He's a Good Boy!

Why do the feds always demonize aldercreatures?

• As sentencing nears for Chicago’s 80-year-old, longest-serving City Council member, lawyers for ex-Ald. Edward M. Burke braced a judge this week “for a biblical flood of stories and letters from people of all walks of life who have been touched by his kindness and generosity.”

  And then they delivered, offering 200 letters — totaling almost 350 pages — from faith leaders, current and former government officials, members of the legal and law enforcement communities, and members of Burke’s own family hoping for mercy.

  “I am unable to grasp the thought of us not being together when God calls us home,” wrote Burke’s wife, retired Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke.

  “As retirees, we get through these days by helping each other with all those daily tasks that are challenging at 80 years old. I am devastated by the prospect that I will not be with Ed at the end of our lives,” she wrote. “Please find compassion through the Holy Spirit in your decision.”

No word on the tens of thousands of people whose lives were made more difficult - or ruined - after run-ins with this political turd when they wouldn't play his crooked game.

Every single one of the authors of these 200 letters owes Burke a favor in one form or another, and the final payoff is a plea for leniency.

We've got a story, told directly to us in the first person. It involves the Police Department and a golf outing, held by the Airport Units at a golf course in Wisconsin for decades. As you may or may not know, Burke ran the Airports for years as his own little fief for the connected. He was the sole reason that when the FOP fought to get the bidding process to an 80%-seniority-20%-management, O'Hare and Midway were held at 50-50....and that second 50% needed Burke's okay to get there.

Every year there was a golf outing which was so successful and huge that they had to have an AM and a PM tee time on a twenty-seven hole course with two foursomes starting on every hole and three foursomes on the par fives. Three hundred plus golfers....and a waiting list for cancellations. Raffle prizes were bunches of top shelf liquor baskets, autographed jerseys from all the sport teams that flew in and out of the airports, dozens of airline tickets to destinations all over the world.

Arriving just before tee time, in a shiny black city car with M plates, driven by a couple of cops, was King Ed. The outing couldn't start until he got there and made his entrance, he teed off with a select group of airport bosses, and at the steak dinner afterwards, the line to kiss the ring ran completely around the dining area. He made sure everyone knew who ran the airports.

And after the rumors hit of the federal investigation, the entire outing disappeared without a trace. One has to wonder what was being spoken about....or passed around.