IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

Bill Clinton and the good looks. She first met the president when he was the Governor of Virginia and she was the Provost at the University of Virginia.
Lorine Barnes was Born September 26, 1990 in Atlanta, Georgia, the only daughter of a Ruth, a schoolteacher and George a mail carrier. She was an exceptional student and a gifted painter, whose works hung in the hallowed halls of the Art Institute in Chicago. After graduating from high school, she received an academic scholarship to the University of Georgia where she earned her Bachelor Degree in Political Science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and her Master’s Degree in Political Science. It was at the University of Georgia that she met and started dating her husband, James Barnes, who had been a roommate of President Tolland at Princeton University, and they were good friends, he also was pursuing a Master Degree in Political Science. After they graduated, they were married and moved to Chicago where she attended the University of Chicago. The couple planned to start a family after she finished her doctoral studies.
Her husband was an avid jogger who enjoyed the early morning runs along the lakefront with the cool breeze coming off Lake Michigan. He usually ran from their townhouse on South 57th Street, in Hyde Park, to the McCormack Place Hotel at South 22nd Street and the lake, a distance of approximately five miles, where he would be met by Lorine and they would have an early breakfast.
Lorine could still remember that faithful day eight years ago. She was driving North on Lake Shore drive to meet her husband, it was around 7:00 am. Usually she would see him on the last leg of his jog at the 31st Beach, but she did not see him today, either he was faster or slower than usual. When she approached the 31St Street exit she noticed police cars and ambulances on the overpass, she wondered what was happening but it was not usual to see emergency vehicle in this part of Chicago. She parked in the parking lot and began to read the Sun-Times Newspaper while waiting for her husband. A half hour later, a police car pulled beside her.
“Mrs. Barnes?” the uniformed officer asked.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Barnes,” Lorine answered curiously.
“I have some bad news for you, your husband has just been shot, come with me and I will take you to Michael Reese Hospital,” the officer said.
“What happened, how he is?” she asked excitedly while getting into the car.
The officer turned on his siren and mars light and said as they proceeded west on 22nd Street to the hospital, “I received a radio call of a man shot at the 31st Street Beach and when I got there some other jogger were giving your husband CPR, he had been shot twice in the chest. Witnesses said that they saw two young black men approach your husband as he was jogging and demanded money and then for no apparently reason they shot him and ran away. Before he passed out he told them where you were waiting.”
After going south on King Drive, the police officer parked at the door of the Emergency Room. Lorine ran into the Emergency Room where a doctor met her.
“Doctor, I am Mrs. Barnes, how is my husband?” she asked tearfully.
“I am sorry Mrs. Barnes, he’s gone,” the doctor said.
Lorine fainted and when she was awakened, she was in one of the rooms.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Barnes? I am Detective Hill of the Chicago Police Department and I am very sorry for your lost.”
“Do you know what happened?” she asked.
“Apparently your husband was the victim of an attempt robbery, based on information we have received from witnesses. Fortunately one of the witnesses called “911” on his cell phone and the two men were arrested a short distance from the scene. I interviewed them and found out they were both gang members and drug addicts, but they don’t remember anything about the shooting. They were so high off something they could hardly remember their names, it so sad, any fool would know that a jogger hasn’t got that much money on him, sad, real sad. Again I am sorry about your lost and I’ll be in touch,” the detective said leaving the room.
After the death of her husband, she continued her studies and received her PH.D. In addition, she graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago School of International Studies. Shortly after graduating, she was appointed by then Governor Tolland as his Special Advisor on Foreign Affairs. After two terms as governor, Tolland decided to run for president.
After Tolland was elected President of the United States, he appointed Lorine as his Director of the National Security Agency. Lorine admired the president for his easy manner and concern about the plight of poor people. In private conversations, he told her that in principal he was opposed to the camps, but he knew something had to be done to stem the violence in the country and to get re-elected, he also told her that he planned to revisit the whole camp issue very soon. She glanced over at Vice President Warren who was sitting erect in his chair, as he always sat. She felt sorry for him; his whole life was defined by his job and his hatred for gang-bangers and drug dealers. Vice President Warren, Jr. was different than most of the other vice presidents she had met. Some of them would sell out their own integrity to look good to the voting public. They were willing to do anything to one day sit in the Oval Office. Their ambitions would override their personal character. In this day of instant communications, email and the Internet, looking good was their main concern. They were willing to tell half-truths, distort reality and placed a high priority on appearance rather than substance. They were eager to conform to the status quo: to lie if necessary and above all cover their asses. Vice President Warren had no such ambitions he was consumed with ridding the country of the killers and gangbangers who had murdered his parents. He was always courteous and respectful to her, but she could not shake an unsettling feeling she had that he had another agenda, what it was she did not know.
The Re-Education Camp Bill was his idea and even thought she had agreed with him and the president on the concept, she had her doubts about how far would it go.
After placing his drink on the table the vice president said, “I had a conversation with Bob Watson, the Director of the Re-Education Program and he expressed concerns over the overcrowding of the camps. He is projecting that in five years the camp population could be well over ten million. He recommended that we start making plans to open more camps. As you know most of our camps are in the southwestern, states and he suggested that we start looking in the northwest, Montana, Idaho, Utah and even Alaska. The Midwest and the East Coast are not viable options, too congested.”
“Yeah, everyday some Hispanic or black kid is turning eighteen,” Lorine said.
“That has always been my concerns,” the president said. “Warren why don’t you chair a committee and present a plan for the new camps and Lorine you get with Gene Thorn over at Census and get some projections together concerning age.
“Yes sir, Mr. President,” they both responded.
“Ok, you guys get out of here and start earning your big government checks, Tolland said smiling.
“I have a hot date tonight with some gorgeous flat head catfish, he said as he simulated making a cast, setting the hook and reeling in the “big one.”

Chapter 50

Vice-President Reginald S. Warren, Jr. sat in his favorite over-sized brown leather reclining chair in the study of his late mother and father’s home sipping a gin and tonic. He had grown up in this house, a large 1,982 square foot Victorian in the Queen Anne style, a popular style when his parents had built the house. The house had six bedrooms with baths, a spacious living and dining room, library, kitchen and a wide sweeping porch that overlooked the land. It had a steeply pitch roof with spindles and lacy fretwork with adorned gable roof, ends. The interior walls were made of terra cotta and stone and the floor plan retained the warmth and character of the past. The vice president had made only a few changes to the furnishings. He had purchased a large leather couch and four matching chairs. He had taken his father’s office as used it as his own and there were locked file cabinets, two computers and a fax machine and of course the red phone, the private line to the President of the United States. A large screen television was imbedded in one wall and the wall had shelves full of legal books.


He was watching the national news on CNN; the news anchorman was citing statistics on the reduction in crime and violence since the implementation of the new law. The vice president thought about how refreshing it was to watch the news without having to sit through ten minutes of stories of people being killed on the streets of the country. There was a short piece, maybe one minute on the Re-Education Camp, which showed the blacks and Hispanics young men in their olive green jump suits, with books under their arms going to class.
Vice-President Warren took another sip of his drink and glanced from screen to screen at the three large screen plasma televisions located next to each other in his study. All of which were tuned to national network news programs. Two of them had the volume turned down low, but audible and the other had a normal volume. Wolf and Ajax, his two especially attack trained Belgian German shepherd dogs were laying quietly on each side of his chair. Warren gently rubbed Ajax with his foot.
He felt nervous and was anxious, his best friends had been taken from him, and he missed the comfort they gave him. He also missed their ability to make him relax, which was hard for him to do, but mainly he missed their company. He was a lonely man and his friends, his cigarettes were his company. His doctor had warned him about the dangers of smoking, but he had his doubts about just how dangerous smoking was. He had known people who had never smoked and got lung cancer and other ailments attributed to smoking, but he had tried to quit but it was hard. He had tried acupuncture, hypnosis and the patch, nothing worked. He decided he would have to do it will mind power to slowly cut down. He was smoking two packs a day and he vowed to himself that he cut down to one pack every two days. He did not think it was as nasty a habit as so many doctors and health professional called it, although he did respect the rights of others who were concerned about the effects of second hand smoke. His office in the White House had been equipped with a state of the art filtering system so the smoke would immediately be removed. He looked at the red and