items tagged with Lisa Madigan

Following Jeff Terronez’s resignation as Rock Island County state’s attorney and his guilty plea last week, I was waiting for the Quad Cities’ daily newspapers to forcefully and directly raise a simple question: Why didn’t he resign sooner?

More relevant at this point: Why didn’t the county’s Democratic leaders strongly encourage his resignation long before he agreed to a plea deal?

Alas, the closest the newspapers got was the Quad-City Times’ April 27 editorial: “Terronez ... has decimated the credibility of his office, his former colleagues, and every Democrat who stood by silently as this crime was covered up for at least six months. That’s how long Terronez dodged specific questions from us and others about this crime. ... If, as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan claimed, police found only enough to charge him with providing the alcohol [to a minor], Terronez could have cleared that up with an honest answer in October.”

But the “honest answer” the Times said Terronez should have provided is far different from his resignation. And both the Times and Rock Island Argus/Moline Dispatch seem more concerned with getting full details of the Illinois State Police investigation.

As expected, former Governor Rod Blagojevich's new book paints himself as the hero of Illinois politics and blames everyone but himself for his troubles.

He also tries to settle an old score. Blagojevich's longtime enemies House Speaker Michael Madigan and Attorney General Lisa Madigan are both attacked.

Every Republican governor this state has had in the past 40 years has raised taxes.

Republican legislators and most of their leaders have always been involved with those tax hikes.

So it's probably not fair that nobody bats an eye when every Republican candidate for governor -- announced and unannounced -- is allowed by the media to get away with saying that taxes shouldn't be raised to balance the state's horribly deficit-ridden budget.

Back in 2005, I asked House Speaker Michael Madigan why he didn't just run somebody against Governor Rod Blagojevich in the '06 Democratic primary if he was so upset at the way Blagojevich was running things.

"I did that once, and it led to 26 years of uninterrupted Republican rule," Madigan cracked.

In the early 1970s, a very young Representative Madigan was Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's point man in the House against Daley's arch-nemesis, Democratic Governor Dan Walker. That legislative opposition led directly to Daley's forces beating Walker in the 1976 primary. Their candidate went on to lose to Republican Jim Thompson, and the GOP held onto the governor's job until Blagojevich won the 2002 campaign.

I told you that story to give you an idea how Madigan may be sizing up next year.