Slow day Mick ? Spent untold column inches parsing Milan's words. This sounds like the literary equavalent of picking lint from one's navel.

Leave the little nuggets like these to someone who does them better, like Eric Zorn.

"...parsing Milan's words."?

Gee, a lawyer's whole existence consists of the words they speak and write.

And those words have a very real effect on the lives of many people.

So, the words of lawyers should be parsed, as vigorously and minutely as lawyers parse their own words and the words of other lawyers.

The parsing of words is what passes for Justice, these days.

It's so typical, of those who practice to deceive, to minimize the words that they use, while parsing, ad infinitum, the words of those whom they oppose.

See if you'll have the same opinion on the parsing of words, if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a Dick Devine/Bob Milan style persecution, I mean prosecution.

Is there a particular case you would like to describe where Milan wanted to withhold justice? Has anything come out that suggests Milan would not want justice for any specific person? I'm all ears.

Hey, T, you sound a lot like me!

How many phony Orions' are there out there ?

Bob Milan is going to bring Jon Burge back to help get good confessions.

The King Holiday and Its Meaning

by Samuel Francis



"Martin Luther King Jr. gives a speech at his Southern "Christian" Leadership Conference (SCLC) on September 26, 1962, as his comrades - Ann Braden, Carl Braden, and James Dombrowski - Intently listen."
On August 2, 1983, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill creating a legal public holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although there had been little discussion of the bill in the House itself and little awareness among the American public that Congress was even considering such a bill, it was immediately clear that the U.S. Senate sould take up the legislation soon after the Labor Day recess.

The House had passed the King Holiday Bill by an overwhelming vote of 338-90, with significant bipartisan support (both Reps. Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich voted for it), and the Reagan administration was indicating that the president would not veto it if it came before him. In these circumstances, most political observers seemed to think that Senate enactment and presidential signature of the bill would take place virtually unopposed; few anticipated that the battle over the King holiday in the next few weeks would be one of the most bitter congressional and public controversies of the decade.

From 1981 to 1986 I worked on the staff of North Carolina Republican Sen. John P. East, a close associate and political ally of the senior senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. While the legislation was being considered I wrote a paper entitled "Martin Luther King, Jr.: Political Activities and Associations." It was simply documentation of the affiliations with various individuals and organizations of communist background that King had maintained since the days when he first became a nationally prominent figure.

In September, the paper was distributed to several Senate offices for the purpose of informing them of these facts about King, facts in which the national news media showed no interest. It was not originally my intention that the paper be read on the floor of the Senate, but the Helms office itself expressed an interest in using it as a speech, and it was read in the Congressional Record on October 3, 1983. During ensuing debate over the King holiday, I acted as a consultant to Sen. Helms and his regular staff.

Sen. Helms, like Sen. East and many other conservatives in the Senate and the country, was strongly opposed to establishing a national holiday for King. The country already observed no fewer than nine legal public holidays --- New Years Day, "Presidents Day" as it is officially known or "Washington's Birthday" as an unreconstructed American public continues to insisting on calling it, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

With the exception of Washington's Birthday and Christmas, not a one of these holidays celebrates a single individual. As Sen. East argued, to establish a special holiday just for King was to "elevate him to the same level as the father of our country and above the many other Americans whose achievements approach Washington's." Whatever King's own accomplishments, few would go so far as to claim that they equaled or exceeded those of many other statesmen, soldiers, and creative minds of American history.

That argument alone should have provided a compelling reason to reject the King holiday, but for some years a well-organized and powerful lobby had pressured Congress for its enactment, and anyone who questioned the need for the holiday was likely to be accused or "racism" or "insensitivity." Congressional Democrats, always eager to court the black voting bloc that has become their party's principal mainstay, were solidly in favor of it (the major exception being Georgia Democrat Larry McDonald, who led the opposition to the measure in the House and who died before the month was over when a Soviet warplane shot down the civilian airliner on which he and nearly three hundred other civilians were traveling).


Charles D. Brennan, retired Assistant Director of the FBI, stated that he had personally been involved in the FBI surveillance of King and knew from first-hand observation the truth about King's sexual conduct --- conduct that Mr. Brennan characterized as "orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women."



Republicans, always timid about accusations of racial insensitivity and eager to court the black vote themselves, were almost as supportive of the proposal as the Democrats. Few lawmakers stopped to consider the deeper cultural and political impact a King holiday would have, and few journalists and opinion-makers encouraged them to consider it. Instead, almost all of them --- lawmakers and opinion-makers --- devoted their energies to vilifying the only public leader who displayed the courage to question the very premise of the proposal --- whether Martin Luther King was himself worthy of the immense and unprecedented honor being placed upon him.

It soon became clear that whatever objections might be raised against the holiday, no one in politics or the media wanted to hear about them and that even the Republican leadership of the Senate was sympathetic to passage of the legislation. When the Senate Majority Leader, Howard Baker, scheduled action to consider the bill soon after Congress returned from the Labor Day recess, King's widow, Coretta Scott King, called Sen. Baker and urged him to postpone action in order to gain time to gather more support for the bill. The senator readily agreed, telling the press, "She felt chances for passage would be enhanced and improved if it were postponed. The postponement of this is not for the purpose of delay." Nevertheless, despite the support for the bill from the Republican leadership itself, the vote was delayed again, mainly because of the efforts of Sen. Helms.

Sen. Helms delivered his speech on King on October 3 and later supplemented it with a document of some 300 pages consisting mainly of declassified FBI and other government reports about King's connections with communists and communist-influenced groups that the speech recounted. That document, distributed on the desks of all senators, was promptly characterized as "a packet of filth" by New York's Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who threw it to the floor of the Senate and stomped on it (he later repeated his stomping off the Senate floor for the benefit of the evening news), while Sen. Edward Kennedy denounced the Helms speech as "Red smear tactics" that should be "shunned by the American people."

A few days later, columnist Edwin M. Yoder, Jr. in the Washington Post sneered that Jesse Helms "is a stopped clock if ever American politics had one" who could be depended on to "contaminate a serious argument with debating points from the gutter," while he described Kings as "a prophet, a man of good works, a thoroughly wholesome influence in American life." Writing in the Washington Times, conservative Aram Bakshian held that Sen. Helms was simply politically motivated: "He has nothing to lose and everything to gain by heaping scorn on the memory of Martin Luther King and thereby titillating the great white trash." Leftist Richard Cohen wrote of Helms in the Post, "His sincerity is not in question. Only his decency."

Meanwhile, Sen. Helms, with legal assistance from the Conservative Caucus, filed suit in federal court to obtain the release of FBI surveillance tapes on King that had been sealed by court order until the year 2027. Their argument was that senators could not fairly evaluate King's character and beliefs anc ast an informed vote on the holiday measure until they had gained access to this sealed material and had an opportunity to examine it. The Reagan Justice Department opposed this action, and on October 18, U.S. District Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr. refused to release the King files, which remain selaed to this day.

Efforts to send the bill to committee also failed. Although it is a routine practice for the Senate to refer all legislation to committee, where hearings can consider the merits of the proposed law, this was not done in the case of the King holiday bill. Sen. Kennedy, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that hearings on a similiar proposal had been held in a previous Congress and there was no need to hold new hearings. He was correct that hearings had been held, but there had been considerable turnover in the Senate since then and copies of those hearings were not generally available. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and many conservatives, the White House, the courts, and the media all wanted the King holiday bill passed as soon as possible, with as little serious discussion of King's character, beliefs, and associations as possible.

Why this was so was becoming increasingly clear to me as an observer of the process. Our office soon began to receive phone calls and letters from all over the country expressing strong popular opposition to the bill. Aides from other Senate offices --- I specifically remember one from Washington state and one from Pennsylvania --- told me their mail from constituents was running overwhelmingly against the bill, and I recall overhearing Sen. Robert Dole telling a colleague that he had to go back to Kansas and prove he was still a Republican despite his support for the King holiday bill. The political leaders of both parties were beginning to grasp that they were sitting on top of a potential political earthquake, which they wanted to stifle before it swallowed them all.

On October 19, then, the vote was held, 78 in favor of the holiday and 22 against (37 Republicans and 41 Democrats voted for the bill; 18 Republicans and 4 Democrats voted against it); several substitute amendments intended to replace the King holiday measure were defeated without significant debate.

President Reagan signed the bill into law on November 2nd. I distinctly remember standing with Sen. Helms in the Republican cloakroom just off the floor of the Senate during the debate, listening to one senator after another approaching him to apologize for the insulting language they had just used about Sen. Helms on the floor. Not a few of the senators assured him they knew he was right about King but what else could they do but denounce Helms and vote for the holiday? Most of them claimed political expediency as their excuse, and I recall one Senate aide chortling that "what old Jesse needs to do is get back to North Carolina and try to save his own neck" from the coming disaster he had prepared for himself in opposing the King holiday.

Indeed, it was conventional wisdom in Washington at the time that Jesse Helms had committed political suicide by his opposition to the King holiday and that he was certain to lose re-election the following year against a challenge by Democratic Governor James B. Hunt. In fact, Sen. Helms was trailing in the pools prior to the controversy over the holiday. The Washington Post carried a story shortly after the vote on the holiday bill with the headline, "Battle to Block King Holiday May Have Hurt Helms at Home," and a former political reporter from North Carolina confidently gloated in the Post on October 23 that Helms was "Destined to Lose in '84."

In the event, of course, Sen. Helms was re-elected by a healthy margin, and the Post itself acknowledged the role of his opposition to the King holiday as a major factor in his political revival. As Post reporter Bill Peterson wrote in news stories after Helms' re-election on November 6, 1984, his "standing among whites . . . shot up in polls after he led a filibuster against a bill establishing a national holiday on the birthday of the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.," and on November 18, "A poll before the filibuster showed Helms trailing Hunt by 20 percentage points. By October, Hunt's lead was sliced in half. White voters who had been feeling doubts about Helms began returning to the fold." If Sen. Helms' speech against the King holiday had any enduring effect, then, it was to help re-elect him to the Senate.

So, was Jesse Helms right about Martin Luther King? That King had close connections with individuals and groups that were openly communist is clear today, as it was clear during King's own lifetime and during the debate on the holiday bill. Indeed, only two weeks after the Senate vote, on November 1, 1983, the New York Times published a letter written by Michael Parenti, an associate fellow of the far-left Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and a frequent contributor to Political Affairs, an official organ of the Communist Party that styles itself the "Theoretical Journal of the Communist Party USA."

The letter demanded "What if communists had links to Dr. King?" Mr. Parenti pointed out that "The three areas in which King was most active --- civil rights, peace and the labor struggle (the latter two toward the end of his life) --- are also areas in which U.S. Communists have worked long and devotedly," and he criticized "liberals" who "once again accept the McCarthyite premise that U.S. Communists are purveyors of evil and that any association with them taints one forever. Dr. King himself would not have accepted such a premise." Those of Mr. Parenti's persuasion may see nothing scandalous in associations with known communists, but the "liberals" whom he criticized knew better than to make that argument in public.

Of course, to say that King maintained close affiliations with persons whom he knew to be communists is not to say that King himself was ever a communist or that the movement he led was controlled by communists; but his continuing associations with communists, and his repeated dishonesty about those connections, do raise serious questions about his own character, about the nature of his own political views and goals, and about whether we as a nation should have awarded him (and should continue to award him) the honor the holiday confers. Moreover, the embarrassing political connections that were known at the time seem today to be merely the tip of the ethical and political iceberg with which King's reputation continues to collide.

While researching King's background in 1983, I deliberately chose to dwell on his communist affiliations rather than on other issues involving his sexual morality. I did so because at that time the facts about King's subversive connections were well-documented, while the details of his sex life were not. In the course of writing the paper, however, I spoke to several former agents of the FBI who had been personally engaged in the FBI surveillance of King and who knew from first-hand observation that the rumors about his undisciplined sex life were substantially true.

A few years later, with the publication in 1989 of Ralph Abernathy's autobiography, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down," those rumors were substantiated by one of King's closest friends and political allies. It is quite true that a person's sex life is largely his own business, but in the case of an internationally prominent figure such as King, they become publicly relevant, and they are especially relevant given the high moral stature King's admirers habitually ascribe to him, the issue of his integrity as a Christian clergyman, and the proposal to elevate him to the status of a national moral icon.

In the course of the Senate debate on the King holiday, the East office received a letter from a retired FBI official, Charles D. Brennan. Mr. Brennan, who had served as Assistant Director of the FBI, stated that he had personally been involved in the FBI surveillance of King and knew from first-hand observation the truth about King's sexual conduct --- conduct that Mr. Brennan characterized as "orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women."

He also stated that "King frequently drank to excess and at times exhibited extreme emotional instability as when he once threatened to jump from his hotel room window." In a study that he prepared, Mr. Brennan described King's "sexual activities and his excessive drinking" that FBI surveillance discovered. It was this kind of conduct, he wrote, that led FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to describe King as "a tomcat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges" and President Lyndon Johnson to call King a "hypocrite preacher." Mr. Brennan also acknowledged:

"It was much the FBI collected. It was not the FBI's most shining hour. There would be no point in wallowing in it again. The point is that it is there. It is there in the form of transcripts, recordings, photos and logs. It is there in great quantity. There are volumes of material labeled 'obscene.' Future historians just will not be able to avoid it."

It is precisely this material that is sealed under court order until the year 2027 and to which the Senate was denied access prior to the vote on the King holiday.

One instance from King's life that perhpas illuminates his character was provided by historian David Garrow in his study of the FBI's surveillance of King. Garrow recounts what the FBI gathered during a 48-hour surveillance of King between February 22 and 24, 1964 in the Hyatt House Motel in Los Angeles: "In that forty-eight hours the Bureau acquired what in retrospect would be its most prized recordings of Dr. King. The treasured highlight was a long and extremely funny story-telling session during which King (a) bestowed supposedly honorific titles or appointments of an explicitly sexual nature on some of his friends, (b) engaged in an extended dialogue of double-entendre phrases that had sexual as well as religious connotations, and (c) told an explicit joke about the rumored sexual practices of recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy, with reference to both Mrs. Kennedy, and the President' funeral."

Garrow's characterization of the episode as "extremely funny" is one way of describing the incident; another is that during the session in Los Angeles, King, a Christian minister, made obscene jokes with his own followers (several of them also ministers), made sexual and sacreligious jokes, and made obscene and insulting remarks intended to be funny about the late President Kennedy and his sex life with Mrs. Kennedy.

It should be recalled that these jokes were made by King about a man who had supported his controversial cause, had lost political support because of his support for King and the civil rights movement, and had been dead for less than three months at the time King engaged in obscene humor about him and his wife. In February, 1964, the nation was still in a state of shock over Kennedy's death, but King apparently found his death a suitable occasion for dirty jokes.

More recently still, in addition to disclosures about King's bizarre sex life and his close connections with communists, it has come to light that King's record of deliberate deception in his own personal interests reaches as far back as his years in college and graduate school, when he plagiarized significant portions of his research papers and even his doctoral dissertation, an act that would cause the immediate ruin of any academic figure. Evidence of King's plagiarism, which was almost certainly known to his academic sponsors at Boston University and was indisputably known to other academics at the King Papers Project at Stanford University, was deliberately suppressed and denied. It finally came to light in reports published by The Wall Street Journal in 1990 and was later exhaustively documented in articles and a monograph by Theodore Pappas of the Rockford Institute.

Yet, incredibly --- even after thorough documentation of King's affiliations with communists, after the relevations about his personal moral flaws, and after proof of his brazen dishonesty in plagiarizing his dissertation and several other published writings --- incredibly there is no proposal to rescind the holiday that honors him. Indeed, states like Arizona and New Hampshire that did not rush to adopt their own holidays in honor of King have themselves been vilified and threatened with systematic boycotts.

The continuing indulgence of King is in part due to simple political cowardice --- fear of being denounced as a "racist" --- but also to the political utility of the King holiday for those who seek to advance their own political agenda. Almost immediately upon the enactment of the holiday bill, the King holiday came to serve as a kind of charter for the radical regime of "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" that now prevails at many of the nation's major universities and in many areas of public and private life.

This is so because the argument generally offered for the King holiday by King's own radical collaborators and disciples is considerably different from the argument for it offered by most Republicans and Democrats. The latter argue that they simply want to celebrate what they take to be King's personal courage and commitment to racial tolerance; the holiday, in their view, is simply celebratory and commemorative, and they do not intend that the holiday should advance any other agenda. But this is not the argument in favor of the King holiday that we hear from partisans like Mrs. King and those who harbor similar views. A few days after Senate passage of the holiday measure, Mrs. King wrote in the Washington Post (10/23/83) about how the holiday should be observed.

"The holiday," she wrote, "must be substantive as well as symbolic. It must be more than a day of celebration . . . Let this holiday be a day of reflection, a day of teaching nonviolent philosophy and strategy, a day of getting involved in nonviolent action for social and economic progress."

Mrs. King noted that for years the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta "has conducted activities around his birthday in many cities. The week-long observance has included a series of educational programs, policy seminars or conferences, action-oriented workshops, strategy sessions and planning meetings dealing with a wide variety of current issues, from voter registration to full employment to citizen action for nuclear disarmament."

A few months later, Robert Weisbrot, a fellow of the DuBois Institute at Harvard, was writing in The New Republic (1/30/84) that "in all, the nation's first commemoration of King's life invites not only celebration, but also cerebration over his --- and the country's --- unfinished tasks." Those "unfinished tasks," according to Mr. Weisbrot, included "curbing disparities of wealth and opportunity in a society still ridden by caste distinctions," a task toward the accomplishment of which "the reforms of the early '60s" were "only a first step." Among those contemporary leaders "seeking to extend Martin Luther King's legacy," Mr. Weisbrot wrote, "by far the most influential and best known is his former aide, Jesse Jackson."

The exploitation of the King holiday for radical political purposes was even further enhanced by Vincent Harding, "Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver," writing in The New York Times (1/18/88). Professor Harding rejected the notion that the King holiday commemorates merely "a kind, gentle and easily managed religious leader of a friendly crusade for racial integration." Such an understanding would "demean and trivialize Dr. King's meaning." Professor Harding wrote:

"The Martin Luther King of 1968 was calling for and leading civil disobedience campaigns against the unjust war in Vietnam. Courageously describing our nation as 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,' he was urging us away from a dependence on military solutions. He was encouraging young men to refuse to serve in the military, challenging them not to support America's anti-Communist crusades, which were really destroying the hopes of poor nonwhite peoples everywhere. This Martin Luther King was calling for a radical redistribution of wealth and political power in American society as a way to provide food, clothing, shelter, medical care, jobs, education and hope for all of our country's people."

To those of King's own political views, then, the true meaning of the holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions --- not simply those that supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy, an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth.

In this sense, the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American identity. In this sense, and also in King's own sense, as he defined it in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes a "promissory note" by which the state is authorized to pursue social and economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that fail to reflect the dominance of equality --- racial, cultural, national, economic, political and social --- must be overcome and discarded.

By placing King --- and therefore his own radical ideology of social transformation and reconstruction --- into the central pantheon of American history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead. Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining --- perhaps the defining --- icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.

It is hardly an accident, then, that in the years since the enactment of the holiday and the elevation of King as a national icon, systematic attacks on the Confederacy and its symbolism were initiated, movements to ban the teaching of "Western civilization" came to fruition on major American universities, Thomas Jefferson was denounced as a "racist" and "slaveowner," and George Washington's name was removed from a public school in New Orleans on the grounds that he too owned slaves.

In the new nation and the new creed of which the King holiday serves as symbol, all institutions, values, heroes, and symbols that violate the dogma of equality are dethroned and must be eradicated. Those associated with the South and the Confederacy are merely the most obvious violations of the egalitarian dogma and thereform must be the first to go, but they will by no means be the last.

The political affiliations of Martin Luther King that Sen. Jesse Helms so courageously exposed are thus only pointers to the real danger that the King holiday represents. The logical meaning of the holiday is the ultimate destruction of the American Republic as it has been conceived and defined throughout our history, and until the charter for revolution that it represents is repealed, we can expect only further installations of the destruction and dispossession it promises.

{He doesn't spend much time talking about the rights of the accused"}

Milan is no doubt a strong and forceful advocate for the direct victims of crime; and society as a whole as an indirect victim as well.

In terms of providing equal justice under the law however; from his perch in the #2 spot, and well before having been elevated there, Milan has probably done more for the "rights of the accused" than many public defenders have done in their entire careers. He does not broadcast this aspect of his efforts however, lest it soften his image which could lead to dampening his effectiveness as a prosecutor.

Milans role in unclogging the backlog of crimnal cases that was choking the system several years ago did more to secure the accused's rights to a "speedy trial" than those defending them who could not get themselves prepared for trial in a more timely fashion.

Through his felony courtroom experience Milan recognized the direct correlation between drug use and street crimes, and advocated for the diversion program for eligible participants believing that treatment would is a more effective remedy in the long run than criminal punishment.

Also, as a leading advocate for the development and implementation of a pilot program in the Cook County Criminal Courts system supported by Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC), Milan was instrumental as part of a broad based constituency within the court system in bringing about tremendous change. Milan alluded to this in the Channel 7 debate to be aired on Sunday afternoon, but available for viewing on their website since Thursday.

The program was designed to serve the needs for the rehabilitation and recovery of alleged offenders suffering with mental illness.

Again from his personal experience in the court room Milan recognized that in the absence of proactive clinical intervention, the mentally ill would continue to contribute to the backlog in court case processing and adversely effect the recidivism rates by virtue of the revolving court room doors which only serve to send perpetrators spinning around back and forth to jail and in and out of the state prison system.

The pilot program implemented in this area was designed to identify prospective eligible partiicipants early in their involvement with the crimnal justice system, and to guide them towards community-based alternative treatment programs.

The initial program results have been very promising and both the accused, and society as a whole have benefitted greatly as a result.

Accordng to a recent study among the initial 28 participants enrolled in the program for at least 12 months, initial findings indicate:

- The average number of arrests per participant decreased from a pre-program participation rate of 4 in the year prior to admission, to 0.43 in the year after enrollment.

These results reflect a staggering reduction of 3.57 arrests per participant, which equates to an 89% decrease.

Among the initial program participants, the average number of days incarcerated per participant decreased from a pre program participation rate of 124 in the year prior to admission to 26 in the year after enrollment.

This reflects a reduction of 98 days, which represents a 79.0% decrease.

The cost savings to the public due to the reduction of incarceration from this program advocated by Milan and others involved in the crminal justice system here have been exponential.

The average pre program participation cost of incarceration per participant in the year prior to admission was estimated at $8,680, compared to $1,820 in the year following enrollment. This reflects a cost savings of at least $6,860 per participant which represents a 79.0% decrease.

These cost savings do not take into account the additional potential cost reductions associated with arrests and adjudication that the program may likely have prevented.

The estimates I am referrng to also do not take into account the cost savings associated with participants who had been in the program for less than one year but still minimized their contact with the criminal justice system in terms of arrests and incarceration days compared with their pre program participation enrollment levels.

The introduction of ths program advocated by Milan and others has laid the foundation to reduce subsequent arrests, and incarcerations, and hospitalizations of mentally ill offenders sentenced to probation in in the criminal court system.

Involvement and advocacy for these types of programs are not the sort of things that a candidate for the position of the top prosecutor typically advertises. This can lead to the misperception that one is "soft on crime" and be distorted and manipulated by opponents for their own political benefit.

None the less advocating for these programs goes a long way towards confirming all the reasons that Milan is the right person to hold the position now that Dick Devine is retiring.

The others are just wannabe politicians pandering to an uninformed public through TV commercials, and appealing to the base instincts of people that think Judge Judy is representative of what our court system is really like.

While others may look to Judge Judy, I'll defer to Judge Biebel, and a host of other respected jurists when assessing a candidates qualifications to be the Cook County States Attorney.

"Is there a particular case you would like to describe where Milan wanted to withhold justice? Has anything come out that suggests Milan would not want justice for any specific person? I'm all ears."


"You tell me,"

"Orion
January 18th - 8:09 p.m.
How many phony Orions' are there out there ?"

Since the 'authentic' orion is a phony, would that mean that any 'phony' orion's would actually be authentic orion's?

Robert Milan is a handsome lad. Someone should set him up with Ronnie " woo-woo" Huberman. While we are on the subject. The only Cook County States Attorney candidate to say they would go after cooruption in Chicago/Cook was ?

Tony 'da Pit Bull' Peraica.

How can Maryanne Syropolous be an environmentalist when her campaign is financed by big oil????
Ever hear of global warming?

"The only Cook County States Attorney candidate to say they would go after cooruption in Chicago/Cook was?"

the Dems are unanimous:

the only bad campaign contribution is one that bounces

Public corruption? as soon as we lock up the last violent criminal out there - no time for that now

contract fraud? you gotta be kidding me

Open Meetings Act? what Open Meetings Act?

Freedom of Information? We don't need no Freedom of information

Have No Doubt....

Go to Chicago Clout...

You mean Clout City or Tim Novaks section in the Sun-Times!

There are two paths you can go by but in the long run there is still time to change the road your on.

I will be back

Milan has bigger problems that shooting off his mouth:
http://www.prairiestateblue.com/showDiary.do?diary...

Is Milan violating the Hatch Act by running his campaign without taking any leave from the state's attorney office?

Is prairiestateblue violating ILLINOIS law by shilling for faux progressives without filing as a PAC?

Who are Milans contributors, or Spryolpolus? When did big oil get involved in local campaigns?>

Spryolpolus father owns the citgo gas stations not her.
The money is from her father and thus big oil but not big oil per se

Alexi Giannulius and his high interest high risk loans and questionable contacts is the cousin of MARYANN SPRYOLPOLOUS.
Treasurer Alexi is also supporting Zoning and inside city lobbyist and lawyer DEAN MARAGOS and his questionable contacts.
ALEXI GIANNULIUS is making a big power play with BIG BANKING, BIG OIL, the global warmers, and big money Greeks making a BIG POWER PLAY to take over the MWRD BOARD and make sure that no Blacks or Hispanics win this race ONLY GREEKS and BIG MONEY.

First of all, her name is Mariyana Spyropoulos not all the other spellings. She is related to Alexi but so what.
The bigger subtext is that if she is elected than you could see some real change and a new President.
Debra Shore is the best candidate for President of the MWRD. She is a true environmentalist and not a corrupt hack like Terry O'Brien.
She was the top vote getter and deserves the job.

The votes should go for:
Mariyana Spyropoulos
Dean Maragos
Diane Jones

Did Mary O'Connor really register to vote out of her business? How come people don't know about that?
Doesn't that violate the law?

Larry Suffredino looks like Fagin, the head of the children thieves, from Charles Dickens.
Larry Suffredino is fat, sleazy looking, and has lobbyied for big tobacco, gambling, alcohol and in no way part of good government.
Look into his Shefsky law firm and the clients and lawyers.
Larry Suffredino would make the State's Attorneys office a joke and would be for the highest bidder with no care about little people.

Tom Allen has proven that he is the lawyer for all people.
He is endorsed by the unions and is the lawyer for the working man.

Will Dick Devine or Larry Suffredin or Tom Allen or whoever is States Attorney DA indict VOTE FRAUD MARY OCONNOR for registering to vote out of business when she resided somewhere else?

There has to be some consideration for Commissioner Frank Avila as he is the only Engineer and environmentalist on the board

It is innocent until proven guilty.

Milan is right that most people probably are guilty, but there are innocent ones also.

I love being cloned!

Milan is probably going to lose because he's impolitic.

In terms of competence, ability and experience, there's a big gap between him and the other candidates.

But, we're not electing the best person for the job, as Mick Dumke's, piece illustrates (unintentionally). In this era of political correctness and the continued, if wrong-headed, power of the political machine, Milan is going to lose because he's the best at doing what the job requires.

I was under the impression that the public defender was responsible for defending the rights of the accused. Didn't know that was the job of the prosecutor.

It's certainly going to make the streets of Chicago safer to have a prosecutor who integrates into his/her cases contemplations on how to help the accused.

Absurd and ridiculous piece.

"....Milan is going to lose because he's the best at doing what the job requires."

If he was, and if his 'boss' Devine was, as you say, "...best at doing what the job requires.", then we must conclude that the 'job' requires the office of the State's Attorney of Crook County to ignore the criminal activities routinely conducted by the executive, legislative and judicial branches of city and county governments.

The Feds shouldn't have to be the ones that investigate, indict, convict and incarcerate the many criminals inhabiting our city and county governments, IF the Crook County State's Attorney was doing his job.

The fact that Devine is endorsing Milan only confirms that Milan's definition of "...what the job requires." is the same as Devine's has been, as in, doing nothing to impede the ongoing criminal acts committed by all the usual city and county 'suspects'.

Your comment is what's "Absurd and ridiculous'.

Though your right to express your opinion is respected, your opinion is not worthy of respect.

Thank you, anyway, for your contribution, Randy.

"Is there a particular case you would like to describe where Milan wanted to withhold justice? Has anything come out that suggests Milan would not want justice for any specific person? I'm all ears. "

Yes!! -- How about the cop that shot a man in the face on a CTA platform. It was caught on tape. The man had no gun and was not coming at him. Milan wouldn't prosecute even though a grand jury recommended it.
Second, how about the cop who beat up the woman in the bar (the big tape). He pursued a misdemeanor charge and only turned it into a felony after the public became aware. He is weak on morals, he is racist -- typical Beverly pig. I think we all know that. Some people just unabashedly want that type of person to lead the attorneys office because they know they won't be the ones targeted by his squads.

State Representative Rich Bradley and his wife Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner Cynthia Santos are the luckiest uneducated and unqualified political couple in Chicago.

Cynthia Santos pretends to be a Latina while her real first married name was Siciliano and Santos is a Greek name. She won in 1996 after Miriam Santos was at the height of her popularity getting more votes than Richard M Daley in the 1995 municipal election. Her claim to fame was being the secretary to Alderman Mike Wojcik, who she later betrayed.
Rich Bradley was working at minimum wage selling lamps before he worked for convicted felon Joe Kotlarz the alderman than state rep and committeeman for Alderman Mike Wojcik.
Santos is an adulterer and had no qualifications. Bradley an uneducated political hack.
They went from 2 low level secretarial and sales jobs to FOUR 4 political patronage jobs ripping off the taxpayer.
There have been numerous articles about the Bradley family being employed at the city.
Rich Bradley was part of the Streets and Sanitation of the convicted and indicted corruption.
Now Rich Bradley in a diabolical triple cross deal with Melma Old Gringo is trying to take the only Hispanic female in the State Senate out with phony Rich Bradley.
And Rich Bradley is trying to take out the only Hispanic on the Cook County Water Reclamation with his Greek wife Cynthia Santos who cheated on and left Siciliano and has no qualifications.

If Bradley and Santos were both to win it would be devastating to Latino Political empowerment.
The only Latina Iris Martinez in the Senate would be removed.
Commissioner Avila will lose because Melma Old Gringo will betray him so Cynthia Santos can win. They are trying to fool the Latino voters with Santos name to take out Avila and Martinez. Melma is working with the corrupt Victor Reyes who betrayed Iris Martinez. The Latino voters should not be fooled by this double cross by Melma Old Gringo.

I don't think the main issue is that Bradley does not have some Mexican blood in his veins or his mother is not Mexican BUT that Rich Bradley did not promote or even accept his Hispanic heritage until it became convinient to do so. Rich Bradley who had a lot of access to jobs through illegal patronage helped mostly his own family. So the only Hispanics he helped with his jobs were his own family.

The real reason that Bradley is running against Iris Martinez is because co-schemer A Victor Reyes the head of the embattled HDO linked to drugs, gangs, and corruption betrayed Iris Martinez and made a deal with Alderman Richard Mell.

The real example of Political disempowerment mentioned above is that Commissioner Frank Avila is 100% Mexican and the only Hispanic on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board. Cynthia Santos is not Hispanic at all. She is Irish and Greek. She never took her husbands name Bradley. Her last name used to be something else from her first husband which she changed. SANTOS IS NOT HISPANIC AT ALL!!!!
but she neglects to tell people that

Rich Bradley besides being a State Rep is also a Streets and Sanitation employee, a double dipper at taxpayers expense. He has many family members on Streets and Sanitation.
Cynthia Santos, the non Hispanic getting Hispanic votes under false pretenses, has a job at Secretary of State besides being a Commissioner at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
Commissioner Santos did not get endorsed because she went on vacation and alienated a lot of committeeman.
Santos and Bradley are both close to convicted felon John "Quarters" "Jingles" Boyle.
Rich Bradleys mom works at the Metropolitian Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
More nepotism and patronage.
Cynthia Santos has a MWRD car with a sun roof she got custom designed and drives around at tax payer expense.

Mothers, brothers, cousins
the Santos/Bradley exploiting Hispanics team is costing taxpayers MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

Lower your property taxes vote against Bradley and Santos.

Victor Reyes is using Santos to defeat Commissioner Avila and cut a deal with Richard Mell to screw over Avila because HDO wants to defeat Avila. The Avila's are to blind and think Mell is on their side but Mell is betraying the Avila's and no Hispanic will be on the County Board.

Rep. Bradley would be better than Iris Martinez, Iris got her start with Victor Reyes and HDO, She would never have been a Senator without that help, she abandoned them and got support from Emil Jones. She should have Never betrayed HDO. I saw Victor at a meeting recently and he is fine, not worried about the trumped up charges against him. Victor Reyes has done more for the Hispanic community and any Elected Official.

Victor Reyes is safe. He beat the statues of limitations.
All Reyes did was get Hispanics jobs like the other white committeemans did.
Iris Martinez is a real Judas.
Bradley is Mexican.
HDO and Mell are not against Avila, that is a lie to start shit.

Randy,

...thanks for telling me that I have a right to express my opinion.

Of course, when a political candidate gets elected in the Fall he/she will be able to make the currently being downsized office work much more efficiently so that it has excess capacity. And we'd far prefer that this work gets paid for out of the county budget than the Federal buget. Besides, Pat Fitzgerald is only doing an average job of pursuing state and city corruption.

Great thinking. Sure that Larry Suffreding agrees with you.

Mary O'Connor is a fine classy lady. If she uses her business to vote out of, that is fine. She works day and night at her business to make ends meet. She is a honest worker that deserves our support. Please give a couple of thousand like I did, she is for the City Worker.

Mary O'Connor should be indicted for vote fraud.
But Ralph should stop talking about her sexual orientation.

"If she uses her business to vote out of, that is fine."

So you say.

Yet, the law says a citizen must be registered to vote according to where they live, as in their principle residence, ie., a residential dwelling.

If, in fact, Mary O'Conner's business is located within the residential property she resides in, she is, in fact, complying with the law.

If, in fact, she is registered to vote from a location that is not her principle residence, she is in violation of the law, and, thus, her voter registration is an act of criminal fraud.

Which is it?

Mary O'Connor was living in her restaurant?

I am sorry.

I didn't realize that you were a functional idiot, otherwise I wouldn't have used so many multi-syllabled words.

I'll make a greater effort this time to use a vocabulary you may better comprehend.


"...thanks for telling me that I have a right to express my opinion."

You're welcome.

Thank you, for your courtesy in thanking me.


"Of course, when a political candidate gets elected in the Fall he/she will be able to make the currently being downsized office work much more efficiently so that it has excess capacity."

Huh? I'd be premature if I were to comment on a sentence that makes no sense. If you have a thought you were trying to express here, please try again, I'm curious as to what that thought might be.


"And we'd far prefer that this work gets paid for out of the county budget than the Federal budget."

By 'this work', I presume you mean the work of rooting out, by investigations, indictments, prosecutions, convictions and incarcerations, including fines and restitutions being imposed, all the many petty, and not so petty, thieves, scam artists, felony frauds and blatant election law violators, currently ruining our city and county governments and defrauding the taxpaying citizens of millions, if not billions, of their hard earned dollars every year.

So, how is it that you think that working to end the waste of taxpayers dollars, caused by the criminal acts of those holding our public offices hostage, those these criminals hire, contract, or permit to operate their 'businesses' in violation of a variety of criminal laws, both city, county, state and federal, is, as you imply, an unwise expending of said taxpayers' dollars?


"Besides, Pat Fitzgerald is only doing an average job of pursuing state and city corruption."

So, does this sentence mean that you find that, because the Federal Attorney has done less to bring our local thieves to justice, (then you perceive could be done), our local Crook County State's Attorney shouldn't bother attempting to do so?


"Great thinking."

Uh, not so much, resident of Evanston, not so much.


"Sure that Larry Suffreding agrees with you."

You mean Larry 'Bad Toupee' Suffredin?

The idiot that's makes Tom 'the Hack' Allen look a little less of a moron?

The liar that makes Brookins, and the other black candidate shilling for the Daley machine, look almost like grown-ups?

The arrogant panderer whose goal is to disarm every last honest citizen in the county, in blatant violation of the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution?

You mean THAT Larry 'Bad Toupee' Suffredin?

Surely you jest.


Sort of like Lucy, you've got some thinking to do.

Take your time, I know it must be painful, but, if you pace yourself, you just might have something intelligent to post, one of these days......

Hey mental giant....

Loved your use of "many multi-syllabled words."

Almost as much as "you may better comprehend."

You are no doubt a product of the CPS.

Type slow so that I can keep up.

There is no effective time limit on your reading what has been posted.

You have, apparently, understood enough of what you've, apparently, read, to choose to avoid commenting on it's substance.

Bravo.

Apparently. Apparently, apparently.

At least you chose to be brief this time.

Does Larry Suffredin really wear a toupee?

If he doesn't, he sure needs to get a new barber.

Evanstonian,
You are mistaken. BY LAW the State's Attorney and his or her assistants have two responsibilities: 1.to prosecute the guilty and 2.to refrain from prosecuting those who are not guilty. The defense attorney has only one function: to defend the accused.
Given how the office of State's Attorney so often functions in this county, the mistake is understandable.

To "refrain from prosecuting" is a different animal entirely than "defending the rights of the accused."

I'm not mistaken. And, as someone who has been mugged, had his car stolen, threatened with a knife and had other crimes committed against me and my family, I'm relieved that I'm not mistaken.

So, you've been 'mugged'.

How did you let that happen?

I've lived a long life in many areas of the city and never been 'mugged', though some have tried and failed.


"....had his car stolen...."

Yep, had one of my cars stolen, too.

Went around the neighborhood, talking to the gang-bangers, letting them know I was not pleased, a week later, my car turned up on the street, a few blocks from my home, a few parts were missing, I pushed it back to my garage, made the necessary repairs and never, ever whined about it.


"...threatened with a knife..."

Who hasn't been?


"...had other crimes committed against me and my family..."

You sound like you've been giving the predators the distinct impression that you are easy prey.

That's the price you pay, when you resign yourself to being a rabbit.

It's called the realities of life.

No one can protect you better than you can protect yourself.

But, being you're from Evanston, it's understandable that you've never thought of that.

These Democrats are really something else, especially Milan, Suffredin and Allen, the Three Stooges wannabees.


Milan has the FOP touting for him, claiming, in his commercial, that ALL 10,000 CPD officers are 'behind' his candidacy.

What a crock.


Suffredin, with his badly fit toupee, has the gall to brag about his 'efforts' to ban 'assault weapons' and promises to rid Crook County of gun shops, like that's gonna magically make everybody soooooo much safer......


Allen's tv ad is more interestingly deceptive.

In it, he has an elderly white lady actually saying that she's grateful that Allen paid attention to her, in this perhaps fictitiously embellished little fable, amazingly 'cared' about her concerns, despite her self-proclaimed status of being a 'nobody', and, being that she's someone who doesn't 'know' anyone, why, Allen is just this wonderful fellow, to be so generous with his precious time, to 'bother' with her interests.

Unfucking believable.

Allen's ad shows clearly the contempt in which he holds the voters of this city and county.

Are we to assume, and accept, as undeniable fact, that we are all unworthy of having our concerns considered, all but those who 'are somebody' and 'know somebody'?

Are we all to never question an alderman's being 'too busy' to, as a matter of routine, actually do the work for the money that we pay him?

Are we to meekly accept, nay, embrace, the concept that, if we're 'nobody dat nobody sent', we're shit outa luck?

Are we to believe this shit, about how we should be sooooooo grateful, that our alderman has taken the time to 'listen' to our pathetic, undeserving complaints, let alone miraculously do something to assist us, us being all we low-life commoners?

Allen's arrogant ass shows itself at the end of this ad and smugly mutters that he'd 'appreciate' our vote.

What a jagoff.


As for Brookins and Brewer, the Beavers Twins, no comment is needed.

Alvarez, while borderline fuckable, isn't likely to have the balls to go after the corruption that we, the citizens of Crook County, need our State's Attorney to be dedicated to going after.

She's worked her entire career under the thumbs of Daley's hack Devine, so there's no reason to think she'd do anything but maintain the status quo concerning Daley's free pass policy for criminal Democrats.


Peraica is the only choice, for those who have grown weary of waiting for the Feds to do their fucking job and indict these motherfuckers already.

Peraica really hates these cocky motherfuckers, from 'Dum Dum' Daley, Mike 'da Mick' Madigan, 'Bullshitter' Burke, et al, to 'Simple' Stroger, 'Big Hog' Beavers, Jesse 'the Jagoff' Jackson Jr., 'Easy' Emil Jones, et al, he hates them all.

What more motivated person could we want as our State's Attorney?

The Republicans see this clearly, thus, no challengers for this office in the Republican Primary.

No matter which piece of shit the Democrats put up, Peraica is the guy to put in this office, hands down.

The only other thing is, which Democrat will be the weakest candidate?

I'm voting in the Democratic Primary, just to try to ensure that only weak Democratic candidates make it to the General Election.

Latinas, Latinos are you awake? Here comes Dick Mell and best buddy, Victor Reyes and his southside crew to tell you how to run your district. Iris Martinez has become an independent voice for her community, something Bradley and Carlos no nothing about and now the boys are pissed that she actually can think and speak for her community. Tell the southside gangsters to go back home. Be proud of your first Latina official elected to the State Senate. Be proud that she is now the asst majority leader. Be proud and vote! Don't let our northside district become overrun by outsiders who don't came about public transportation, health care, education, our childre. Look at the facts. Chicago Tribune stated not too long ago no one knew who Bradley was in Springfield? Iris Martines has worked hard for us. Punch 35.