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| MADIGAN: Ending AG term w/ Gov. investigation |
Of course, much of what these ideologues
want to say is “criminal” amounts to little more than the fact that Madigan, as
a Democrat, disagrees with many of the policies they’d like to see the state
impose on all of us.
SO PERHAPS THERE is a touch of appropo to
the fact that soon-to-be former state Attorney General Lisa Madigan is doing
her own investigation against the man – Gov. Bruce Rauner – who has been aggressive
in spewing the rhetoric that “Speaker Mike” is a crook.
Specifically, Lisa Madigan wants to
determine if the outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease that occurred at the
Veterans Affairs facility in downstate Quincy in any way was worsened by neglect
by the state that could constitute criminal behavior.
In short, is the man whose re-election
desires are based on the notion that Mike Madigan is a crook really nothing
more than a crook himself – one whose behavior resulted in aging military
veterans in need of care becoming ill, or more than a dozen dying outright?
Or is all this rhetoric merely misuse of
legal issues to try to punish one’s political opponents. Criminalizing politics
– or at least the notion of being in an opposition party.
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| Ideologues would fight over whether Rauner … |
THAT MAY BE the scariest thought of all.
Because it would put our society in the same league as many of the societies
that we like to spew high-minded rhetoric about how superior we are to them.
To be honest, I don’t think Rauner has
done anything blatantly illegal. Certainly nothing that ought to result in him
spending the next few years following his possible Nov. 6 electoral defeat
having to fight off criminal charges.
And while I don’t think that Lisa Madigan
is somehow being a spiteful witch threatening to prosecute the man who keeps implying
that her father is somehow worthy of criminal prosecution, you just know the
conservative ideologues are going to want to view the issue in exactly such a
manner.
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| … or Madigan is more of a 'crook' |
If anything, Madigan’s actions are all the
evidence needed as to why people who think that an “Attorney General Harold”
ought to prosecute Speaker Mike are being downright ridiculous.
FOR THE PURPOSE of the state attorneys
general is to serve as the lawyer advising state government on the limits of
the law whenever they engage in their schemes on assorted issues.
In short, they’re there to defend state
officials, not be the prosecutors. It really is the individual state’s
attorneys across Illinois who ought to be taking on such criminal cases.
Which in this case means the state’s attorney
for Adams County, Ill.; that Western Illinois place along the Mississippi River
that would like to think it is still a significant port city – and not just the
place where residents of the local veterans’ home died due to appalling
circumstances.
Yet State’s Attorney Scott Farha has been
quick to not only distance himself from any such action, he was even quicker to
dismiss Lisa Madigan’s actions as being, “politically motivated.”
THAT MAY, OR may not be true. Yet it also
creates circumstances where people can quickly conclude that Farha, as a
Republican, is merely being protective of his political party counterparts –
rather than trying to get to the truth of what happened in Quincy.
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| Did we believe Nixon when he said he was 'not a crook' |
This has become a case where partisan
politics is going to interfere with ever determining what occurred at that
veterans’ home – and who was in any way responsible.
Trying to determine if Bruce Rauner was
more of a crook than Mike Madigan was gets us tied up with side issues that
most likely aren’t relevant to the case. They’re distractions.
Besides, those of us of a certain generation
know that in politics, there’s only one man who deserves to be called a “crook”
– that’s Richard M. Nixon. Although I’m wondering if President Donald J. Trump these
days is giving him a run for the money for that label?
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