Word: scandalous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Matteson (governor from 1853-1857), who tried to cash $200,000 of stolen government scrip he "found" in a shoebox. Matteson pulled a "how-did-that-get-there?" excuse and escaped indictment by promising to pay it back. (Oddly, this isn't Illinois's only shoebox-full-of-money scandal; after former secretary of state Paul Powell's death in 1970, a search of his home revealed shoeboxes full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks made out to him by unsuspecting Illinois residents who thought they were paying license plate registration fees...
...subsequent investigation, called Operation Safe Road, took years to complete; when it was done, 79 people were charged, including Ryan. The former governor was found guilty on 18 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, tax fraud and lying to the FBI. In addition to the license-for-money scandal, Ryan had exchanged government favors for family vacations, tickets to events and other gifts. He is currently serving a six-year prison sentence in Indiana. In 2005, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his most famous act as governor: commuting the death sentences of over 160 Illinois...
...prison; the Prison Review Board member who voted to free notorious mobster Harry Aleman in exchange for getting his son a Las Vegas singing job; and the city employee who ran a heroin distribution ring out of Chicago's Department of Water Management. In Chicago's Hired Truck Scandal of 2004, trucking companies on city contracts were discovered to have links to city employees, convicted felons and the mob. And of course there was the time Mayor Richard M. Daley hired John "Quarters" Boyle - a man previously convicted of stealing $4 million (in quarters) from the Illinois Toll Highway Authority...
...Blagojevich scandal will prove to be a distraction for Obama, a Chicago pol made good who was hoping to put old-fashioned Chicago politics in his rearview mirror. The criminal complaint produced no evidence that Obama or his aides have done anything wrong. Blagojevich was, in fact, recorded complaining that Obama's people were "not willing to give me anything except appreciation." Obama himself maintains that he never talked to Blagojevich about the Senate seat, and during the recent campaign, the two men kept their distance from each other...
...reading tea leaves. Don't. I don't draw a very good tea leaf." - Dismissing reporters' questions after announcing his first indictment in the Plame scandal (San Francisco Chronicle, October...