With the help of several Latin scholars, I've come up with a fittingly snooty motto for this column's annual exercise in forecasting the news:
Non coniectare imprudentior esset.
Translation: Not to conjecture is imprudent.
Inspiration: "Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to," a defensive quip by former Reagan administration speechwriter Peggy Noonan justifying the wild, unsupported surmise in a 2000 Wall Street Journal column that the U.S. was returning young Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez to Cuba because Fidel Castro was blackmailing President Bill Clinton.
Rationalization: We are a speculative species. We not only enjoy for its own sake looking forward through the prism of experience, we also occasionally find it useful — illuminating, broadening, sobering.
Declaration: Putting this sentiment into a dead classical language gives our descent into idle guesswork a dignifying, scholarly gloss that tabloid psychics lack.
With that out of the way, here's how 2013 shapes up based on my projections and the collective wisdom of respondents to my 25-question online poll.
Law and order
Readers and I agree that former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. will be indicted in the coming year (80 percent of respondents) and that we'll see convictions or guilty pleas in pending cases involving state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago (91 percent), Cook County Commissioner William Beavers (86 percent) and state Sen. Donne Trotter (51 percent).
Hindsight tells us never to bet against the U.S. attorney's office when they're going after politicians. The local firearms charge against Trotter for having a handgun in his bag when he went through security at O'Hare International Airport looks both cut-and-dried and likely to be bargained down to a lesser, minor offense.
We also agree that George Zimmerman is likely to be acquitted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin last February in Sanford, Fla. (56 percent). The evidence I've seen so far — the timeline of events, the various witness accounts — suggests that there's at least reasonable doubt that would-be vigilante Zimmerman was the aggressor in the seconds leading up to the fatal altercation.
I also think jurors will find reasonable doubt when Richard "R.J." Vanecko faces involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2004 death of David Koschman — not because Vanecko is a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, but because witness memories of the tragic, drunken wee-hours confrontation that left Koschman dead will be too blurred by alcohol and the passage of time for fact-finders to confidently apportion blame. However, 55 percent of readers disagree with me.
Politics and government
My sense is that Illinois state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, has the inside track in the race to replace former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a race that almost certainly will go to the winner of the Feb. 26 Democratic primary. Multiple candidates have filed in the largely suburban district, and Hutchinson looks to have the best chance to coalesce the suburban vote. However, a plurality of readers think the nod will go to former U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson (33 percent), even though she ran a very weak primary race against Jackson in 2012.
Who will be off and running in the 2014 race for Illinois governor by the end of 2013? Readers and I agree that Bill Daley, brother of the former mayor, will challenge Gov. Pat Quinn for the Democratic nomination, and that Attorney General Lisa Madigan will once again decide to sit out a run for higher office.
Daley is already talking more like a candidate than we've ever heard, and he's sounding sure that he can bring his brainy management style to bear on the grave fiscal problems facing the state. Madigan, the state's top vote-getter, seems still to lack the consuming ambition that for years many of us have projected onto her. She likes her current job. She's good at it. Crazy thought, but maybe she doesn't want to be governor, particularly when her father is still speaker of the Illinois House.
On the Republican side, the most interesting question is whether up-and-coming Peoria Congressman Aaron Schock will join the predictable cast of GOP strivers in the race for governor in 2014. I say no, he'll bide his time and wait for other opportunities. But 59 percent of readers disagree.
In Massachusetts, Republicans have high hopes that former Sen. Scott Brown or another member of their party will succeed Democratic Sen. John Kerry when, presumptively, he is confirmed as secretary of state. Seventy-two percent of readers and I say that won't happen.
Readers and I agree that this will be the year the General Assembly finally OKs a casino in Chicago (59 percent) and the dispensation of medical marijuana (37 percent plurality vote). Readers also think state lawmakers will legalize gay marriage in 2013 (72 percent), though I see them postponing it for at least a year when it will be an easier lift because, I predict, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in favor of same-sex marriage in California and perhaps the rest of the nation (69 percent of readers agree).
Readers and I also agree that, in a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court will significantly curtail the use of race-based affirmative action at public colleges and universities (61 percent), that President Barack Obama's approval rating at the end of the year will be between 50 and 55 percent and that Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy will keep his job (72 percent).
