News report hedline a ‘fantasy come true’ for some twisted souls amongst us

I know I’ve written a few commentaries published here indicating how some will only be satisfied with the ongoing saga of Jason Van Dyke when there are reports about how he was killed in some sort of prison inmate brawl.

A most-definitely un-romantic Valentime's hedline

To that end, Thursday must have been a very sad day – what with the Chicago Sun-Times giving us the front page hedline “Van Dyke Beaten in Lockup.”

THE ATTACK SUPPOSEDLY took place on Van Dyke’s first day at the federal correctional center in Danbury, Ct. – within just a few hours of him being placed in a cell amongst the prison’s general population.

No word on the exact nature of the attack. As in was it a batch of black inmates who wanted to beat the stuffing out of the cracker, or white inmates who wanted a shot or two at beating on a cop?

Or maybe it was a bizarre mixture, as in Van Dyke is the factor that can unite the various factions of societal slugs who are amongst the prison populace.

To me, the sad part of this story is that I can easily envision way too many people amongst us back here in Chicago taking some sort of pleasure out of the Sun-Times hedline – which also is turning up in news organizations across the nation on account of the Associated Press doing their rewrite to spread the word.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE on a certain level, we want to let the thugs amongst us make our correctional centers are hellish a place as they can possibly be. Is it our way of giving the one-time bullies of our school yards something to aspire to?

As in they can be stupid and go to prison and have the run of the roost once they get there?

For what it’s worth, Van Dyke’s wife did her part Thursday morning to spread the story by making herself available for television cameras – where she was quick to denounce prison officials for not keeping her husband in strict segregation from other inmates.

Van Dyke's new 'humble abode,' for the time being

Which has the potential to backfire. Are we going to get a significant share of the public eager to believe that Van Dyke got what he deserved, and probably warrants much other constant abuse for the next few years – or until the Illinois Supreme Court gets around to ruling on a measure by the state Attorney General’s office

That could result in Judge Vincent Gaughan being forced to impose a harsher prison sentence than half of six years, nine months.

OF COURSE, THERE are the people who envision Van Dyke having to do another 30 or 40 years in prison until he finally dies. Which strikes me as a depressing line of thought for people to have – if they must be obsessed with Van Dyke’s life, their own must be incredibly lacking.

It’s not like I’m overly sympathetic to the plight of Van Dyke. But I do find it contemptible the degree to which some are going to find joy in his agony. Which invariably is going to motivate those amongst us willing to excuse the misbehavior of law enforcement into thinking their guy is the ultimate victim.

Although it should be noted that Van Dyke’s being placed on the East Coast, albeit in a minimum-security facility.

Illinois Corrections Department officials made the arrangements to have Van Dyke do his time elsewhere largely because they figured his very presence in a local prison facility would lead to exactly the kind of incident that occurred in Danbury.

EVEN DURING THE time that Van Dyke did at the Rock Island County Jail awaiting sentencing, he was kept in segregation away from other inmates.

So it will be interesting to see exactly how the one-time Chicago cop manages to cope with the next few years, and if officials outside of Illinois are willing to take any precautions to protect inmate safety in this case.

I know I’ve heard various prison professionals say there’s only so much that can be done to protect the inmates, and that ultimately the inmates need to be entrusted to behave themselves.

But I suspect we’re going to keep getting similar stories about Van Dyke’s plight in prison, and a certain segment of us are going to take far too much pleasure from reading them.

  -30-

Blagojevich wants a commutation? Is he better off asking “President Trump”

If there were truly a sense of cosmic justice in our political world, President Barack Obama would choose to do absolutely nothing with the request by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – who’d like it if Obama would grant Milorod a “Get Out of Jail, Free” card.
 

BLAGOJEVICH: Let me out now!!!

It was reported last week that Blagojevich, who currently is serving a 14-year federal prison term and isn’t scheduled for release until 2024, filed a request with the president for commutation of his sentence.

WHICH IN BASIC language means that Obama would decide the time Blagojevich already has served at a federal correctional center in Colorado is sufficient punishment for his criminal conviction.

In short, he’s begging that he be released from prison now and that he be set free at age 60 – rather than having to continue rotting in a prison cell until he hits age 68 – as is currently scheduled.

Personally, I don’t expect Obama to actually grant Blagojevich his request. But there is a sense in which I think it would be so apropos if Obama were to somehow manage to lose track of all the final actions he has to take care of before Noon on Jan. 20 – which is the time at which his presidential authority ceases to exist and the clown show to be known as the Trump presidency begins.

I actually think that Obama acknowledging the request would be much better than Blagojevich ever granted back in the days when he was our state’s governor and had his own powers of clemency and pardon to grant as he saw fit.

FOR BLAGOJEVICH WAS one of those people who believed he didn’t really want to be bothered taking the time to consider criminal cases.

Perhaps it dated back to his days just out of law school when he was an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County – meaning he had a certain respect for the legal process and presumed it wouldn’t be right for him to do anything that would undermine it.

Or maybe Blagojevich just had a lazy streak when it came to such issues.

 

OBAMA: Will he 'Blago' Rod's request?

For whatever reason, during the six or so years that Blagojevich was governor – he only ruled on about 1,000 clemency petitions. At the point in time he was impeached, there were some 3,000 cases left unresolved.

THIS WAS JUST a man who didn’t want to be bothered.

As it was, Blagojevich’s lieutenant governor went on to become Gov. Pat Quinn, and he would up having to deal with the backlog, ultimately issuing decisions on nearly 5,000 clemency requests (and granting about 1,800 of them).

The backlog didn’t really get caught up until our current governor, Bruce Rauner, who earlier this year issued a statement saying the state was finally caught up – although Rauner wound up rejecting all but 3 percent of the requests he ruled on.

That might be a cold-hearted view for a governor to have, but the reality of clemency is that it is up to the whim of a particular governor. It makes me wonder how many cases might have had a chance of being considered IF ONLY Blagojevich had got off his duff and taken this particular duty of his office a bit more seriously. Because it is understandable that when faced with an overload of cases, the chances of all of them getting a legitimate viewing decreases significantly.

ALSO, IT’S NOT like Blagojevich is asking for a pardon – which would mean a clearing of his record AFTER he served the entirety of his prison sentence. He wants to get out early – even though federal judges have already ruled his 14-year prison term isn’t overly harsh (despite those of us who think it is a tad too long) in a purely legal context.

 

TRUMP: Would he rule better for Rod?

Does anyone think that Obama, who was never that close with Blagojevich during the time that the two of them were colleagues, of sorts, on the Illinois political scene, would actually be inclined to grant anything to him. Particularly for all the flack he'd have to take publicly if he were to even consider such a request!

Considering that Blagojevich considered Obama to be a rival who stole public attention he thought ought to be rightfully is, Obama’s reaction to this request could well be a sign of how much bigger a man he is.

Although I still think the proper reaction might well be for Obama to do nothing and leave Rod’s fate to the future president – a fat chance that would have any chance of succeeding.

  -30-

Blagojevich will be on TV again (sort of); does he want to control image?

Rod Blagojevich will crop up back in our minds in a couple of weeks when a judge at the U.S. District Court in Chicago decides whether he ought to have his prison sentence reduced.

 

An embarrassing-enough day for ex-gov

But it doesn’t mean that Blagojevich will physically be in our presence.

SINCE BLAGOJEVICH IS being held in a federal correctional center in Colorado, he will remain there on Aug. 9 while legal activity takes place in the Chicago courtroom of Judge James Zagel.

It will be the modern-day miracle of television and a closed-circuit connection that will allow Blagojevich to express any thoughts he has about his legal predicament without actually having to be in the courtroom.

We may well get Blagojevich family or friends speaking in person on his behalf. But we won’t get to see in person the wrath that five years of federal prison life have brought down upon the governor who likely considered himself to be the ultimate “Elvis person.”

He will remain at the prison during his court hearing. Which strikes some as odd because they remember the Blago ego that would have naturally have made him want to be the center of all attention.

SO WHY WOULD Rod choose not to be transported to Chicago at the federal government’s expense?

The smart aleck in me wonders if Blagojevich enjoys the thought of a courtroom full of spectators with their attention focused on a television screen with his face filling it up.

It would be (sort of) like the old days. Back when our whole state paid attention to his every bizarre move and when some people actually took seriously the notion that he would someday be presidential timber.

 

The image Blagojevich would rather have; being one of the masses with fantasies of a Cubs World Series this season and dreaming of a chance to throw out the first pitch prior to a World Series game

Does Blagojevich fall asleep these days to dreams of how Hillary Clinton is offering him advice and support after she congratulates him on the crushing primary election defeat he administered to her in the 2016 primary election that exists only in his mind?

COULD IT JUST be that Blagojevich didn’t feel compelled to return to Chicago at this time because it would be under less-than-desirable conditions?

He’d be an inmate. He’d be in the brightly-colored jumpsuit meant to make him stand out in a crowd in a humiliating manner.

Heck, he’d be shackled. The resulting image would probably feed the fantasies of many a conservative ideologue whose life is so pathetic that they have nothing more to live for than the misery of other people.

And worse of all, we’d all wind up getting the answer to the question many of us have had since we learned of his regular use of hair dye to maintain a youthful look – How old does Rod Blagojevich look in reality?

COULD THE THOUGHT of being seen with all that grey hair (he will turn 60 come Dec. 10) be too much for him to bear? Does he want to maintain that vision of himself that we all became used to a decade ago with the primped-up hair?

Which may be the reason that one of the few details that has come out about Blagojevich’s time in prison is that he participates in a band of inmates who envision themselves as rock ‘n’ rollers.

 

Is this Blagojevich's biggest fear?

Literally calling themselves the “Jailhouse Rockers” in memory to the old Elvis tune. That image, he can handle. Which makes me suspect that Blagojevich’s worse nightmare is something similar to that of the late New York-area gangster Henry Hill.

Who in being portrayed by actor Ray Liotta at the end of the film “Goodfellas” told us, “I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”

  -30-

EXTRA: Supreme Court can’t be bothered to hear Rod Blagojevich pleas

It really shouldn’t be a surprise – the Supreme Court of the United States usually hears arguments on about 100 of the thousands of appeals it receives each year.

BLAGOJEVICH: From back in better days

Meaning most people who have dreams of the Supreme Court ruling in their favor and overturning some lower court’s “mistake” wind up disappointed.

COUNT AMONG THE disappointed one federal corrections center inmate named Rod Blagojevich – who currently is about four years into a 14-year prison sentence for some of his actions committed while serving as Illinois governor.

The high court reportedly gave the Blagojevich case a cursory review, decided there were no great legal issues that needed to be resolved, and therefore no need for the court to give it any public attention.

No hearings. Definitely no ruling. The court let stand the ruling of the Court of Appeals based in Chicago – which was the one that struck down five of Blagojevich’s criminal convictions, but also implied that the remaining convictions were severe enough that they could still warrant the lengthy prison sentence he received.

There are those who dream that Blagojevich’s prison sentence could be significantly reduced to something like about four years – which, coincidentally, is the amount of prison time already served.

THAT WOULD BE the nightmare for many others – the idea of Blagojevich returning to Chicago for a re-sentencing hearing and learning that his prison time is done!

Not likely to happen. Because my prediction is that Blagojevich gets a year knocked off the overall sentence. With early release for good behavior (which isn’t much in the federal correctional system), he could be free by 2023.

Another seven years without Milorod in our presence. Although I suspect the only person who truly will miss him will be one-time Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich.

Although Judge James Zagel will make the final decision on Blagojevich’s fate when he holds the re-sentencing hearing – which has yet to be scheduled. Something we all get to look forward to.

I DO HAVE to admit one potential disappointment in the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Blagojevich case.

What if the legal merits had caused a split in the high court that would have resulted in a 4-4 decision? One in which the current vacancy caused by the Senate’s refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the court became an issue.

Because a 4-4 decision would mean a failure to get five justices – it would mean upholding the Court of Appeals’ decision, and nothing would change.

Somehow I suspect the now-greyed Blagojevich would get a kick out of the ability to cause such chaos with his legal case. While the rest of us are on the verge of forgetting that the man ever existed – we’ve moved on to new layers of political people (Rauner or Madigan, depending on one’s partisan hang-ups) whom we’d like to see incarcerated!

  -30-

Is Illinois government becoming the ultimate financial deadbeat?

The next time I hear a state government official complain about people not meeting their financial obligations, I’m going to have to retort that they have become the ultimate collection of deadbeats.

For while some people want to downplay the impact of state government’s financial problems and lack of a state budget by saying that 90 percent of government operates by court decree, it would seem the remaining 10 percent is enough to make our state look stupid.

WHAT BOTHERS ME is the latest financial incident impacting the state – the fact that a company is repossessing five trucks it leased to the state Department of Corrections.

The company, known as the Larson Group, negotiated a contract by which the state pays them $68,000 per year to provide trucks used by Illinois Corrections Industries to ship the goods that prison inmates make to locations where they are then sold to the public.

But the lack of a state budget (which is an Illinois Constitution requirement) means that the bills for the time period from July through now have yet to be paid.

The Larson Group made the decision to take back the trucks, even though the Chicago Tribune reported that the terms of their lease with the state called for the trucks to remain in state use through the end of the next fiscal year.

HAVING AN OUTSTANDING debt of just over $17,000 was the point at which Larson Group decided the state was no longer worthy of being trusted. The trucks, currently parked at a facility in downstate Lincoln, are supposed to be returned on Thursday.

The fact that the bill will eventually get paid once our state officials get off their stubborn derrieres and negotiate a balanced budget (which becomes more difficult the longer they wait to do so) wasn’t enough to keep the company’s faith in doing business with state government.

Now the Tribune reported that Corrections Department officials have other vehicles they can put into use to make the shipments for corrections industries. There won’t be immediate delay in the goods made by prison inmates for next to no wage actually making it to the public.

Although the image of the state being the target of repossession is an embarrassment – just as much as the reports in recent weeks about how the utility bills for the Capitol building and other state government facilities in Springfield aren’t getting paid.

FORTUNATELY FOR STATE operations, no one has cut off the electricity or the water supply. But we’re developing a real deadbeat reputation – one that ought to be particularly embarrassing for those who claim the financial standoff is somehow justified because it will result in taking down the labor unions that are somehow the cause of our real problems.

Who’s to say we don’t start getting a flood of similar repossessions?

Because we really don’t seem to be getting any closer to resolving the financial problem – which this time isn’t so much financial as much as politically partisan.

Nor do I believe the rhetoric that somehow January is going to be a magical point in time at which a budget deal will be reached.

PERSONALLY, I CAME to the realization in mid-August that the “sides” in this political fight were stubborn enough to create the possibility that Fiscal 2016 could be the year we never get a budget. As it turns out, even if a budget deal is reached, the spending already done for the past four months has been at a higher rate than the state can afford.

State officials are concerned they don’t want to pass anything resembling a tax increase. They may have to pass a larger one now than they would have had to back in May to make up for the money that may have been wasted.

Which makes me think the best thing that could have happened to Illinois would have been if the judge in St. Clair County (the St. Louis suburbs in Illinois) had ruled months ago that the lack of a budget REALLY DID MEAN state employees couldn’t have been paid; rather than going out of his way to rule against the Cook County judge who would have cut off the payroll.

Because the pressure those workers would have put on Gov. Bruce Rauner and the General Assembly with their anger would have ensured we’d have had a budget by Aug. 1 at the latest.

  -30-

Poor Little Milorod? Or an unjust crumb bum who got what he deserved?

There’s one part of the Republican attacks on Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, related to the state budgetary stalemate that I find downright humorous.

BLAGOJEVICH: Victim? Or still a bum?

Many GOPers keep repeating the talking point that Madigan is a power-hungry tyrant who has gone out of his way to undermine every single person who has served as governor in the three-plus decades he has held his speakership title.

OF COURSE, THEY like to remind us of the early 1990s battles with Jim Edgar (which created overtime sessions that seemed downright historic then but now seem ever so quaint – July 19??), downplay the fact that he and George Ryan got along and even show some sympathy for Pat Quinn.

But what do they say about Rod Blagojevich?

It seems that now, under these circumstances, they’re willing to speak decently about the governor whom they impeached. Because it fits their partisan circumstances now.

As if it was because of Madigan that the mood of state government became ever so ugly; refusing to accept the authority of the first Democrat to hold the gubernatorial post in 26 years.

THAT, OF COURSE, is nonsense. At least the part about Madigan picking on Poor Little Rod.

The reality is that it was a desire by Blagojevich to assert his own authority that caused Madigan to use his legislative power to remind the governor of the fact that the executive branch is only one-third of state government, and that our government truly represents the people who elect it when the three branches work together.

MADIGAN: Who picked on whom?

Perhaps that means the real comparison is between Blagojevich and Gov. Bruce Rauner – who seems like he needs to be taught first-hand this spring about the need for cooperation.

Rauner may have won the November 2014 general election for governor, but those same voters also kept the same partisan political balance in the General Assembly that give Democrats the ability to stand up for the principles they espouse about working people and the labor unions that represent their interests.

BLAGOJEVICH GETS SOME nice talk; until Tuesday at least.

For it seems the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago finally issued its ruling in Blagojevich’s appeal – some 19 months after it was initially filed and argued before a judicial panel.

RAUNER: Blagojevich similarities?

The appeals court determined that five of the charges that Blagojevich was found guilty of cannot stand. Which has some people speculating that the 14-year prison sentence (he’s done about three years thus far) will have to be reduced.

Although I couldn’t help but notice that one-time First Lady Patti Blagojevich expressed disappointment at the decision. For it seems the charges that are no more are more minor and technical.

THE APPEALS COURT wrote in its decision that the remaining charges are severe enough to warrant the full 168-month term in a federal prison. Although the desire had been that the sentence could be reduced by enough that he would no longer be classified as such a serious threat to the public safety and might be eligible to be moved to a federal corrections facility closer to Chicago.

Perhaps he could receive the “Oxford education” that many a Chicago political personage has received at the federal facility in Oxford, Wis.?

One part of the appeals ruling caught my attention – the part that stated the use of wire fraud charges was overdone. All too often, federal indictments come across as multiple counts of wire fraud (or mail fraud) and an act that is not explicitly illegal but which someone in a prosecutor’s office did not approve.

But all of this is bound to bring out the political people who earlier this week were saying Blagojevich is a victim reverting to form and lambasting the former governor; while also speculating about what he looks like since his hair dye has long worn away and he likely now looks his age of 58!

  -30-

EXTRA: Jail not a pleasant place. That doesn’t make lawsuit’s claims proper

I find it odd that a television in the background while I write this is showing the 1997 film “Pleasantville,” which tells the tale of a 1950’s-era community where everything is pristine and pleasant.


Just because Cook County had a miserable jail back in 1910 doesn't mean we have to strive today to be even worse


Of course, that film shows us the dirty underside of such a white-washed community. And a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court shows us the dirty underside of Chicago these days.

AS IN THE Cook County Jail.

The lawsuit says that the county’s management of the jail amounts to “sadistic violence and brutality.” What with the way guards use physical force to maintain order, or turn their heads to look away from brutal acts committed by inmates on themselves.

Now I know the reality I have heard from corrections officials that they are outnumbered by inmates within a jail or prison facility, and how any attempt to impose order by total domination would likely provoke the inmates into a riot.

So they tend to let the inmates have a sense of policing themselves.

THIS LAWSUIT BY the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People’s Law Center gives a horrific image of incarceration that ought to make us ashamed that we could permit such a thing to happen within our society.

Although I’m also sure there are those amongst us who will read the reports about the lawsuit and merely shrug their shoulders, thinking to themselves, “Prison isn’t supposed to be pleasant.”

I’ll agree. But I also tend to believe that how we treat our most vulnerable (or choose to ignore them) also says a lot about us as a society and how seriously we deserve to be treated.

Personally, I’d like to think we deserve better than any reputation we’d get from letting the violence run amok out there at the jail in the Little Village neighborhood.

EVEN IN PLEASANTVILLE, in that scene where Toby McGuire’s “Bud” character spent time in a jail cell (charged with actions that made life “less pleasant”), nobody was threatening him with “an elevator ride.”

As in a place where he could be beaten up without being recorded on any security cameras – according to the jailhouse code included in the lawsuit.

  -30-

Electoral politics brings out the tackiest of gallows humor in some people

The next week is going to provide certain people amongst us with a field day for their sick, twisted jokes about our political state.

RYAN: Soon to be free (sort of)

You know who you are. The ones who can’t resist a chance to take a pot shot at former Gov. George Ryan and anyone else whose name they can manage to tie into his.

HOW MANY PEOPLE have derived a gag (and an attempted laugh) at the thought of Ryan and our other convicted former Governor, Rod Blagojevich, being cellmates or being assigned to some miserly duty in the prison yard?

That never happened – what with Ryan doing his time at the minimum-security work camp connected to the maximum-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., and Blagojevich winding up at that facility out in Colorado!

But it was this week that former political powerbroker William Cellini finally surrendered himself to federal officials, where he was then sent to the very same minimum-security facility where Ryan is being held.

For the time being.

YOU PEOPLE CAN have your jokes about how the mighty-and-powerful have fallen and are now sharing space in the same federal facility.

Perhaps it is a sign of how far the Republican Party has fallen, since back in the days when they were significant and Mighty! and capable of actually getting things done, it was with people like Ryan in charge, with people like Cellini using his business acumen to raise the money that those candidates used to pay for their campaigns.

CELLINI: Soon to be prison power-broker?

Which then made them indebted to Cellini – which was the source of his power. He had the ability to tell people with power how they should use it.

Now, they two of them are a punch line, rotting away at a Bureau of Prisons facility in a southwestern Indiana community where “God” is spelled “L-A-R-R-Y B-I-R-D.”

HE DID, AFTER all, play his college ball at nearby Indiana State University.

But back to Ryan and Cellini – who aren’t going to be prison-mates for long. For Ryan is on the verge of leaving the facility where he has spent nearly six of what should have been his “Golden” years.

Ryan’s prison term is scheduled to end July 4. But in accordance with standard prison policy, inmates can be released to a half-way house a few months early as part of an effort to re-acclimate those individuals to the outside world – which has changed quite a bit since Ryan went away.

And the Chicago Sun-Times reported recently that Ryan’s date for release – possibly to a facility on the West Side – is one week from Wednesday.

ALREADY, I HAVE been reading the gripes from those individuals who are determined to believe that any sort of release for Ryan is a political favor of sorts.

As though the only way those individuals will be pleased is if they learn of a report that Ryan was killed during a prison riot. Then again, they’ll probably gripe that it wasn’t violent enough.

If it sounds like I hold a lot of Ryan’s critics in contempt, you’d be accurate.

It just seems like certain people are determined to let their venom flow to extraordinary levels when it comes to our former governor from the Kankakee area. Which kind of saddens me.

THAT IS A lot of hatred they have built up, and it likely is preventing them from getting on with their own lives and achieving something of significance.

And while I’ll admit that even all these years later, a part of me is skeptical about the nature of the charges for which Ryan was convicted, I accept that a jury reached its verdict that has been upheld by various appeals courts.

Ryan did his time. Just as Cellini is about to do his (he owes the federal government about one year, and should be free by 2014). Those of us who feel compelled to spew disgust about this situation ought to look more intensely at ourselves.

For while I’m the first person to admit I can appreciate the humor of a tacky situation, the overkill we’re going to hear in coming weeks and months is something that will leave me in dismay.

  -30-

What to think about prison closures?

So is this what we’ve come to, our state’s significant industry is building prison facilities for the federal government to operate?

It seems like a bizarre way to have an economy. Yet it seems to be the direction we’re headed in.

REMEMBER THE NEW maximum-security prison near Thompson, Ill., in the northwestern part of the state. Illinois built it, but never opened it because the funds to pay for its operation were never on hand.

It may never have become the place to hold the people now being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo, Cuba on suspicion of terrorism – which would have made so much sense that of course the ideologues didn’t like the idea.

But the federal government is considering using the facility for other purposes within the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Perhaps that is why Gov. Pat Quinn turned to the United States of America when he has another prison facility to sell. It’s not like he has a used car to deal. There aren’t many people or organizations with the potential to buy such a facility.

SO NOW WE can speculate as to whether the Tamms Correctional Center at the far southernmost county of Illinois (only a dozen miles north of Cairo, which is the state’s southernmost tip) will go from being a state facility to a federal one.

For all I know, we’ll get wisecracks about how former governors George Ryan or Rod Blagojevich could wind up getting transferred from their current federal prison facilities to one that they once (theoretically) oversaw.

Quinn literally (according to various news reports inspired by the Associated Press) sent the federal government a letter telling them of Tamms’ isolation from the rest of Illinois (which is something all of Southern Illinois has in common) that would make any federal facility operated there all the more secure.

But I’m not sure just how seriously the U.S. government will take the offer – even if the president himself considers himself an Illinois native.

BECAUSE THE FEDERAL government already had a high-security prison facility located in Southern Illinois – about an hour’s drive to the north in the city of Marion (which at just over 17,000 people might seem like a small suburb, but by Southern Illinois standards is a major urban area that includes the federal courthouse for that part of the state that thinks of itself as Little Egypt).

Back in the days before anyone used the phrase “super-max” to describe a high-security prison kept on “lockdown” mode at all times (instead of just to deal with a potential crisis), the federal correctional center at Marion WAS super-max.

It was the prison opened by the federal government in 1963 to replace Alcatraz when that infamous facility became too old and decrepit to be trusted to house dangerous inmates!

But with the opening of a closed maximum-security (the real term that describes such facilities, not super-max) prison in Florence, Colo., Marion became a medium-security prison. The point being that Southern Illinois’ days of housing such dangerous inmates are over.

UNLESS SOMEBODY BELIEVES that the Marion facility is about to overflow and needs a nearby building to take on the extra hard-cases who need to be kept away from other people, it is uncertain how a Tamms facility would fit into the Bureau of Prisons.

It would appear to be a federal redundancy.

Then again, no one has ever accused the federal government of being run in the most efficient manner possible. So maybe somebody at that level would think such a facility would be worth owning.

So this could be the ultimate reason for supporters of this plan to back Barack Obama for re-election come Nov. 6. Somehow, I suspect that a “President Romney” would be used by the Republican ideologues to “punish” Illinois for having ever created a political person out of Obama.

MY GUESS WOULD be that this long-shot of a plan would be no-shot if Obama himself isn’t around somewhere to nudge it through.

And if that were to happen, we in Illinois would literally be stuck with a modern (and vacant) prison facility to have to watch over – with no real use since Quinn included it (along with the women’s maximum-security prison at Dwight) among facilities to be closed by the state in a cost-cutting move.

As for where all those women are going to be transferred to, that is a commentary for another day.

  -30-

Seven more days for 40892-424

One week from now, federal inmate number 40892-424 will have gone through orientation and will have completed his first night in prison – a lifestyle that he’s going to have to endure for just over a decade.

BLAGOJEVICH: Soon to lose the suit

That inmate, of course, is Rod Blagojevich, who has to report to prison (possibly a minimum-security facility in Colorado) come Thursday. Which means he’s now going through his final week of freedom.

EVERYTHING HE DOES in coming days will take on the aura of “one last time” – both for himself and for his family.

It even seems that we’re going to get “one last statement” from Blagojevich. The Associated Press reported that a Blagojevich “spokesman” said the former governor himself will make some sort of public statement some time in coming days.

Then, he will go off to prison – which makes me wonder if his final day of freedom will resemble the scenes in the film “Goodfellas” where actor Ray Liotta’s “Henry Hill” character engaged in a final party of booze and drugs and floozies, only to climb into a limousine and tell the driver, “Now, take me to jail.”

Although as much as I might joke here, and some people will eagerly be awaiting this week with glee (a fact that still bothers me more than anything Blagojevich might have actually done while in public office), the truth is that there really is nothing funny about what is going to happen a week from now.

HE’S STILL A human being, and he will have a wife and two daughters who will be devastated by what will happen. I’m not about to start up the charity fund for the family Blagojevich. But we shouldn’t overlook the loss that is created by a 14-year prison term (even if that translates into 11-plus years of REAL time).

Which is why I can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy these days. But not so much sympathy that I really care much what Blagojevich has to say in a final statement. In fact, a part of me desperately wants to ignore whatever the former governor has to say for his final words as a “free” man.

Because I’m convinced that if we really wanted to inflict a “blow” to the ego of Blagojevich, we’d blow it off. We wouldn’t cover it. We would let his statement twist in the wind, and we’d seriously debate that old philosophical cliché, “If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If Blagojevich speaks and no one records it, does it really matter?

BECAUSE I CAN’T really envision anything he’d say that needs to be recorded for posterity. He still thinks he ‘didn’t do it.’ He’s been framed?

Even if he were to do an about-face and admit some sort of “guilt” or “responsibility” (which some law-and-order types always claim they want to hear), would it really make a difference now?

He’s going to have to endure prison. It’s going to be a demeaning experience, particularly for someone like Blagojevich who had such an over-bloated view of his self-importance to begin with.

My own trivial question is to wonder how Blagojevich will cope with the fact that the prison barbers will likely be incapable of (and unwilling to try to) maintaining that helmet-like hairdo he has spouted for years.

BLAGOJEVICH WITH A buzz-cut?!? What horrors it will be for him!

Although I wonder if he’ll get another ego-blow come March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day. That is a holiday that Chicago political types like to make a big deal of, regardless of their ethnic origins.

It will be a “first” – as in, the first holiday Blagojevich will miss out on due to his incarceration.

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Heirens will bring out our ‘worst’

It was just over the weekend that a thought popped into my head – How long will it be before Bill Heirens pops back into the news again?

Headlines like these swayed sentiment



Back a couple of decades ago, I was a reporter-type who covered the proceedings in which Heirens argued that he “didn’t do it” – as in the slayings of three females (including 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan) back in 1946.

NOT THAT THE authorities were ever swayed by Heirens (who at times has had fairly sophisticated P.R. ‘machines’ trying to build sympathy for him). His efforts to gain release from prison were never successful.

Until now.

For it seems that Heirens is dead, and not by electrocution (which would have been a real possibility back in the mid-1940s) or lethal injection. News reports indicate he was found unresponsive in his cell at the Dixon Correctional Center and was transported to the University of Illinois Medical Center.

He was pronounced dead Monday night at about the same moment that I was driving home from a candidate forum significant only because I can now claim to have met Patrick Thompson (the Daley nephew and grandson who is running for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District).

BUT BACK TO Heirens. He’s gone.

So the “event” that I expected to put Heirens’ name back in the news will NEVER happen. Meaning, he won’t make another appeal for release from prison. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board won’t be put in a position to have to reject him again.

Books like these also hurt

Because those officials always made it clear they weren’t about to do anything to seriously consider the claims of Heirens, which at one point tried to blame the fact that he went to prison on the news coverage of the era.

Admittedly, the crimes for which Heirens ultimately pleaded guilty got big attention. They had two visual elements that were so grisly and creepy that readers could latch onto them – the head of Suzanne Degnan being found in a sewer and the message written on a mirror in lipstick that read, “For heaven’s sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.”

WHICH MEANT THEY got major coverage as hysterical as anything that Nancy Grace or anyone of her ilk is capable of doing these days on television. The mood in Chicago was angry, and Heirens claimed he entered a guilty plea to avoid being railroaded into a conviction and execution.

I know law enforcement types who say the fact that Heirens was allowed to live at all (even in prison, where he is officially the longest-serving inmate in Illinois Department of Corrections history) is evidence of how compassionate a legal system we have.

Not that anybody is pleased. I have been reading countless comments on assorted Internet sites from people who are seriously arguing that one execution would have been cheaper than 66 years of incarceration.

They want him dead. They want him suffering. I wonder if, even now, there will be people who will forevermore complain that Bill Heirens didn’t get what he deserved – even though he literally is a case where our system locked him up and threw away the key!

INSOFAR AS WHETHER or not he “did” the crimes, I never really knew what to think. I don’t doubt that our society was prepared to behave with a ‘lynch mob mentality’ when Heirens was arrested.

I know some people who were always convinced of guilt by the fact that Heirens’ fingerprints were found at the apartment of one of the dead women AND ALSO on the ransom note that was sent to the parents of Suzanne Degnan.

But I also know there are so many ways in which police can react to public pressure to make an arrest and close a case, rather than worry about trying to get at “the truth.”  It also helped his case that Heirens ultimately became a “model” inmate – the first to earn a college degree while incarcerated who ultimately worked his way down to minimum-security prisons.

A significantly different portrait



He even had a woman, Dolores Kennedy, take him seriously, as she wrote a book (“His Day in Court”) that tried to make his case. I have a copy that I can see sitting on my bookshelves while I write this commentary. But I don’t know who was swayed by her prose.

PROBABLY, NO ONE. The official “mood” of the populace was such that he wasn’t going anywhere, and now there is nothing more that can be done.

When you have modern-day prosecutors comparing your behavior to something out of a Stephen King horror novel (as what happened to Heirens), you probably never had a chance of having your argument taken seriously.

Now if we could only just lay his remains to rest and put an end to this horrid saga – instead of having to listen to the crackpots of our society, who seem to be enjoying his death too much and feeling the need to take one last pot-shot.

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