Scrooged
Holy cow, can I be Governor of Illinois, now? I'm apparently a better human being than either of the last two, as the worst defense strategy ever shows:

George Ryan received thousands of dollars in annual Christmas cash from his office employees along with neatly printed lists of those who donated the money when he was secretary of state and later governor, a witness testified at his racketeering and fraud trial Thursday.

Defense attorneys wanted jurors to know about the Christmas money as one explanation for testimony that Ryan always seemed to carry a wad of cash [even though he never went to the bank]. But prosecutors sought to turn the tables and paint Ryan as an Ebenezer Scrooge who squeezed cash gifts from low-paid state workers.

"Did he ever say he wouldn't take cash from janitors and other people who were making less than he did?" federal prosecutor Joel R. Levin asked former Ryan office worker Vicki Easley.

"No," she answered.

"Did Mr. Ryan ever give any cash to janitors in the office that you know of?" Levin asked.

"Not that I know of," she said.

Easley testified that every Christmas Ryan's employees collected money and delivered it to him in a card. One card said: "To a Special Boss."

Also tucked into the card were neatly printed lists of those who donated money, she said.

Give or die!

The money was collected in the Springfield and Chicago offices, Easley said.

Writing on the envelope that came with the 2001 card contained scrawled calculations: $470 from 34 employees in the Chicago office for an average of $13.80 per employee. Added to $3,030 from employees in the Springfield office produced $3,500 "total cash," the handwriting said.

A going-away gift was collected in 2002 as Ryan was leaving office, she said. The list of those who contributed contained the names of staffers, lobbyists and others.

They included lobbyists Ron Swanson and Jerry Shea and businessman Ron Gidwitz, who was named chairman of the State Board of Education by Ryan and now is a candidate for governor.

The ultimate sign that Illinois politics has hit rock bottom is that Ron Gidwitz has made it this far. How can he not have dropped out yet?

The Good Old Days
One of the things I didn't get to do when I visited Springfield was tour the inside of the Illinois Statehouse, but I thought this was interesting, taken from the amazing compilation of information at Ilstatehouse.com:

This photograph shows the impressive centerpiece of the Statehouse. The stained glass is to be found at the summit of the inner dome. Notice the arcane spelling of the word sovereignty. Also, the phrase "State Sovereignity" is placed above "National Union." This is opposite of what appears on the "official" Great Seal of Illinois.

When the seal was adopted in the 19th century in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, this key point of federalism was a touchy subject, and petty bickering ensued.

The present state seal was adopted in 1868 when Secretary of State Sharon Tyndale convinced Senator Allen C. Fuller to propose a new seal. Tyndale's seal changed the banner's wording from "State Sovereignty, National Union" to "National Union, State Sovereignty" because of the Civil War. The General Assembly adopted the new seal, but rejected the changed wording. However, Tyndale, as Secretary of State, was the keeper of the seal, and changed the design so that "National Union" was much more prominent and the word "Sovereignty" was upside down, decreasing its readability.

I'd always wondered why it was like that, but never realized it had any significance. The photos on the initial link also vividly illustrate the 1986 restoration project to remove what appears to be a good century of cigarette smoke from the inside of the dome and the building's fine artwork, a delicate task perhaps only an order of magnitude removed from painting the Sistine Chapel.

Other fun bits include rumors of the "Bat Signal" reportedly used to alert Springfield police officers in the old days:

Mike's father, John H. Nolan, was a Springfield Police Officer from 1940-1969. According to Officer Nolan, before police officers of Springfield communicated by radio, upon receiving a call the Police Station would turn an aircraft beacon located atop the Statehouse on and off. Any Springfield Officer seeing the light flash would then call in to the police station from a call box to see if they could be of service. Further, according to Mr. Nolan, he recalls discussing with his father that Officer Nolan actually saw the switch in the recently demolished police station located at Jefferson Street.

More information about this subject comes to us from Milo Estill, whose father, Primm, was a Springfield policeman in the 1930's. In those days the squad car did not have a heater. During periods of extremely frigid weather, to escape the cold for a while, the officers would keep an eye on the dome from the relative warmth of the service bay of a filling station located on Peoria Road. The owner, Ken Pflugg, provided the men with a key to his business and they would back the car onto the grease rack, which offered an unobstructed view of the Capitol.

Also worth checking out is the picture of the rotunda eagles, and this article on the underground tunnel system beneath Springfield.

In fact, it is possible to walk from the Archives Building all the way to North Klein Street which is located approximately 1 mile north of the Statehouse without ever going outside.

The Armory, the Supreme Court, the Museum, the old Records Building, and the Howlett buildings are all interconnected with tunnels. Open to the public are walkways from the Howlett Building to the Archives, Howlett building to the Statehouse and Statehouse to the Stratton Office Building. Most of the tunnels are used as utility subways and not pedestrian walkways. According to newspaper accounts, these underground hideaways were once used for storage as well. Items at one time stored in these tunnels include barrels of water and emergency rations for civil defense or attack.

Vaults can be found in several areas of the Capitol. According to a January 1962 article in the Illinois State Register, these basement vaults contained as much as one billion dollars in stocks, bonds, and securities. At that time the Illinois treasury was said to be the third largest bank in the nation, ranking behind Fort Knox and the Chase Bank of New York.

Finally, this quaint photograph of the original Illinois Statehouse at Kaskaskia (rented for $4 a day), which was the capital until 1820. The photo was taken in 1899, two years before it finally sank into the Mississippi River.


I blame global warming!

Topinka/Birkett '06
That appears to be the general feeling of the Cook County Republican Convention. I'd assume Du Page will go the same way, and it won't take much sampling to figure out what's going on downstate.

The Church With the Crooked Cross
This place was one of a kind.

CHICAGO, Jan. 6 - A raging blaze Friday afternoon quickly destroyed the 115-year-old Pilgrim Baptist Church, an architectural and cultural landmark in this city's Bronzeville neighborhood that is renowned as the historic home of gospel music.

Investigators could not determine the fire's cause Friday, but officials said their focus was on roof repairs under way shortly before the flames erupted about 3 p.m. The church janitor, who escaped unscathed, said he was the only person inside the building when the fire broke out; two firefighters sustained minor injuries from smoke and debris.

Church members and neighborhood residents stood vigil for hours on blocks filled with black smoke, staring in shock at the charred hole where so much history had happened, as preservationists throughout the city joined in the mourning.

"I grew up in this church, my mother grew up in this church, my grandmother grew up in this church," said Lakeisha Gray-Sewell, 30, who was married at Pilgrim and expected her children, ages 5 and 7, to soon be baptized there, as she was. "When that smoke clears, I don't know what we're going to see. I'm afraid to see what we're going to see. No matter what, this will always be my church."

Deemed a city landmark in 1981, the South Side church was significant not only for its role in African-American musical and religious history, but as one of the last remaining, defining works of the legendary Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan built the structure in 1891 as a synagogue with his partner Dankmar Adler, whose father was the congregation's rabbi; a young draftsman named Frank Lloyd Wright worked on the project.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," David Van Zanten, an art historian at Northwestern University, said when told of the fire. Mr. Van Zanten, co-author of "Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), recovered enough to add, "This is totally irreplaceable, a document of Sullivan's life."

The building was bought by Pilgrim in 1922. Its details reflected its history, with stained glass Stars of David alongside Christian symbols. John Vinci, a Chicago architect who worked on a 1980's restoration of the building, described its entry arch, windows and panels of ornament and then quietly said: "This is breaking my heart. I'm trying to think it's just another day, but it's not."

Inside the landmark walls were rich acoustics, which Thomas Andrew Dorsey embraced as he began putting religious lyrics to jazz and blues rhythms and calling it gospel. Mr. Dorsey, who came to Chicago from Atlanta, spent nearly six decades as Pilgrim's minister of music - the youth choir Ms. Gray-Sewell sang in is still known as the TAD's, for his initials - and was the host of the first convention of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses at the church.

Other famous gospel singers who worshipped at Pilgrim include Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin and James Cleveland. Presidents Harry S. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt were among the parade of politicians to attend services there, members said Friday.

"When you were sitting in there, you knew you were in the presence of an awesome peace, of God," said Representative Bobby L. Rush, whose district includes the neighborhood, adding that the majestic woodwork of the church's vaulted ceiling was how he imagined the inside of Noah's ark. "It's like a gaping hole that's being burned out of our community."

Cortez Trotter, Chicago's fire commissioner, said the roof and east wall had collapsed, adding, "The church is a total loss."

As darkness fell, Pilgrim members hugged one another and whispered, but mostly just stood and stared, smoke and soot hastening the tears down their cheeks.

"They can wipe out the church, but they can't wipe out my history," said Al Bracey, 67, who has attended Sunday services at Pilgrim sporadically since 1938. "Can't kill the spirit."

This is the church that inspired the famous scene in The Blues Brothers: The Hollywood recreation of the place was so exact that the pastor is said to have jokingly asked how the crew got inside to film. (They were paid $500 for the use of the exterior and the vestibule in the film.) The Pilgrim Baptist Church was originally built as Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue in 1890. This tiny photo doesn't do the interior justice. I'd hope they'll be able to rebuild it just as it was, but who knows what'll happen.

Feelings Hurt
A few weeks ago, I picked out an old article by Eric Zorn as an example of how people vastly overdid the story on the Alstory Simon conviction. Today, on his blog, Zorn acknowledges that there's an issue, noting that he regards the questioning of the Simon conviction as an "indirect attack" on Zorn himself.

Personally, I think it would've nice if he'd bothered to mention the astounding scope of the claims against Protess and Ciolino, instead of spending time poking at Simon's attorneys for not making a career of the bandwagon hysteria against "the system". It would certainly be nice if people were more interested in discussing actual guilt or innocence instead of some kind of convoluted class warfare.

Just Kidding!
In other alarming hoax news...

There is a new twist in a murder case that was pivotal in the debate over the death penalty in Illinois. Convicted killer Anthony Porter was set free after another man, Alstory Simon, confessed to the killings. But now, seven years later, Simon says he is innocent and claims there is evidence to prove it.

It is certainly not unusual that someone doing time for murder would contend that he was framed. It is a bit unique that the claim would come from someone who confessed -- in convincing fashion -- on video-tape. But Alstory Simon has been saying for years that his confession was coerced. What's become significant is that Simon's former wife, who once said Simon committed the murders, is now saying he did not.

"I'm just glad the truth is finally coming out," Simon said. "I didn't have any involvement in Jerry Hillard's death."

Simon proclaimed his innocence Monday, though seven years ago on videotape he confessed to the 1982 murders of Marilyn Green and Jerry Hillard in a park on Chicago's South Side.

Simon's confession meant freedom for Anthony Porter who was convicted and nearly executed for the Green-Hillard murders. His confession wasn't the only evidence against Simon. His estranged wife Inez Jackson Simon, after 17 years of silence, told private investigators and later a grand jury that her husband committed the murders.

Inez Simon's cousin Walter Jackson, who is in prison, signed a statement saying Simon told him years earlier that he had taken care of Jerry and Marilyn.

Case closed.

But in a recent interview taped for Simon's lawyers, Inez Jackson Simon, now suffering from years of drug and alcohol abuse, says she was not even in the park when the murders occurred.

Simon claims seven years ago she was coached and coaxed into fingering her husband with promises of money from future book and movie deals on the Anthony Porter story. Walter Jackson has now told Alstory Simon's lawyers that Simon never told him he was the killer.

But then what of his convincing confession given to a private investigator?

"He had me convinced this was my only way out. He had me convinced the police was coming to arrest me, and that they had enough evidence to put me on death row," Simon said.

Simon contends he was told that if he cooperated, and claimed self defense, he would do just a couple years. He was, he says, bullied into a false confession.

"Alstory Simon is incapable of being bullied. He's a murderer, he's a drug dealer, he's a violent repeat offender, and to say that he was scared of us is almost laughable," said Paul Ciolino, private investigator.

The private eye who took the confession says that when Simon saw his wife's statement, he readily offered up a confession with facts only the killer could know.

Northwestern University professor David Protess, who with his journalism students pursued the case against Simon, says never were there any promises of enrichment for Inez Simon, and that he's never seen a more clear-cut case of guilt against a confessed murderer.

But Alstory Simon's lawyers, Terry Ekl and Jim Sotos, believe Simon is innocent, that he was never adequately defended, and Monday a judge granted their request to do a formal video deposition of Inez Simon.

Walter Jackson says that he was incarcerated with Porter and asked to help him beat the rap by claiming he heard Simon admit guilt, then later by Professor Protess, who is a journalism professor at Northwestern who had several students working to get Porter exonerated as a class project. (Seriously.) The allegation in the petition filed in Cook County appears to be that Protess "set up" Jackson, prepping him to meet his students and tell them what they needed to hear in exchange for a promise that Protess would help him get out of prison, and give him money when he got out. Also, this excerpt from the petition actually made me laugh out loud:

Inez claimed that Simon immediately grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out of the park. After first stopping for a banana split at a local ice cream shop Inez claimed that they returned to their apartment. Inez is claiming that after observing a violent double homicide involving her best friend which occurred after 1:00 a.m., she and the killer then went out for ice cream.

Inez, like everyone else involved, has since said that she was put up to it by Protess and Ciolino. I'm hardly an expert on this case, but the whole thing looks very intriguing, no matter who is telling the truth. Ciolino did indeed at one point use a fake witness statement to try to convince Simon to confess.

"A murder confession is not high tea at the Drake Hotel at 1 o'clock," he said. "It's perfectly legal and acceptable and ethical for investigators to use these ruses." And they can be necessary to counter Chicago police investigations, which Ciolino said often target a particular neighborhood hoodlum, whether or not he can be linked to the murder.

I'm not an expert in this case, but a cursory refresher read of the background does seem to leave the door of feasibility open that Ciolino was engaged in the same tactic: Trying to railroad Simon into a conviction in order to find a "real killer" to free Porter. The real kicker is that Ciolino reportedly then proceeded to "help" Simon pick out his defense attorney, a close friend of Ciolino's. (Note to any potential murder defendant: DO NOT TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SEE YOU FOUND GUILTY.) That link also includes lots of the usual stuff from the students about how convinced they are after this experience that journalists have the power and duty to change the world, etc, which is admirable and all but, sadly, is also the overzealous claptrap that causes well-intentioned reporters with an activist streak to end up with bogus stories that in the first place.

If the allegations are true, the implications are quite far-reaching. Note, of course, that even if true this doesn't mean Porter is guilty, but even some of Porter's defense attorneys have said they thought he did it, and the case exonerating him and convicting Simon was apparently based entirely on Simon's confession and the surrounding statements, which have all been recanted.

Bonus points: A CBS News broadcast that contained alleged propaganda bits from Protess' people was played live during Ciolino's interrogation of Simon, the implication apparently being that "Look, the whole world thinks you did it, so you should confess to avoid the death penalty". The kicker? Yes, the anchor was the King of Pain himself, Dan Rather.

Illinois Democrats: "You're Too Stupid To Balance Your Checkbook."
Once again, we see that things like "jobs" and "education" take the backseat to ridiculous non-issues.

A law designed to protect consumers from outrageous payday loan interest goes into effect today.

But consumer advocates fear that lenders will try to evade the law, which applies to loans of 120 days or less, by making the loans longer term. To avoid this, Gov. Blagojevich is asking the Department of Financial and Professional Regulations to "aggressively" enforce the law, with particular attention to lenders who may try to get around it.

"We will not tolerate any loan that is a subterfuge against the intent of the act, and we intend to make sure that no lender can avoid the act's most important consumer protections," said Dean Martinez, acting secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations.

Martinez said the department sent letters last week to payday lenders instructing them that any loan product that involves a future wage assignment like a post-dated check, charges an interest rate above 36 percent and has a term longer than 120 days could be considered a subterfuge of the payday loan law and subject to its restrictions.

Payday loans are short-term loans for small amounts of money -- usually between $100 and $1,000 -- secured against a post-dated check. Payday loan stores charge an average annual percentage rate of 595 percent. Problems arise when borrowers can't pay back the loan right away, and have to keep refinancing. A $1,000 loan can turn into a $10,000 debt because of interest and fees.

Last year, lenders made 1.4 million payday loans, which generated $1.3 billion for the lenders, according to the governor's office.

The new law:

*Limits the interest that can be charged for each loan to $15.50 per $100.

*Provides that payday borrowers cannot have payday loans for more than 45 days -- after that time, they must have a seven-day loan-free period.

*Caps loan amounts to $1,000 or 25 percent of a customer's monthly pay, whichever is less.

*Prevents borrowers from having more than two payday loans at a time.

*Creates a new 56-day repayment period with no additional interest charges for borrowers who have trouble repaying their loans.

*Protects borrowers from attorney fees and court costs.

*Extends special protection to members of the military.

Alan Alop is an attorney for a customer at an American Cash-N-Go in Schaumburg who took out an $800 payday loan in August. The loan increased to $1,200 with interest and fees, and in November the customer was told she had to switch to an installment loan. The customer, who asked not to be named, now must make installment payments that will total $6,276, or almost eight times the original loan, according to Alop.

"It's a terrible thing, what's going on with her," said Alop, an attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

It is a terrible thing. It's terrible that Illinois schools don't teach the basics of economics and finance required to grasp how to avoid a situation like that: By not taking out the ridiculously disadvantageous loan in the first place.

Look at the stipulations of the law: They don't actually restrict the lender nearly as much as they restrict the person taking out the loan, because the problem isn't the lender, it's people being incredibly irresponsible with their debts. I've actually worked collections, and the number one excuse you hear is "I could pay the bill, but I don't want to, because I don't see why they charged me all those fees for not paying my bill for two years." Probably because it was expressly and clearly stated in the contract you agreed to when you took out the loan that you'd pay it back, or else they'd charge you a whole bunch of fees?

Considering that most Illinois high school graduates don't seem to know how to balance a checkbook in the first place (nevermind make change without a cash register), a smarter thing to do would be to educate them instead of passing laws that enable irresponsible decision makers to remain ignorant and guarantee that those who are poor due to their (lack of) financial skills will continue to be poor. Bad lenders will continue to be bad lenders, and they will continue to find new ways to take advantage of people who don't know any better. You can't easily use the law to protect people from mistakes that they want to make, nor is it really ethical to do so.

That said, the percentage of Illinoisans impacted by this problem is infinitesimal in comparison to, well, virtually any other problem on the table.

Applied Technology
The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago is a pretty neat little historical project, even just for the maps.

Almost Like Being Governor of Southern Illinois
Glenn Poshard is the new President of SIU. Congratulations to a good man who's qualified for much, much higher office but always seems right at home wherever he is.

WHERE IS IEMA?
An email from an anonymous juror back home in Williamson County claims that when the tornado warning came down Tuesday, the Williamson County Courthouse kicked the jurors out into the street and told them to drive home because the judges and State's Attorney wanted to go home, too. (This is a clear violation of the #1 rule of tornado safety: You do not attempt to cruise around in your car during a tornado warning.) One juror, driving home in sheet rain through which they could not see, found Route 13 (right along where the storm passed over) blocked off by an Illinois Department of Transportation truck due to flooding.

Apparently, the courthouse has no disaster plan, and a telephone investigation by angry jurors and the Franklin County reporter for the Southern Illinoisan revealed that the courthouse later claimed they could've stayed since the whole courthouse wasn't closed, that they had no disaster plan, that they once tried to put one together but gave up, that they thought that they had no basement (Marion policemen disagree), and that they didn't know who was in charge (the Sheriff). Some jurors may intend to tell the judges that they're angry with the court for endangering their lives and are too biased against the State to serve on a jury.

Yeah, combined with Governor Blagojevich's sterling leadership qualities, this is making me feel lots better about the aftermath of a potential New Madrid earthquake.

We're Special
Conservative Cat's third Illinois blogger carnival is up, and I'm in it again. Sadly, this may well be the last one I qualify for!

Don't Drive In Chicago
To complete today's tour of Illinois state governance, I give you an update on the status of reader Jason Feagans' traffic ticket. As you may recall, Darth Daley's bounty hunters tracked him down in Texas to let him know he once allegedly parked somewhere unacceptable, 10 months after the fact.

Anyhow, today I got a call from my mother. She told me that I got a piece of mail from the city of Chicago. It was a $50 parking ticket that was [written] on September 27, 2004, that was just recently issued. The city of Chicago likes to post their parking tickets on people's cars with pride. Those bright orange tickets glued to mirrors and driver side windows, very hard to miss them. My car, however, was never ticketed with one of those tickets. Instead, they waited close to 10 months before mailing it to me in Dallas (actually, it was Denton). Naturally I called the city of Chicago and I asked them about it, and I was told that the reason it took 10 months was because my car was registered in Texas, and they had to contact the state of Texas, get my name and address (my mom's actually, I used her's instead of mine), then mail me the ticket. I have never heard of anyone ever doing this....

They're still after him, but the joke's on them, as Jason explains in earlier comments:

My Illinois hell is continuing. They sent me a bill for that parking ticket, the fine's doubled to $100, and a threat to boot my car. The jokes on them, I bought a new car and used the one they ticketed as a trade in. They're welcome to come boot it. They've got to find it first, and seeing how the car was cut up for scrap, I don't think booting it now is going to do them much good.

Reader "Fred Mertz" suffered a similar fate:

This happened to me in that I received a parking ticket for a violation that supposedly occurred in downtown Chicago. I found out about it over two years later when I received a final collection notice and couldn't meet the appeal deadline nor did I think it would make any difference. Aside from the fact that I always take the L to work, there were other discrepancies with the ticket, including the make of the car. I ignored the ticket for a couple of years until it was turned over to a law firm for collection. I asked them for a copy of the ticket and told them that I couldn't have gotten the ticket. Finally they told me I could ignore the ticket because it was an error.

...and now, just tonight, reader Doug Cobb appends a similar tale of woe:

I've got the capper on this subject. I received in the mail about two weeks ago a letter from the law offices of Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP entitled "Notice of Liability" in which it states I owe the City of Chicago $60.00 for a parking ticket from January 17, 1999. I've lived in two states since that time and this is the first I've ever heard of this ticket. I lived in Chicago until August of 2001 and not once did I ever receive any mail or anything on this issue. It gets better, yesterday I received a letter from the same law office entitled "Notice of Judgment". It appears as though they've issued a judgment against me for not only this mystery ticket from January 17, 1999 but all of a sudden they've added an additional one, for another $60.00 of course, from August 15, 1999. I guess it wasn't old enough to make the first cut off line. When I contacted the law firm that is attempting to collect this debt they were unable to provide with a copy of the tickets in question nor the allegedly numerous letter's I supposedly received from the City regarding my outstanding tickets. I asked the person that took the call about a contact name at the City of Chicago and he stated they didn't have one. Feeling slighly ornery I inquired how they landed this account with the City if they don't have a contact name for their client and asked the gentleman if the City simply picked a law firms name out of the phone book and they just happened to get lucky that way. What a wind fall. Either way, the original mystery ticket is now 6 years, 10 months and two days old. The other one is only 6 years 2 months and 4 days old. I'm wondering is there maybe a seven year statute of limitations on collecting these and that's why these are now such an issue because in a few months the City of Chicago forfeits their ability to collect or maybe they simply purge the debt from their system as uncollectable after 7 years. Maybe it's all a scam. This is Chicago politics after all. If you were to ask me if I parked somewhere 6 weeks ago I couldn't give you a definitive answer, let alone 6 years.

Maybe it is. Do they just pick some random guy who left the city and send him a ticket as punishment for escaping? I wonder if, after I move, I'll get one in the mail with a signed picture of Governor Blagojevich.

Update: Wow, somebody's law firm has an ego. I wonder if some law firms have to install drains in the floor to let out the slime.

WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPER...game.
Ticket scalping is a lucrative business:

In football parlance, the Illinois Lottery wasn't just called for a penalty for its Little Lotto Fantasy Football promotion - it was thrown out of the game.

After hearing from the National Football League that it was illegal to run a promotion without league permission that promised lucky fans tickets to the Super Bowl, lottery officials pulled the plug.

The game, which started Oct. 1 and awarded one set of Super Bowl tickets and other goodies to a single winner each night, was supposed to run through Oct. 31. Now it will end Wednesday night. Winners will still receive their prizes, lottery spokesman Courtney Hill said.

Lottery officials believed that they didn't need NFL approval under the terms of a contract with Promo-Travel International, the company that sold the state the promotion, Hill said.

Hill also said lottery officials were aware that the words "Super Bowl" and "NFL" are licensed trademarks that belong to the league. So they used the words "Super Game XL" instead.

In radio ads for the promotion, they even made sure that the word "Super" could be heard but where listeners might have expected "Bowl" there was only cheering.

To be clear here, the State of Illinois was so keenly aware of the liabilities inherent in what they were doing that they made comical (and horrifically misinformed) changes to avoid, or so they thought, any trademark issues. (The operative phrase here is "likelyhood of confusion".) Yet they couldn't be bothered to check with the NFL? So how much did Promo-Travel International have to donate to Governor Blagojevich's campaign to get buy-in on this?

Next week: The Illinois Lottery raffles off a stolen car.

The Electronic Ambulance Chaser
...and to think, lawyers wonder why people think they're parasites.

Like many shoppers, attorney Stephen Diamond buys lots of stuff online. But unlike other consumers, he sues retailers that don't charge him state and local sales taxes -- and is making a profit doing it.

Using a state whistle-blower law, Mr. Diamond since 2002 has filed about 95 suits in Cook County court here against retailers that failed to charge him taxes on Internet sales, alleging that they broke the law. In cases where the state of Illinois joins the suits and prevails, he is entitled to up to 25% of the financial damages, with the rest going to state coffers.

"This is a no-brainer," says Mr. Diamond, a veteran class-action attorney who has a scenic view of Lake Michigan from his downtown office. "I started going on the Internet and discovered to my astonishment that companies like Target Corp. and Wal-Mart were not collecting taxes on their Internet sales. I was like, "Wow!"

State laws allow for the collection of taxes on Internet purchases if the retailers have a physical presence -- a "nexus" in legal terms -- in the state. But different states define "nexus" differently. In some states, the regular presence of a single sales person, even a traveling one, is enough to establish a nexus. In Illinois, a retailer is considered to have a physical presence if a customer can return an item purchased online to a retailer's physical location.

To gather evidence for their lawsuits, Mr. Diamond and a couple of staffers went online and began the process of buying items from hundreds of different retailers. The goal: to see whether the retailers applied taxes at the end of the purchase. "If it showed no tax, we would go ahead and make the purchase," he says. They identified about 150 retailers that weren't collecting taxes. Of those, about 100, Mr. Diamond figured, met the test for having a "physical presence" in the state. The items they bought online were modest, usually costing around $15 to $20. Some were eventually returned, and others were given away.

Chaka Patterson, the chief of special litigation in the Illinois attorney general's office, says he was surprised by the flood of cases from Mr. Diamond. It was the first time that the whistle-blower law had been used in this manner. Many of the cases have merit, he says.

Mr. Patterson declines to estimate the state's take if the cases are won but says that Mr. Diamond could end up earning millions. That's because the financial damages can total up to three times the amount of uncollected taxes.

Other states are less... Shall we say... Enthused.

Eager to expand his franchise beyond Illinois, Mr. Diamond subsequently widened his focus to include the three other states -- Tennessee, Nevada and Virginia -- that had laws permitting private citizens to sue on behalf of the government over taxes owed and to share in the financial damages recovered.

In 2003, in Tennessee's Davidson County Chancery Court, Mr. Diamond filed about 30 suits alleging noncollection of sales taxes on online purchases by Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com Inc., PetsMart Inc., and Bass Pro Shops, among other companies.

But he didn't reckon on the reaction of Loren Chumley, Tennessee's commissioner of revenue, who wasn't happy that a private citizen was using the whistle-blower law to enrich himself.

Viewing Mr. Diamond as an opportunist exploiting a legal loophole, Ms. Chumley immediately set out to change state law. She succeeded, and the cases were dismissed. Ms. Chumley says that Mr. Diamond was misusing the law. Mr. Diamond counters that Tennessee wasn't being aggressive enough in collecting taxes.

But Ms. Chumley wasn't through. In 2003, she told Virginia's tax commissioner, Kenneth Wayne Thorson, about Mr. Diamond. Mr. Thorson says he notified the staff of Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and said, "We don't want to go there. It is going to be a mess. We need to put a stop to this."

In February 2004, Virginia's state legislature voted unanimously to change the year-old law, which now excludes private citizens from getting money by suing online retailers that don't collect sales taxes.

Nevada could be the next to snub Mr. Diamond. He has filed 10 suits there that the attorney general's office moved to dismiss. A state trial court refused to dismiss those cases, and a state supreme court decision is pending on the outcome.

Even Illinois, judicial hellhole and whatnot, is not cooperative enough for Mr. Diamond's appetite for litigation:

In Illinois, meanwhile, Mr. Diamond is fighting with the state over his share of the proceeds in cases involving some big retailers he sued.

Last year, the attorney general's office negotiated a $2.4 million settlement with Wal-Mart, Target and Office Depot about uncollected sales taxes dating back to 1999. Mr. Diamond says that since he did all the legwork, he is entitled to the full 25% share plus any costs he incurred, which is allowable under the law. But the attorney general's office wants to pay him less than 25%, and nothing for his costs.

Mr. Diamond has since filed an appeal against the state of Illinois.

Can I sue Mr. Diamond for my share of the expenses the State of Illinois has incurred dealing with him?

The Happiest Place On Earth
Doug Finke offers more examples of the visionary leadership of the State of Illinois:

[Democratic Secretary of State Jesse White] said that when he took office eight years ago, there were huge lines at many driver's license facilities.

"The wait time for customers in certain areas of the state was absolutely unacceptable," White said. "We immediately implemented one common-sense approach to serve the people of Illinois better. We provided chairs so that you no longer had to stand in line."

People were no longer standing in long lines, they were sitting in long lines. White's office said it is an example of how he has used everything from the mundane to high tech to improve service.

I saw one of these makeshift lines when I went to get my license renewed in Marion back in June before my vacation. Correction: I saw them when I was finally able to get inside. First, I came by on Monday, jerked on the door only to see a handwritten sticky note plastered to the door informing me that as a cost-saving measure, they're now closed on Mondays.

Then I went back on Tuesday. The Marion DMV is a potential killing field: Both sides of the access road that run right in front of the building are used as parking, creating one giant blind spot for pedestrians and drivers alike, and leaving about half a lane for every teenager with a still-warm license to emulate Death Race 2000, flooring the accelerator as they level their hood ornaments at anyone unfortunate enough to have to cross.

Enter Aaron. As I closed my eyes and took my chances darting across the road, I vaguely remember praying that I would be spared the incredible indignity of being killed in front of the DMV. I'd rather be found dead on the toilet like Elvis.

In any case, it was like the Superdome in there. The roughly 10'x10' waiting area was packed to the brim with depressed-looking people virtually sitting on each other's laps, and it wasn't exactly fit for human habitation, either: Along with the two employees who were desperately attempting to man the understaffed operation, janitorial services also appeared to have been victims of state budget cuts, and the unwashed masses left behind by the unwashed masses remained, staining the yellowing walls and upholstery. The helpful handwritten signs on the wall warned me that not only should I refrain from smoking, but that the state had jacked up renewal fees by roughly a billion percent.

When I signed in, I realized that the next person qued to be called up had signed in over an hour ago. Apparently, I was the only one who realized that I could leave, go to Fazoli's, and come back 45 minutes later once they'd burned off some of the people in front of me. It seems none of the staff thought to tell people that, either, although they were probably concerned about the liability issues raised by advising people to cross the road out front two more times than they strictly had to.

Of course, keeping your thinking as far inside the box as possible is a bipartisan event in Illinois state government:

Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, chairman of the task force, offered an example of how high fuel prices are affecting all segments of the economy.

The pizza place he's been patronizing for 30 years has added a $2 surcharge on deliveries because of high gasoline prices, Black said. And, Black noted, the pizza place is only four blocks from his home.

It apparently hadn't crossed Black's mind that at a mere four blocks away, he could pick up the pizza and save the $2.

Far more upsetting to me was when they jacked up the minimum wage, putting my favorite pizza place (which also made killer Italian beef) out of business, and the workers that the state thought they were helping out on the streets. Basing Southern Illinois wages on Chicago markets is, er, not sound policy.

Make The Nose Longer
There are so many good stories going right now it's hard to decide which to focus in on, but former Governor Ryan's trial is underway, and CBS2 has been blogging it.

For the most part Ryan listens intently to the questioning of the potential jurors and takes notes. Sometimes it appears that Ryan is just doodling though - he spent several minutes one day drawing a design on his Styrofoam water cup....Ryan also checks in with the court sketch artists from time to time to see how they are drawing him.

Forensic accounting is fun!

George Ryan was occasionally short of cash as lieutenant governor, but after he was elected secretary of state, he carried wads of cash and handed out hundreds of dollars at a time, prosecutors said in a court filing made public Thursday.

Yet from 1993 through 2002, Ryan and his wife never used an automated teller machine, and they withdrew cash from their bank accounts just seven times for a total of about $6,700, according to the government.

The filing came in a response to a defense motion seeking to bar prosecutors from commenting at trial on the frequency or size of Ryan's cash withdrawals.

Among the beneficiaries was Ryan's son-in-law, Michael Fairman, who was given $55,000 in campaign funds at a time of financial difficulties, the government said.

The styrofoam cup is practice for doodling on the walls of his prison cell.

"Pet Projects"
An Illinoisan writes a letter to Senator Obama, asking him to oppose pork barrel spending in order to help pay for hurricane relief. Senator Obama responds:

Dear Mary:

Thank you for contacting me regarding Hurricane Katrina and rescue operations for the pets of evacuees. I appreciate hearing from you....

As you know, the lack of government planning for this disaster has drawn the ire of many Americans, and a substantial review process must take place to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. Planning for the rescue and care of pets should certainly be part of that discussion....

P.S. Our system does not allow direct response to this email.

Apparently, the first process that should be reviewed is that by which Illinois Democrats determine the interests of their constituents.

"'Representative Jim Powell thinks your problem and flag-burning are among the biggest problems facing America today. That's why Jim Powell has introduced House Resolution number 11461. It would ban flag-burning in all...' Aw, he never even read it." - Hank Hill

Daley-Seeking Missile
We're closing in!

A federal grand jury indicted former [Chicago] patronage coordinator Robert Sorich, ex-Department of Aviation staffer Timothy McCarthty, and former Department of Streets and Sanitation officials Patrick Slattery, John Sullivan and Daniel Katalinic on corruption charges. All specifically were accused of participating in an alleged scheme to funnel personnel and other city resources to political campaigns by rigging job tests to help political favorites.

But the bigger news was the indictment's reference to an alleged "co-schemer" identified as Individual A. The indictment does not name Individual A but says the person worked full-time in the city's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs between 1993 and 2000, and helped run a political field group known as the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO).

That would appear to describe former intergovernmental director Mr. Reyes, who left City Hall in 2000 after joining the staff early in the 1990s, founded and still heads HDO, and was Mr. Sorich's supervisor at City Hall.

More, please.

Done Dirt Cheap
Do not pass go.

A bagman who helped a top [Chicago] city official collect more than $100,000 in bribes was sentenced to more than two years in prison Friday for his role in the city's Hired Truck scandal.

Gerald Wesolowski Jr., 47, got at least a year off his prison sentence for helping federal prosecutors advance their case against Wesolowski's boss, First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak.

Tomczak pleaded guilty in July and will serve less than four years in prison, according to his plea deal with prosecutors. Tomczak, too, is cooperating.

Wesolowski started out in Streets and Sanitation as a cement mixer, making $10.10 an hour, but stayed there only a few years before moving to the Water Department. Wesolowski eventually became a top administrator, making about $80,000 a year.

But Wesolowski served another important function to Tomczak, collecting bribes paid by truck businesses that wanted city work and shaking them down for contributions to politicians whom Tomczak wanted to curry favor with.

Tomczak persuaded Wesolowski to do Tomczak's "dirty deeds," Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins said at sentencing. Wesolowski collected more than $100,000 in bribes from at least four trucking companies over 10 years.

Wesolowski, who moved from the South Side to the Gold Coast, apologized for what he did.

"I just want to apologize to everybody. I made a big mistake," he said.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan scolded Wesolowski, saying his actions not only tarnished the reputation of Chicago, but made it harder on honest city officials to do their jobs. The judge fined Wesolowski $7,500 and ordered him to forfeit $25,000.

Next!

Rubber Hoses Are Always An Option
Mayor Daley is interrogated by the Feds for two long hours.

Daley -- appearing on the verge of tears at a hastily called news conference after he met with the feds -- said the findings of the probe have so far made him feel "embarrassed," "mad" and "disappointed."

But, he added, "I will overcome these challenges."

Poor baby.

"I'd be terrified [to let the mayor testify]," said former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter of Ahrnstein & Lehr. "He's not a very articulate guy. When he answers questions, he answers in funny ways....It could be they're just following the evidence wherever it leads...."

I'd say that's pretty much certain. Somewhere deep inside, I still hold out hope that this will all end for Mayor Daley and Governor Blagojevich much as "The Blues Brothers" ended for Jake and Elwood.