Really.

[It’s a] steaming heap of suffocating debt, endless greed, blind self-interest and numbing incompetence. How we’ve been able to survive this long without plunging into the abyss is beyond me, and all reason.

 

 

 

 

No need here to document all of the state’s failures. Way behind on its bills. The nation’s worst credit rating. Higher unemployment than the nation. Business wanting to scram, fed up with an unfriendly entrepreneurial climate. Crushing pension obligations so far into the future that no one alive today, even if they ponied up every cent they made (after taxes, of course), will ever see the end of it.

 

Illinois is run by a self-renewing, power-hungry, piggish oligarchy so impervious to change (I hesitate to use the word reform, because true reform is as rare in Illinois as is the sight of Pike’s Peak) that it makes feudalism look good.

From Wed. Journal Reader Comments:

joe from south oak park Posted: January 27th, 2014 5:27 AM
issues of religious dogma aside, this also interesting because concealed carry in Illinois came about as the result of a ruling by the 7th circuit court in Moore v. Madigan. One of the plaintiffs in this case is Mary Shepard who, along with two others, were savagely beaten by a man who robbed the church. http://www.abpnews.com/archives/item/4465-victims-of-brutal-beating-in-illinois-church-expected-to-recover#.UuZAArTna70

joe from south oak park Posted: January 27th, 2014 5:42 PM
It seems a bit odd to remind Fr. McGivern of the catechism, but i’ll ‘take a stab at it’. Legitimate defense 2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor……