An encore in corrections for ‘Fast Eddie” would be a unique outcome

Perhaps it was intended that Edward R. Vrdolyak have his life in the public eye end in a way unlike just about everyone else.
 

VRDOLYAK: Back in the public eye

A return trip to prison, if that is what ultimately occurs, would be something unheard of.

BECAUSE USUALLY WHEN someone on the Chicago political scene gets into legal trouble and winds up with a criminal conviction and prison time, upon their release they manage to fade away and we don’t really hear much about them again.

Just think – how many of us know off the top of our heads whatever became of Larry Bloom or Miriam Santos.

But it seems there’s no way the man known during his time as “Fast Eddie” was going to fade away like that – even though he has been retired for roughly the past decade and probably wishes he weren’t thought about so much anymore.

Vrdolyak was the son of Croatian immigrants from the East Side neighborhood down at Chicago’s far Southeastern corner (where Indiana is a next door neighbor and the smells of the oil refinery in Whiting often waft across the state line) who was elected to the City Council in 1971 and achieved his political peak in the mid-1980s.

HE WAS THE man who realized that many Chicagoans were hostile to the idea of Harold Washington being elected mayor in 1983 – which he used to justify his own blatant resistance to anything the city’s first black mayor tried to achieve. He also banded together 28 other alderman into a caucus that was openly defiant.

 

Someday to be sequel to this headline?

For those of you too young to remember "Council Wars" as we laughingly referred to it back then, think of the way Congress has treated the Barack Obama presidency, only much less polite.

The “Vrdolyak 29” is how it was publicly known, the group that for more than two years did everything it could to make Washington look ridiculous. It took a court-ordered redistricting of City Council ward boundaries to break this up and give the mayor some sort of control over the city.

All I know is that locally in his home neighborhood, there are those people who remain grateful that Vrdolyak kept THAT MAYOR from doing more harm (in their minds) than was actually achieved.

 

Will Harold's backers be able to control laughs?

IN OTHER PARTS of Chicago, there are those people who remain eternally peeved (to put it mildly) that Vrdolyak existed. They were the ones who privately cheered back when the feds got a criminal conviction against him and he wound up serving 10 months in prison (briefly being a fellow inmate with former Gov. George Ryan at the work camp connected to the Terre Haute Correctional Center).

That should have been the end of the Vrdolyak story. But it isn’t. For it seems the feds have come up with a new indictment – criminal charges related to payment for legal work he never actually did and speculation that he didn’t make payments to the Internal Revenue Service that were owed for someone else.

Vrdolyak’s attorneys are saying the money was actually paid into a special account and theoretically are still sitting there waiting for the IRS to come collecting. Not that the IRS is buying such an excuse.

Vrdolyak is now facing charges (for which he will make his first court appearance two days before Thanksgiving) for which he could face up to an eight-year prison term. An encore performance in the Bureau of Prisons! A political recidivist.

THAT WOULD GIVE Vrdolyak a unique niche in our political culture. Off the top of my head, former alderman Ambrosio Medrano is the only return case I can think of.

 

MEDRANO: Also doing a sequel to serving time

The alderman is now serving a 10 ½-year prison sentence for a deal involving bribes connected to a contract for selling bandages to Stroger Hospital, which came after he had already served prison time – just over two years for his role in the Operation Silver Shovel investigation at City Hall back in the mid-1990s.

But if a return to prison is meant to be Vrdolyak’s fate (his backers can’t believe that any charge is being sought for actions so old), that would be quite the outcome for the man who once defied Harold Washington, saying famously, “It’s a racial thing, don’t kid yourself,...We’re fighting to keep the city the way it is.”

Which is why some people now will take great pleasure if it turns out that a 78-year-old man like Vrdolyak winds up ending his life sitting in a cell somewhere.

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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.”

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Smith, Jackson add to list of local pols who do incarceration routine

By the time you read this Friday, Derrick Smith will likely be en route to a federal correctional center where he will serve the next few months as punishment for the label he’ll have to bear for the rest of his life – a corrupt Chicago politician.

SMITH: Countdown begins Friday

Smith was the Illinois House member from the West Side whom the Legislature tried to kick out of its ranks – only to have the voters send him back to the Statehouse scene until said time that the U.S. Attorney’s office got around to indicting him.

HE EVENTUALLY WAS found guilty, sentenced to five months in prison, then engaged in a series of maneuvers meant to delay having to serve the sentence.

Those maneuvers extended into this week, when U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman rejected them on the grounds she had no faith that his legal appeal of his conviction would succeed.

Meaning he now has to begin serving his time within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. If he doesn’t report by Friday, he becomes a federal fugitive – which might sound like an enticing story to write.

Although I suspect that if Smith were to become a political fugitive, he’d become even more nondescript than he was as an elected official.

SMITH WAS LITERALLY a legislator for so short a period of time and accomplished so little that the only reason he will be remembered is for the story of how he regained his political post even after he was kicked out of office.

Nobody is going to take up the cause of Derrick Smith and claim that he should do anything other than serve his five months of prison time – which really is a short stint.

He could literally be free (having paid his debt to society, to use the tacky old cliché) some time around St. Patrick’s Day.

JACKSON: 362 more days to go

Although he will get the experience of serving a Thanksgiving Day, Christmas holiday and Valentines’ Day within the prison environment. Which isn’t something I would want to see anyone have to endure. Even if it is just a minimum-security environment.

SMITH GETS TO be just another among the list of our local political people who managed to cross over the line and wind up with a criminal record. While speculating if that $7,000 he took from what turned out to be an undercover FBI agent was worth the ordeal he’ll now have to go through.

As it turns out, the same day that Coleman rejected Smith’s request to stay out of prison was the same day that former 7^th Ward alderman Sandi Jackson reported to the minimum-security facility for women in West Virginia to begin serving her one-year sentence.

Her offense? She signed the tax returns that one-time Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., used to try to justify the legality of the campaign contribution spending he did for personal items.

Which federal prosecutors said made her an accomplice to the Congressman’s actions – which amounted to using those funds to buy tacky items such as Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves and personal items that once belonged to singer Michael Jackson.

THESE AREN’T EXACTLY Public Enemies Number One. But the congressman served his prison time and is now back with the kids, raising them while their mother serves her prison time. Which in a court quirk will not include any time off for good behavior.

She’ll do a full year of time, meaning she’ll get to return to Chicago just before Halloween of 2016.

Sandi Jackson will do her time at Alderson, which as one of the few federal facilities for women has quite an “alumni” list – Martha Stewart did her prison time there when federal officials went after her business operations.

HOLIDAY: Prison instead of treatment

And if you go back a few decades, singer Billie Holiday also was an inmate back when her heroin addiction (and most likely her race) caused authorities to treat her as a criminal rather than someone who needed treatment – and the lady really did sing the blues for a stretch!

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‘Junior’ may be home again by week’s end. But will it be D.C., or So. Shore?

Sometime Thursday, federal inmate Jesse Jackson, Jr., will be released from the prison camp near Montgomery, Ala., where he has been held since last spring; and I’m sure his thoughts and prayers are focused on how quickly he can return to home.

Technically, Jackson remains in federal custody through Sept. 20, although his release to a halfway house in the District of Columbia is part of the process by which all federal inmates become re-accustomed to life outside of prison walls.

AND YES, I realize that Jackson was being held in a camp that was part of an air force base, but the imagery remains.

But the trick is going to be to decide whether Jackson can be determined to be such a non-threat to the society at large that it would be a waste of time to have him actually stay at the halfway house.

It’s a very real possibility.

Remember back when former Gov. George Ryan was released from the work camp that was attached to the federal prison near Terre Haute, Ind.? He reported to a halfway house on the West Side, and it was found within six hours that he didn’t need to be there.

HE WOUND UP spending that first night of “freedom” really free at his home near Kankakee. It’s very possible that depending on how late in the day you actually read this commentary, Jackson himself could be on his way home.

The only question being, “Which home?” The house he has in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington? Or the house in the South Shore neighborhood that gave him the address that enabled him to be a part of the Illinois congressional delegation for all those years?

Will Jesse, Jr., return to his South Side roots? Or find that a change of scenery is best for him to be capable of building a new life for himself. He did just turn 50 a couple of weeks ago, and is still capable of doing something significant to build his reputation.

Even though I’m sure there are certain ideologue crackpots who will only be satisfied if Jackson were to become a destitute bum. Of course, then they’d rant about him existing off the public welfare rolls.

SOME PEOPLE ARE just determined to be miserable to deal with! Like the ones who, I’m sure, are now ranting that Jackson should not be free anytime soon – even though his “criminal” offense wound up being the use of campaign funds to purchase assorted memorabilia to decorate the office.

Which makes me wonder about the ongoing mess that soon-to-be former Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., faces. He being the guy who spent significant sums to re-decorate his own Capitol Hill space – is there something about interior decorating that attracts the suspicion of “the feds” to warrant indictment, conviction and incarceration?

It will be intriguing to see how the new Jackson comes to be.

While he had a political career of some significance with big dreams that fell short (“Mayor Jackson?”) of becoming reality, I don’t doubt he could come back to achieve some goals that could wind up topping his political significance.

OF COURSE, HE has to get through this ordeal first. Regardless of where he calls “home,” he’s likely to have to wear one of those funky ankle bracelets during the summer months so as to further demean him.

Then, sometime in mid-October, spouse Sandi (the former alderman who got busted for signing the income tax returns that allegedly tried legitimizing Jackson’s actions) will have to do her few months in prison – followed up by her own stint in a halfway house/home confinement.

When the Jacksons are finally (sometime late in 2016) finally able to get on with their lives, there is another benefit. Perhaps then we’ll be able to get over our public obsession over this case.

All of us will be a lot better off when that day comes.

  -30-

Jesse, Jr. – Is he, or isn’t he, getting out early from his federal prison term?

The ideologues of our society have a new issue to get them all worked up – is there a chance that Jesse Jackson, Jr., will manage to shave some time off of his prison term.

JACKSON: Promising past, and future?

Technically, Jackson was sentenced in 2013 to a 2-1/2-year prison term. But with early release provisions, his term is scheduled to end on Dec. 31, 2015.

THERE ARE THOSE people who, for political and personal reasons, want to complain that the one-time member of Congress from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs didn’t get anywhere near a long-enough sentence for his guilty plea on criminal charges.

Although when one considers that the offense was using campaign funds to buy tacky junk to decorate his office and that he cooperated with federal prosecutors who brought the case against him, I can see why a short prison stint is all that was received.

But Jackson popped back into the news in recent days – first by being transferred on Friday from a Bureau of Prisons facility in North Carolina to a prison camp that is part of the Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery, Ala.

Then, during the weekend, with news reports about how Jackson was trying to get into a program for dealing with drug abuse problems – which if he completes it could theoretically knock more time off his prison term.

THERE WAS SPECULATION that Jackson could have so much time knocked off his prison term that he could essentially be free – or living in a Chicago-area halfway house – sometime around this year’s end.

Although I couldn’t help but notice the Chicago Tribune used its website Monday to publish an updated story that emphasized the fact that Jackson’s projected release date remains the end of 2015.

So what should we think? Are we going to get Jesse Jackson, Jr., back sometime soon? I’m inclined to think that Jackson has so much public attention focused on his case that legal breaks and benefits other inmates can obtain will not be available to him.

He’s going to wind up doing as much prison time as possible for his offense – which is so much less significant than the actions that people want to believe he committed.

AND WHICH WERE the reasons why federal prosecutors got involved in investigating former member of Congress to begin with.

Of course, even if not for this issue, the ideologues would still find something to be offended about with regards to Jackson. For his latest prison transfer is something for them to get worked up over.

Because back when Jackson entered his “guilty” plea, he also made a request for a specific prison camp to be assigned to. Federal officials were under no obligation to grant his request, and they didn’t – initially – when he was sent to North Carolina.

But with the transfer to the prison camp in Alabama, he now gets his way. He’s where he wanted to wind up.

TO THE PEOPLE who despise the Jacksons for whatever reason, they would consider that reason enough to oppose him. As though they won’t be content unless they hear stories of Jackson being held in segregation under miserable conditions for every day of his prison term.

Many of these people are also the ones who want to believe that Jackson’s claims of a medical condition (he was diagnosed as suffering from a bipolar disorder) are somehow fraudulent.

Although the fact that the work camp he’s now at is one designated as a federal medical center might mean that federal authorities take his medical claims seriously.

In today’s day and age, where there are those who aren’t satisfied until their political opposition is incarcerated, the best resolution for all of us is for Jackson (and spouse Sandi who also owes the federal government one year of time) to complete their sentences so that we all can move on.

  -30-

Did you hear the one about the felon who was turned away from prison?

Only Jesse Jackson, Jr., could pull off a moment like this.

JACKSON: He'll be back in 2 years

Most people who get convicted of a political corruption-type of offense have their day where they enter prison, then they get forgotten about in the public eye for some time.

BUT NOT JACKSON.

It seems he showed up on Monday at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex near Durham, N.C.  I lost track of the number of newspaper and television-based websites that went ahead and published the story about the former Congressman and namesake son of the famed civil rights leader now being just a number among all the other prison inmates.

It wasn’t to the extreme of when Rod Blagojevich went to prison and had helicopters and news trucks following him – so we could see the moment when he stopped off at a fast-food joint for a final hamburger and how we saw him get snubbed when he tried to shake the hands of the guards who “greeted” him at his prison facility in Colorado.

But Jackson wound up becoming newsworthy in his own way.

BECAUSE IT SEEMS the prison officials in North Carolina refused to admit Jackson to their facility.

For an extra day, Jackson remained free (to the dismay of his ideological critics who have drawn way too much pleasure from his ordeal, but that's a subject matter for another day)!

Prison officials are being very vague about what exactly went wrong, although the Chicago Tribune reported that one prison official called “very accurate” the description by Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., that there were paperwork problems.

It also seems that Jackson was told by the federal judge in the District of Columbia who sentenced him to a 30-month sentence (which will become something just over two full years, presuming he earns all the “good time” possible) had told him he had until Friday to report to prison to avoid becoming a federal fugitive from justice.

DID JACKSON REALLY think he could show up early and perhaps get a head start on doing his time? The one thing I have come to know from years of being a reporter-type person dealing with federal bureaucrats is that they are the types who have their regulations.

They want them followed strictly. And they’re not about to let anyone tell them what to do.

Which is probably the reason why they’d turn him away. There probably are people who work in the federal Bureau of Prisons who are thinking these days that Jackson, Jr., is some sort of an arrogant sort for thinking he could dictate to them when his prison time should start.

Of course, there is the very legitimate point that the Bureau of Prisons ought to be strictly regulated in terms of whom they can hold. Without a specific court order saying he should be there, they really do have no right to hold Jackson in their custody before his sentence formally begins.

SO THE OUTCOME of all of this was just a delay. It wound up that when Jackson tried again on Tuesday to check into prison, he was accepted. His final day of freedom was spent in the greater Durham area (not that he was able to see the Durham Bulls play ball, their season’s over) before he began to serve his time.

In the end, prison officials were more than willing to suck him into their system and begin the process of intimidation that is meant to let he (and all other inmates) know who is boss.

But Jackson will wind up earning his place in the Chicago Corruption Hall of Fame for the way in which he was refused a place in prison – at least for a day or so.

  -30-

Jackson’s “lesser” prison sentence upstages Springpatch political spats

It’s probably a good thing that the Democrats didn’t bother with a political rally at the Illinois State Fair on Wednesday – I doubt political observers would have cared much about what was said.

JACKSON: "I was wrong"

For the attention was on the District of Columbia where former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., finally had to stand before a federal judge and have sentence imposed upon him for the misuse of campaign funds to purchase all kinds of tacky memorabilia for himself.

FOR THE RECORD, Jackson got a 2 ½-year prison term, while wife Sandi (the former 7^th Ward alderman) got 1 year. There’s nothing that the Springfield-based Democrats could have said on Wednesday that would have mattered by comparison.

As it was, the Democrats had their annual breakfast of county party chairmen – and all it turned into was a Bill Daley vs. Pat Quinn hissy fit. We’ve had them before, and will have many more in the future between now and the March primary elections.

None of that will catch the public attention in the way of the Jacksons having to appear in court – including the moment when Jesse, Jr., became tearful and said the words, “I was wrong.”

Great drama. Except that I doubt the people who have been most eager to see Jackson go down to defeat will be satisfied.

BECAUSE THE FACT is that federal prosecutors had recommended the four-year prison term for the former Congressman. The ideologues who were anticipating Wednesday for many months now were hopeful that the federal judge in this case (also named Jackson, although not related in any way) would ignore the recommendation and go harder.

Instead, the judge went lighter, and went along with the Jacksons' desire to stagger their prison terms. He must report to prison by Nov. 1, while she must report within 30 days of Jackson completing his sentence.

With the concept of time off for good behavior, Jesse, Jr., will do slightly more than two years in federal custody. Admittedly, he will have another three years of supervised release – which means he’ll still have federal law enforcement-types scrutinizing his every action.

It’s more than the 18-month sentence that Jackson’s attorneys asked for, but it is not going to be perceived as enough for the ideologues – for whom they had fantasies of something along the lines of that 14-year sentence received by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

WHICH IS WHY I expect the rhetoric is being spewed about in certain quarters about how lenient this particular sentence is – even though I personally view it as being more in line with common sense.

As Jackson’s attorneys put it on Wednesday, the congressman’s actions, “are not a Ponzi scheme.”

Besides, I’m sure the ideologues (whose real objection to the couple is their relation to the Rev. Jesse Jackson – whom they dream of incarcerating someday) will revel in the fact that Sandi Jackson got a prison term, rather than her preference for supervision and some sort of community service.

In fact, the judge did her sentence in a way that she qualifies for no early release – she’s going to do one full year in a federal facility.

NOT THAT WE know yet where either Jackson will be detained. The Bureau of Prisons decides that, and we don’t know yet if they will be willing to go along with Jesse, Jr.’s, preference for a facility sort of close to the District of Columbia.

So perhaps the Jackson critics will get their kicks from seeing the couple denied their preferences? That strikes me as being pretty petty. Then again, much of electoral politics and government is about trying to accomplish something despite the pettiness of the people who we elected!

BLACKBURN: Over, before he began?

Although definitely more intriguing than the Springfield-based activity. Unless you were anxiously awaiting the decision by Will County Auditor Duffy Blackburn NOT to run, after all, for the Democratic nomination for Illinois comptroller.

So now it seems clearer that departing Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon will be the Democrat who gets her butt kicked by incumbent Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka come November 2014.

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Jacksons have gone D.C. Or so it seems

It seems we can now count the Jacksons (not the musical family, but the political one) among the ranks of people who have given up their Chicago-area ties for someplace else.

JESSE, JR.: A pre-charges version

For Jesse, Jr. and Sandi seem to be thinking of themselves as residents of the District of Columbia when they contemplate their fates. Both are up for sentencing on Wednesday for their involvement in what federal prosecutors say was misuse of campaign funds.

THE FORMER MEMBER of Congress from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs used campaign funds for personal purchases without reporting it as income, and the former 7^th Ward alderman signed the income tax returns that didn’t acknowledge the extra income.

Attorneys for Jesse, Jr., on Monday made their preferences known for where they’d like the former Congressman to serve his prison sentence. He’d like to be sent to either a federal prison camp in Montgomery, Ala., or to the minimum-security portion of the federal correctional complex at Butner, N.C.

Jackson indicates those facilities are his preference because of their proximity to the District of Columbia – which the Jacksons seem to think of as their home now, rather than the South Side.

The latter facility is about 700 miles from Washington, but that make it one of the closest to the nation’s capital city. Attorneys wrote that putting him there would make it easier for him to maintain contact with his wife and children while incarcerated.

AS FOR NORTH Carolina, Jackson is thinking back to his days in college – when he attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. He thinks he still has ties to North Carolina, and thinks it would help rehabilitation if he were in a familiar region of the country.

It also would make him a fellow inmate along with Jon Burge, the former Chicago police commander who supposedly let the officers under his command abuse the rights of the people in their custody. Although he’s doing his prison time for a perjury conviction in a civil lawsuit where he denied the abuse occurred.

SANDI: Doing the D.C. service route?

In short, that facility in Butner could wind up becoming a new focal point for Chicago political observers – who’s to say who else will wind up there?

Although this case is most likely to wind up in an eastern (or southern) facility because it is of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. If it were in the federal courts of Chicago, we’d be looking at the likelihood of Jackson getting himself an Oxford Education (ie., serving his time in the minimum-security facility in Oxford, Wis.).

BUT JESSE, JR., is not the only person thinking of himself as a D.C. resident, rather than a Sout’ Sider. Sandi Jackson put in her own request. She’s looking at the possibility of a year in prison, although probation is an option.

Sandi’s attorneys filed a similar request, asking for probation and pointing out that the Martha’s Table charitable organization in Washington is willing to accept her as a volunteer IF she gets a sentence that includes community service as part of the punishment.

We won’t get the sight of Sandi Jackson serving slop to the homeless in the South Shore neighborhood, or anywhere else in the city. Perhaps it will be better for us if the actual penalty phase of this whole sordid ordeal takes place somewhere else. At the very least, the people who get worked up over this case for purely partisan political reasons won't be able to revel in the Jacksons' misery quite as much.

Not that the courts are obligated to follow along with any of these requests. If anything, I wonder if the real humiliation for them would be if they had to do their punishments on Chicago-area turf. Where it would be easier for them to be seen by the locals.

GOING AWAY TO D.C. might make it easier for them to blend into the masses and be overlooked? Who’s to say!

Maybe it means we’ve lost the Jacksons as a part of our local scene for a second time.

Just like how Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Tito (along with little brother Michael) long ago left their Gary, Ind., origins for something bigger and better musically.

 

It's too bad that the political version of a Jackson family won't get as much glory from this D.C. shift.

 

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EXTRA: Ryan released, sort of. His reputation is still on trial

“He has paid a severe price. The loss of his wife and brother while he was in the penitentiary, the loss of his pension, his office, his good name and 5 ½ years of imprisonment. Now near 80 years old, that is a significant punishment.”

Former Gov. James R. Thompson, speaking about former Gov. George Ryan

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RYAN: His freedom will infuriate some

Why do I suspect that Gov. Thompson, now a high-priced attorney who has devoted a significant amount of his professional life in recent years trying to cleanse the reputation of his one-time running mate, is going to take more than his share of ridicule for that comment he espoused Wednesday morning?

Not that Thompson isn’t correct when it comes to the life of George Ryan, who has spent five-plus years in a federal corrections center, but was released to a half-way house in Chicago early Wednesday.

THE EARLINESS OF the hour of release was done most likely to avoid the circus of television cameras trying to capture the exact moment of release from prison for posterity.

So instead, what we’re going to get to see all day on television is the moment that Ryan surrendered himself Wednesday morning to the half-way house, a Salvation Army-type facility that is supposed to help prison inmates adapt back to life on the outside -- although Ryan himself was later released the same day; which is likely the ultimate evidence that he is NOT a hardened criminal element the way some people want to believe.

Of course, there will be those who will note that the official release date for Ryan is July 4, and they’re going to wish that he could spend every possible second in a prison cell.

There also will be others who will complain that even that date is too early for Ryan’s release. In short, there are some people who are just determined to be malcontents when the name of “George Ryan” is mentioned.

THOSE PEOPLE ARE the ones that Thompson was trying to get through to when he made his comment – which was the only spoken word Wednesday morning, since Ryan insisted on walking into the half-way house, accompanied by son George H., Jr., without saying  a word on his own behalf.

That’s probably to be expected. I don’t expect Ryan to be all that talkative in the near future. Certainly not as much as his gruff-spoken style when he was governor – where I secretly suspect he enjoyed the public attention that would swarm around him even though he would throw out the “grouchy grandpa” routine.

I write this particular commentary now to put myself on the record, of sorts, in opposition to all of the political trash talk that we’re going to read and hear on Wednesday and in future days.

For I’m sure there are those who will devote significant amounts of time to trying to ensure that Ryan’s reputation is never rehabilitated.

THEY HAVE THEIR own reasons, most of which I suspect are politically partisan, for needing Ryan to be the arch-villain of their lives. Even though I’d like to believe most people will see through this and grow tired of constantly being reminded how “venal” the former governor is.

Because no matter what the bulk of us believe about Ryan or his actions or whether they crossed over the line into criminal behavior, I’d really like to believe that we have our own lives to worry about.

And that the people who are going to persist in trashing George Ryan are probably telling us more about what is lacking in their own lives, rather than anything that is flawed about Ryan.

  -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.

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Will we care what John Walker Lindh thinks about prison prayer? Should we?

I must confess to having lost track of John Walker Lindh. Until reading the accounts on Monday about how he’s suing for the right to practice his religion freely, I didn’t realize he was an inmate at the federal correctional center in Terre Haute, Ind.

LINDH: From a decade ago, just after his capture



Not that anybody should get any delusions of Lindh and former Gov. George Ryan associating with each other. The latter is in the minimum-security work camp that helps service the maximum-security prison, while Lindh is in a special unit within the prison that keeps him out of circulation from the violent criminals who populate the place.

LINDH, FOR THOSE who have forgotten, is the alleged “American Taliban.” While some people like to use that phrase to denigrate Tea Party types (comparing their extremist, uncompromising behavior to that of the religious fanatics whose behavior taints Islam), Lindh is the U.S. citizen who converted his religious faith, then left this country to be among his new believers.

And back in late 2001 when U.S. troops started going into Afghanistan out of a sense that they were avenging the people who were killed when airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Lindh was captured by local forces being propped up by the U.S. military.

For he literally was fighting in opposition to the U.S. allies and alongside the people to whom Taliban is not an epithet, but merely a label of who they are!

The rest of those people could be regarded as prisoners of war and become faceless beings whom nobody ever gave much thought.

BUT LINDH, BECAUSE of that U.S. citizenship, wound up getting criminal charges in this country and the lengthy prison time. He’s getting treated more harshly than others because he’s the white face, a northern California kid, who’d have the gall to wear a keffiyeh and not think it looks absurd.

Which is why while it surprised me to learn that Lindh is so close to Chicago (Terre Haute is about a three-hour drive by car), it didn’t shock me to learn that Bureau of Prisons officials are giving him a hard time about his religious beliefs – which I have no reason to doubt are sincere!

Who remembers the "John Walker Blues?"

It seems that Lindh, due to the security restrictions of his particular unit within the Terre Haute Correctional Center, is being denied access to group prayer, which his particular faction within Islam believes is essential whenever possible.

But Lindh is not allowed to pray while in his once-a-week group sessions. Prayer would be regarded as subversive toward proper prison conduct.

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT if it were Christian prayer of a specific denomination approved of by the warden, then somehow the rules could be bent.

Lindh filed a complaint asking for the right to group prayer. The part that caught my attention the most was his explanation of what is wrong with him being allowed to pray in his cell whenever he wants to.

It seems that having to kneel in the presence of a toilet in order to pray would be regarded as disrespectful to Lindh and other Muslims.

For those people who are reading this and saying “So What!?!,” and shouting that a prison inmate has no right being picky, I wonder how irritable they’d be if someone in another country wanted to engage in Christian prayer, and was being forced to use the toilet for their faith.

WE’D BE ARGUING that it is disrespectful. We’d probably be looking for every euphemism we could think of to describe it.

And yes, I am a firm believer in showing respect for all beliefs. That ultimately is what gives our society the moral high ground on such issues.

When we give up such tolerance, we become no better than the opposition that we’re all too eager to demonize.

So as Lindh appears this week in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis to argue his case, we ought not to be getting all high and mighty in our outrage toward him. It only brings us down to a level that we should be ashamed to drop to.

BESIDES, EVEN IF he behaves like the perfect angel while in the misery of a federal prison, he still has another seven years to go before anyone can even think of early release for him.

And if he’s being nitpicked over aspects of his prison life such as prayer, I’m sure the rest of his life isn’t any more pleasant.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I realize that in this commentary, I provided a very truncated account of what Lindh did to warrant prison time. Much more detailed information can be found elsewhere, although one has to be wary of the partisanship of whomever chose to write any particular given account of his story.