Once upon a time, a man with little education and no skills to speak of was looking for a job. "Can you drive a truck?" he was asked. He could drive. Even though he did not speak the native language very well he could interpret the road signs. "Yes," he said.
The man drove a big, heavy truck, transporting goods from Illinois to Wisconsin. One day, while he was driving his truck, some people honked their horns at him and sped up to come alongside him. He kept driving. The people in the cars waved their hands, saying things that he could not hear. It was very noisy in the truck cab.
As he was heading north, his truck made a strange noise, but none of the indicator lights went on, so he continued his work of driving the truck. After a while, the truck made a funny bumping sort of motion and the noise disappeared. Behind him, cars screeched and stopped. He thought he saw a fire, but he was afraid and he kept driving.
On the news that night, the reporter told viewers about a terrible accident that occurred on the same highway that the truck driver had traveled that day. A metal part had fallen off a truck and the van following behind the truck could not avoid the large piece of debris. The truck assembly pierced the gas tank, the friction of the road set off sparks, and the van burst into flames. Six children were burned alive.
In an office in another part of town, a bureaucrat heard of the accident. When the police uncovered the identity of the truck driver, the bureaucrat checked the records and discovered that the man had paid a bribe to obtain his license. The bribe money was used to fund the George Ryan for Governor campaign. The bureaucrat became alarmed.
Important people called for an investigation into the licenses for bribes campaign financing plan. The bureaucrat's boss fired the investigators so that they could not disrupt everyone's plans to elect George Ryan. The important people asked the lawyer to investigate, and he was a very fastidious lawyer who looked under every rock and every carpet in Illinois.
The governor grew nervous because the lawyer was lifting up the carpets, looking for the dirt that had been swept underneath. "No more death penalty," the governor declared, and the people were so amazed by his pronouncement that they forgot about the lawyer and his housecleaning duties. They could not see because the wool had been pulled over their eyes.
The lawyer carried on, exposing every speck of dust and dirt. The governor made speeches about the evils of the death penalty that he had eliminated. The people listened to him, the wool obliterating their vision. When it was time for a new election, the governor stepped aside. He could not pull enough wool to blind the entire electorate.
The lawyer went to court and showed twelve people all the dirt he had found. "But he abolished the death penalty," some people shouted. The twelve people scratched their foreheads, where the itchy wool had been removed. "Guilty on all counts," they said. George Ryan is guilty of abusing the public trust. And he is guilty of the death of the six Willis children, burned alive because an unqualified driver was on the road because George Ryan had to have more money to get more power.
The moral of the story is: Watch out for former Catholic altar boys. They grow up to be lawyers and Supreme Court justices.
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