I am not a big fan of Rod Blagojevich. Yes, I voted for him and it was a gigantic mistake.
This man abused his office and violated the trust we put in him as governor. He deserved prison.
The softer side of me says his sentence was too long, but that was his sentence. When he chose to abuse power, ask for bribes, and seek to turn the governor’s office into his own personal gold mine, he did it knowing getting caught meant prison.  
Elected officials who violate the public trust deserve stiff sentences. I would be interested to see how much money his family and friends, along with the others recently freed, have contributed to the president.
What galls me most is “Blago” still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He even claimed he was a “political prisoner.”
As Mr. T used to say, “Pity the fool.”

One last word on “Blago”…at least he implemented the Open Road Tolling. Of course, it cost the state a lot of money to put his name on the signs and then remove it.
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I recently ran across an interesting Facebook post from Northern Illinois University’s celebration of Black History Month that I am sharing here.
“Elzie Cooper was the first African-American student athlete at Northern and the first student of color to win an NI varsity letter in any sport. He played football, basketball and baseball at Northern during the 1930s, lettered in all three, and was a two-time Athletics Hall of Fame inductee. He also worked as a football student coach under the legendary Chick Evans.
Elzie graduated from Northern in 1936 and returned to his hometown of Rochelle, where he worked and coached youth baseball and basketball.  So well-loved was the pioneering community leader that the Rochelle Park District named its primary baseball facility Elzie Cooper Field.”
I remember Elzie from when I first came to town. He seemed like a genuinely nice person.
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Congratulations to all the Rochelle Township High School students competing at state meets this year. I’d love to see one of those signs on the edge of town that says “Welcome to Rochelle…home of the 2020 state champion in (fill in the blank)”
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I hope you saw Doug Oleson’s story in the Tuesday paper about MaryLou Reeser. When I first worked at the paper she went out of her way to help me, many times. She was a good person.

Terry Dickow is a retired elementary school teacher with lots of opinions, some you will like, some you won’t. He can be contacted at terrydickow@gmail.com.