by Gerard Coulombe

Created on: May 25, 2009

Madigan and Madigan! Couldn't this father and daughter team accomplish the impossible feat of turning out all of ousted former Governor Blagohevich's appointees from State Government?

Ah-huh! Yes they could. And could they finish the job during their terms in office? Well, they could if the Speaker of the Illinois Assembly and the Illinois's Attorney General were safe on being reelected. And it would appear that their good standing in and out of State Government makes both worthy candidates for all their honest public service.

But what is this all about? There's the rub. [Attributed to Shakespeare.] And what a fine piece of comedy all of this buffoonery would make for a Moliere or even a tragedy for an Arthur Miller-a political Death of a Salesman, perhaps, were these playwrights living today.

What we outsiders, the people living outside the State of Illinois, have learned these past few months, in between other more exciting or personally traumatizing events in the country is that Tammany Hall was [Is it still?] alive and well in Illinois. It is so because of some 3,000 state employees who were hired under the former governor and who are suspected of gumming up the smooth operation of Illinois government.

The ousted governor and the Illinois Speaker had struggles of the political Olympians going on before the governor was shamefully ousted in a dramatic but altogether shameful performance of his own peculiar invention. In the news making heyday prior to his ouster, the governor often tried linking Madigan & Madigan, the Speaker and the Attorney General, father and daughter against the people's choice, Blagohevich and, well, Blagohevich.

In a story by Doug Finke of "Gatehouse News Service," Finke clearly explains what the issues are. Madigan wants current Governor Quinn to speed up a "fumigation" of all current state employees who were hired during the drummed out governor's watch.

A review of their work has been on-going but according to Madigan, the pace of these reviews has not been fast enough to be considered effective against the vermin among the 3,000 employees whose loyalty to the people of Illinois [rather than to the old regime] remains in doubt. Governor Quinn has been at work on this essential project, but according to Speaker Madigan he has not been moving fast enough. He, the governor, owes the Speaker who helped put him in office some loyalty and that translates into more expeditious due diligence in applying

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