving shoppers and workers to hide in fear.

The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, was waiting for the next child's Christmas wish when shots rang out, causing the mall to erupt into chaos.

About to invite a child to hop onto his lap, Wilson instead dove for the floor and kept his head down as he heard shots being fired upstairs in the mall.

“I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target,” said Wilson, 68. Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson crept away for better cover.

Witnesses said the gunman fired several times near the mall food court until the rifle jammed and he dropped a magazine onto the floor, then ran into the Macy's store.

Witnesses heard the gunman saying, “I am the shooter,” as he fired rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland.

Some were close enough to the shooter to feel the percussion of his gun.

Police rapid-response teams came into the mall with guns drawn, telling everyone to leave. Shoppers and mall employees who were hiding stayed in touch with loved ones with cellphones and texting.

Kayla Sprint, 18, was interviewing for a job at a clothing store when she heard shots.

“We heard people running back here screaming, yelling `911,“’ she told The Associated Press.

Sprint barricaded herself in the store's back room until the coast was clear.

Jason DeCosta, a manager of a window-tinting company that has a display on the mall's ground floor, said when he arrived to relieve his co-worker, he heard shots ring out upstairs.

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Facebook revises privacy controls in effort to make them more accessible, comprehensible

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is trying to make its privacy controls easier to find and understand in an effort to turn the world’s largest social network into a more discreet place.

The fine-tuning announced Wednesday will include several revisions that will start rolling out to Facebook Inc.‘s more than 1 billion users in the next few weeks.

The biggest change will be a new “privacy shortcuts” section that will appear as a tiny lock on the right-hand side at the top of people’s news feeds. This feature offers a drop-down box where users will be able to get answers to common questions such as “Who can see my stuff?”

Other updates will include a tool that will enable individuals to review all the publicly available pictures identifying them on Facebook.

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‘Lincoln,’ ‘Les Mis,’ ‘Playbook’ lead SAG awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Civil War saga “Lincoln,” the musical “Les Miserables” and the comic drama “Silver Linings Playbook” boosted their Academy Awards prospects Wednesday with four nominations apiece for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

All three films were nominated for overall performance by their casts. Also nominated for best ensemble cast were the Iran hostage-crisis thriller “Argo” and the British retiree adventure “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

Directed by Steven Spielberg, “Lincoln” also scored individual nominations for Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role as best actor, Sally Field for supporting actress as Mary Todd Lincoln and Tommy Lee Jones for supporting actor as abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens.

“Les Miserables,” from “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper, had nominations for Hugh Jackman for best actor as Victor Hugo’s long-suffering hero Jean Valjean and Anne Hathaway for supporting actress as a woman fallen into prostitution, plus a nomination for its stunt ensemble.

“Silver Linings Playbook,” made by “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, also had lead-acting nominations for Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as lost souls who find a second chance at love and Robert De Niro for supporting actor as a football-obsessed dad.

Besides Lawrence, best-actress nominees are Jessica Chastain as a CIA analyst pursuing Osama bin Laden in “Zero Dark Thirty”; Marion Cotillard as a woman who finds romance after tragedy in “Rust and Bone”; Helen Mirren as Alfred Hitchcock’s strong-willed wife in “Hitchcock”; and Naomi Watts as a woman caught in the devastation of a tsunami in “The Impossible.”

Joining Cooper, Day-Lewis and Jackman in the best-actor field are John Hawkes as a polio victim aiming to lose his virginity in “The Sessions” and Denzel Washington as a boozy airline pilot in “Flight.”

SAG nominees are almost all familiar names in Hollywood’s awards season. Eighteen of the 20 film acting contenders are past Academy Awards nominees and 13 have won Oscars, among them five two-time winners. Only Cooper and Jackman have never before earned Oscar nominations.

One of the year’s most-acclaimed films, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” earned only one nomination, supporting actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mesmerizing cult leader. The film was snubbed on nominations for ensemble, lead actor Joaquin Phoenix and supporting actress Amy Adams.

Other individual performances overlooked by SAG voters include Anthony Hopkins in the title role of “Hitchcock,” Keira Knightley in the title role of “Anna Karenina,” Bill Murray as Franklin Roosevelt in “Hyde Park on Hudson” and “Argo” director Ben Affleck, who also starred in the film.

The SAG Awards will be presented Jan. 27. The guild nominations are one of Hollywood’s first major announcements on the long road to the Feb. 24 Oscars Awards, whose nominations will be released Jan. 10.

Nominations for the Golden Globes, the second-biggest film honors after the Oscars, come out Thursday.

Maggie Smith had four individual and ensemble nominations. Along with sharing the ensemble honor for “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” Smith joined the cast of “Downton Abbey” among TV ensemble contenders and had nominations for supporting film actress as a cranky retiree in “Marigold Hotel” and TV drama actress for “Downton Abbey.”

Nicole Kidman earned two individual nominations, as supporting film actress as a woman smitten with a prison inmate in “The Paperboy” and best actress in a TV movie or miniseries as war correspondent Martha Gellhorn in “Hemingway & Gellhorn.”

Bryan Cranston had three overall nominations, as best actor in a TV drama for “Breaking Bad,” an ensemble honor for that show and a film ensemble honor for “Argo.”

Along with “Breaking Bad” and “Downton Abbey,” best TV drama ensemble contenders are “Boardwalk Empire,” ”Homeland” and “Mad Men.” TV comedy ensemble nominees are “30 Rock,” ”The Big Bang Theory,” ”Glee,” ”Modern Family,” ”Nurse Jackie” and “The Office.”

___

Online:

http://www.sagawards.org

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Fed adds another $45B per month in stimulus

The Federal Reserve ramped up its stimulus to the economy on Wednesday, expressing disappointment with the pace of recovery in employment as contentious U.S. budget talks heighten uncertainty about the outlook.

The central bank replaced a more modest stimulus program due to expire at year-end with a fresh round of Treasury purchases that will increase its balance sheet. It committed to monthly purchases of $45 billion in Treasuries on top of the $40 billion per month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September.

In a surprise move, the Fed also adopted numerical thresholds for policy, a step that had not been expected until early next year. In particular, the Fed said it will likely keep official rates near zero for as long as unemployment remains above 6.5 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than 2.5 percent, and long-term inflation expectations remain contained.

The Fed noted unemployment remains elevated and that inflation is running somewhat below policymakers' 2 percent objective.

"The Committee remains concerned that, without sufficient policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions," the Fed said in a statement.

Policymakers also repeated a pledge to keep buying bonds until the labor market outlook improves substantially. A drop in the jobless rate to 7.7 percent in November from 7.9 percent in October was driven by workers exiting the labor force, and therefore did not come close to satisfying that condition.

Under the "Operation Twist" program that will expire at the end of the month, the Fed was buying $45 billion in longer-term Treasuries with proceeds from the sale of short-term debt. The new round of government bond-buying it announced on Wednesday will be funded by essentially creating new money, further expanding the Fed's $2.8 trillion balance sheet.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will discuss the central bank's latest decision at a news conference at 2:15 p.m. (1915 GMT).

SWEATING A WEAK RECOVERY

The Fed cut overnight interest rates to near zero in December 2008 and has bought about $2.4 trillion in bonds in a further effort to push borrowing costs lower and spur a stronger recovery.

Despite the unconventional and aggressive efforts, U.S. economic growth remains tepid. GDP grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the third quarter, but it now appears to be slowing sharply. According to a Reuters poll published on Wednesday, economists expect the economy to expand at just a 1.2 percent pace in the current quarter.

Businesses have hunkered down, fearful of a tightening of fiscal policy as politicians in Washington wrangle over ways to avoid a $600 billion mix of spending reductions and expiring tax cuts set to take hold at the start of 2013.

Bernanke has warned that running over this "fiscal cliff" would lead the economy into a new recession.

Fed officials will release a new set of quarterly economic and interest rate projections at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT) that could show yet another round of downward revisions to future growth prospects.

Back in September, the Fed predicted the U.S. economy would expand 2.5 percent to 3 percent in 2013, but even that modest rate is looking potentially rosy. The Reuters poll showed a median U.S. growth estimate of 2.1 percent for next year on the same fourth quarter over fourth quarter basis.

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Court strikes down Illinois' concealed-carry weapons ban

Chicago Tribune reporter Ray Long provides details on the U.S. appeals court ruling regarding concealed weapons in Illinois.

The state of Illinois would have to allow ordinary citizens to carry weapons under a federal appeals court ruling issued today, but the judges also gave lawmakers 180 days to put their own version of the law in place.

In a 2-1 decision that is a major victory for the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said the state's ban on carrying a weapon in public is unconstitutional.

"We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home. The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside," the judges ruled.

"The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense. Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety. It has failed to meet this burden.

"The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment compelled the appeals court to rule the ban unconstitutional, the judges said. But the court gave 180 days to "allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public."

David Sigale, an attorney who represented the Second Amendment Foundation in the lawsuit, called the decision by the appeals court in Chicago “historic.”

“What we are most pleased about is how the court has recognized that the Second Amendment is just as, if not at times more, important in public as it is in the home,” he said. “The right of self-defense doesn’t end at your front door.”

In the opinion, Posner wrote that “Twenty-first century Illinois has no hostile Indians. But a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower.”

Illinois is the only state in the nation not to have some form of conceal carry after Wisconsin recently approved law.

"The (Illinois) legislature, in the new session, will be forced to take up a statewide carry law," said NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde.

The lobbyist said prior attempts to reach a middle ground with opponents will no longer be necessary because "those compromises are going out the window."

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, a longtime gun control advocate, said she hoped the state would appeal the ruling. But Currie also said lawmakers must “get cracking” on how to respond to the ruling and begin parsing its key points.

Currie, D-Chicago, said that “justices surely do not mean that we would have to have wide-open” laws in Illinois. She said Illinois must now look at what other states are doing, such as disallowing guns in day-care centers and other locations.

“If we need to change the law, let us at least craft a law that is very severely constrained and narrowly tailored so that we don’t invite guns out of control on each of our city’s streets,” Currie said. “I don’t want people out of control wandering the streets with guns that are out of control.”

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office is reading the just-issued opinion and is unable at this point to comment about the prospects of filing an appeal, a spokeswoman said.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Pat Quinn said the administration is reviewing the decision. The governor has previously said he was firmly opposed to any law allowing citizens to carry loaded guns in public. He threatened to veto previous attempts by lawmakers to pass legislation allowing concealed carry in Illinois.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel said city lawyers were reading the court ruling and would issue a comment this afternoon.

Last March, the mayor introduced a resolution passed by the City Council in opposition to state legislation that would have allowed people to carry firearms in public. Like former Mayor Richard Daley before him, Emanuel has long been a proponent of gun control.

Under Daley, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Chicago’s handgun ban. In mid-2010, the council enacted new gun-control measures, even as many aldermen conceded it would do little to quell crime. Those regulations require that Chicago handgun owners obtain a permit after undergoing mandatory firearms training and register their weapons.

Reaction to the decision is rolling in from City Hall to the Capitol.

Ald. Howard Brookins, 21st, chairman of the City Council black caucus, welcomed the decision, saying allowing Chicagoans to carry concealed weapons would help level the playing field in neighborhoods where law-abiding citizens feel like they need firearms to protect themselves.

"Certain people will have a sense of safety and peace of mind in the ability to do it," Brookins said of conceal-carry. "I know that even people, for example, just trying to see that their loved ones get homes safely are in technical violation of all sorts of weapons violations. If you just walk out to your garage and see that your wife is coming in the house safely, and you happen to have your gun on you, you're in technical violation of our ordinance. So I would hope all these ordinances would be consolidated so there's one set of rules and people would know where the bright line is to what they can and cannot do with respect to carrying a weapon."

Brookins said he's not worried doing away with the state ban would lead to an increase in gun violence as more people walk the streets with weapons. "I think those people have a gun now, they've just been made criminals because they can't legally have it," Brookins said. "And I think the gangbangers and thugs are going to have a gun regardless."

Tribune reporters John Byrne and Hal Dardick contributed.

rlong@tribune.com
Twitter @RayLong

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Notorious patent troll hits RIM with new lawsuit, seeks BlackBerry sales ban

Well-known patent troll Wi-LAN has filed a new lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Wi-LAN, which describes itself as “a leading intellectual property licensing company,” claims RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,260,168, owned by Wi-LAN, which relates to Bluetooth implementation. The lawsuit covers multiple BlackBerry handsets including Bold, Torch, Pearl and Storm models, Reuters reports. Wi-LAN is reportedly seeking unspecified damages and is looking to ban sales of RIM’s infringing BlackBerry phones in the United States.

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