Crime and punishment. The big news today hails from Chicago, my home town, where a federal appeals court overturned a recent probation sentence given to former Alderman Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak by U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur. Shadur had sentenced Vrdolyak to five years of probation after getting caught and pleading guilty to a $1.5 million kickback scheme from a rigged city college real estate deal. The federal government is demanding a sentence more appropriate to the crime: 41 months in prison. So why is this such a big hoo-hah? Because Ed Vrdolyak has been a gangster disguised as a public servant for decades. He masterminded most of Chicago’s most notorious payoffs, scams, illegal deals, hidden agendas and hiring schemes and never served a day in jail. In this most recent incident Vrdolyak wound up with probation because the court received hundreds of letters of support from his pals, cronies, highly-placed relatives and even Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher. The feds wisely decided this was all a pile of cow poo and overturned it. I, for one, can’t wait to see a photo of Fast Eddie in stripes reporting to the penitentiary in Joliet. Mazel tov!Another winter warning gone awry. Surprise, surprise ... the crappy frozen weather I mentioned in my January 27 post never materialized here. We had a few thundershowers last night followed by a temperature drop, but apparently the worst of it hit the Texas panhandle (nowhere near Dallas) with a foot of snow and then moved north into Oklahoma, where they’re buried under three inches of solid ice. I’m actually fine with that because everybody knows Oklahoma is a much better spot for an ice storm. Thank you.
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