Responsibility!!!

Evidently, the mayor has found religion - and it appears to be the Cult of Responsibility. But it appears to be a fleeting phenomenon. Tuesday, we are treated to this:

• "Who's responsible for that? The family better stand up. That young man ... belonged to [a] family. Who is he? Where's the family? Aren't they outraged that their son just killed a 13-year-old girl? It's unbelievable. They should be outraged. Parents have to go into the bedrooms. Find out whether their sons or daughters have guns in their room. Find out whether their sons or daughters are palling around with gangbangers on a block or in a community ... Parents have to do this. They should prevent crime.

But two years ago, we got this:

• Thirteen died in the collapse of the porch June 29, 2003. Within days it was learned that the porch was built without a permit, was bigger than code allows and was poorly constructed, even though city inspectors had looked at it. Much of that was confirmed in a preliminary report prepared for the city by architecture professor Elliott Dudnik.

• A year-and-a-half after it had Dudnik's preliminary findings, the city filed a legal complaint against John Koranda, a party host, suggesting that he and others were intentionally rocking the porch back and forth, and that that contributed to the collapse.

  "Everybody has to take responsibility in this world, in life. No one wants to take responsibility," said Mayor Richard Daley in February 2005.

So Daley's definition of responsibility two years ago was to ignore his own commissioned report that found an illegally built porch, shoddy material, improper fastenings, missing hangers and the fact that he had a Department full of building inspectors regularly taking bribes, logging non existent visits to work sites and hiring unqualified kids under 21 as fully certified inspectors and instead sued the brother of a dead victim for "shaking" the structure.

Who knows what today might bring?

• Summer storms have flooded hundreds of basements on the Chicago's North Side, and many residents are blaming the city.
• The city's Office of Emergency Management addressed the problem Thursday afternoon, saying the problems are not their fault. They say there's plenty that homeowners can do to prevent flooded basements.

Things that make you go "Hmmm."