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TWO DEMOCRATS WHO REALLY SUPPORT TERRORISTS

Steve Guerra, convicted FALN supporter, top Illinois state government official and protege of Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il).

Hyperbolic charges are thrown with great regularity and unfairness in American politics. Character assassination is a form of art and negative campaigning is the norm. Most of the time, it’s a useful rule of thumb to take whatever perjoratives are commonly used with a grain of salt. And then there are the exceptions that are so absurd as to make the usual slander an understatement.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich – who hired Steve Guerra as his $ 120,000 a year deputy

The Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday ran a front page expose on Steve Guerra, a top official in the administration of Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was hired despite having gone to prison for refusing to testify before a Federal grand jury about what he knew regarding a terror bombing campaign carried out by the Puerto Rican terrorist group, the FALN. The revelation has caused an uproar among the family members of the victims of the FALN terrorists and only slightly less outrage among Illinois Democrats and Republicans in the legislature who were already unhappy with Gov. Blagojevich.

Why would Governor Blagojevich, currently floundering even among his own Democratic supporters, take a risk and hire a sinister figure like Guerra, a felon who obstructed a murder investigation of one of the FALN’s victims with his refusal to testify ? Two reasons:

First, Illinois politics is replete with shadowy tough guys, mobbed-up businessmen and fixers with criminal pasts who cracked a few skulls here and there in their youth. Such folks, who like Mr. Guerra, often appear to lack a neck, are not rare here. From, Taylor Street in Chicago to Cicero to Rosemont to small towns in the collar counties, you have lots of people in both political parties involved in retail politics who are “connected”. Granted, they usually mean to men nicknamed “Big Tuna” or ” the Clown”, and not to Marxist terror groups, but chances were that if Guerra had kept a low profile, no one living in a glass house themselves was going to be seen pitching stones any time soon.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il) – a history of pulling strings for convicted FALN terrorists

Secondly, Guerra is a close, personal, friend of far-left but Daley machine-backed, Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Chicago. Representative Gutierrez has made constituent services to imprisoned FALN members something of a minor hobby during his years in Congress. It was also Gutierrez who helped persuade President Clinton to grant clemency to FALN terrorists convicted of bombmaking, sedition, robbery, conspiracy and other lesser charges. By hiring Guerra, the struggling Governor Blagojevich was reinforcing a political connection to an influential figure in the Daley machine and Chicago’s Puerto Rican community.

The remarkable aspect of this episode is not that in this day and age, an American politician would knowingly hire or assist an individual with strong ties to a terrorist group but that the moral state of politics in Illinois is so low, that hiring Guerra raised no eyebrows among party insiders in Springfield.

At least until the story hit page one.

WINTER’S UNRELENTING GRIP

It has been a long time since Chicago has had snow in mid-April.

ST.PATRICK’S DAY IN CHICAGO

I’ve been feeling the need for a blogging break, but as Zenpundit is doing so well lately, I’ve been trying to err in favor of keeping the posts relatively fresh for the readers who like coming here frequently. In an effort to address the other side of the coin, I met some friends and co-workers yesterday in the Wrigleyville area on a pub crawl.

The weather was nice, if a little cold and the crowds were well-behaved and friendly until the early evening, which is when I headed home. Lunch was a tasty Italian beef sandwich with hot peppers at D’Augustino’s, on Addison, which hit the spot. I skipped the pizza everyone else was eating as I thought I was getting more than enough calories as it was in liquid form. ;o)

A mellow battery-recharger on a day where everyone is a little bit Irish.

More posts to come later today…..

“DA MARE”

“Chicago ain’t ready for reform”

Alderman Paddy Bauler

Jonathan at Chicago Boyz points to “A Brilliant Analysis of Chicago Politics” by Michael Barone entitled “Mayor Daley Re-elected“. I have to concur.

I grew up reading columns by the legendary Mike Royko and as a small lad of five or six, I was hustled by patronage minions of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Park District overlord, Ed Kelley, along with other children in a park district summer day camp, onto school buses to participate in a parade downtown marching past Hizzoner himself ( this was my first and last moment participating in Democratic politics). Barone’s piece on Chicago politics is one of the few I would put in a league with Royko or alongside the excellent Cohen and Taylor biography of Richard J. Daley, American Pharoah. An excerpt from Barone:

“Things became different after Richard M. Daley was elected to a two-year term in 1989 after the death of Harold Washington. The new Mayor Daley was as popular in the suburbs as in the city–perhaps even more so. He became the face of the Democratic party in Illinois. Even though Republicans, in the Republican year of 1994, were able to re-elect Edgar and get majorities in the legislature, they have fared disastrously otherwise. The Daleys gave great encouragement and tacit support to Bill Clinton in the 1992 primaries, and were amply rewarded: Bill Daley became NAFTA honcho and then secretary of commerce; Richie Daley advanced his plans to expand O’Hare Airport. His father built O’Hare to its present dimensions; he seeks to expand it much more. They both recognized that Chicago established its great eminence in 1850-1950 as the railroad hub of the nation and have consistently sought to make it in 1950–2050 the great airport hub of the nation.

Asked if the sacrificed Democrat would like the plan, Madigan, in the monosyllabic don’t-back-no-losers language of Illinois politics, replied, “No.”

Indeed.