UPDATED: ALD. MOORE DELIVERS ROUSING SPEECH

It has to be said: 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore gave a good speech at today's tragic City Council meeting (see related video now). Moore spoke against the proposal to allow the Children's Museum into Grant Park. He drew applause from the spectators twice - once during his speech and again when he finished. Moore is on the right side of this issue. Alderman after alderman gave speeches in which unbelievably stupid things were said in support of allowing the museum into the park. "It's for the children," was a mantra oft chanted today at City Hall. Yah, we get it, it's called "Children's Museum." The supporters said today, and have been saying for months, that the museum would give inner city kids an opportunity to see things they've never seen before, to have their imaginations challenged, to learn things, to see God and finally have all their problems eliminated. (I made up those last two items, but they might as well have thrown them in.) Are those alderman really so dumb that they believe that kids in Chicago will never - or have never - had the opportunity to see new things, have their imaginations challenged, or learn things without a Children's Museum located in Grant Park? Or do they think that you are so stupid that you believe it? Or both? Alderman Moore said it well when he asked, "Why there?" There are other neighborhoods in the city, many of them, that would welcome the museum on their turf. Indeed, there is nothing magic about locating it in Grant Park. To take the proponents' argument literally, every single school, all other museums and each library around the city and county are pointless - because they are not in Grant Park. Ridiculous. 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith, who is vastly superior to Alderman Moore in almost every way, both as an alderman and a human being, was a proponent. She said, "This is the right thing to do." Well, four times in the past the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that such an invasion into Grant Park is not the right thing to do. Smith noted that the museum would be put onto a parking lot that already exists. And so what, Alderman Smith? It's a parking lot that already exists. Are there no other parking lots in the City of Chicago that already exist? The man who is most credited with protecting Chicago's lakefront and green space is the long-deceased Montgomery Ward. Mr. Ward is surely rolling in his grave tonight. RELATED: Leave Grant Park as the law intended - When Montgomery Ward looked out his office window at Grant Park more than 100 years ago he saw a landmark urban park falling into utter chaos. It was dedicated in 1836 as "Lake Park" under a perpetual public trust that promised "public ground," a park that was "forever to remain vacant of buildings" and that was "not to be occupied by buildings of any description." The Beachwood Reporter - Four Illinois Supreme Court decisions have made clear that Grant Park is specially protected open space.