Illinois Criminal/Governor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

[Don Gwinn]

Hey, if Arafat can win. . . . folks in Illinois are familiar with Governor George Ryan. Lyin' Ryan. King George. The man who ran the Secretary of State's office when it was passing out CDL licenses to people who couldn't even read street signs in return for cash. The man whose close associates are all going to prison rather than turn on him. The man who broke every single campaign promise he made. The RINO-In-Chief.

Well, now he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by an anti-death-penalty college professor here in Illinois, for you see, George found time between getting innocent children killed on the highway and banking his bribes to enact a moratorium on executions in Illinois. In fact, until the public outcry singed his eyebrows, he was hinting last month that he might issue a blanket commutation for everyone on death row before his term ended! Now that looks unlikely (though not impossible, and you can never trust this man.)

I understand that there were concerns with Illinois' justice system. I share those concerns. However, everyone who has a reasonable claim to having been wrongly convicted has already been released. What we have left are people like the guy who shot up a bar in Kane county and was caught by the police in the bar, still firing his weapons. He was convicted with that testimony plus nine eyewitnesses, and he is now proclaiming his innocence and demanding more appeals. There seems to be a real danger that Ryan might commute this idiot's sentence.

 

[Blackhawk]

After the Carter fiasco, I wouldn't even WANT a NPP. Arafat's award was a harbinger of what was to come, and now the prize is indelibly corrupted.

Ryan must have higher political ambitions to inviegle George into nominating him. Clinton's chief regret is that he couldn't nominate himself. They should wait a few years because self-nominations are the next news from Oslo, I'll bet....

 

[Don Gwinn]

I can't imagine George Ryan winning another political office in the foreseeable future. I won't make any promises about ten years from now, of course. I really don't think he has a shot at the Nobel Prize, either. I can't imagine a bunch of Nobel Committee members in Oslo voting for what they'd have to consider a provincial official from barbarian America.

Great--here's the website for the international campaign on Ryan's behalf.
http://www.stopcapitalpunishment.org/pressreleases.html

I'm not sure where I stand on the death penalty, but I know where I stand on George Ryan being honored for any reason whatsoever. He is quite probably the most corrupt politician in Illinois, and he's disgustingly gleeful about it. "Most Corrupt Illinois Politician" is not a title to be pursued by lightweights, either.

It isn't likely, but it is possible, that George Ryan will be on trial for multiple felonies at the time the award is bestowed. The federal prosecutors who've been tossing his friends in jail left and right have been hinting all along that as soon as he's out the indictments will fly. That would be an interesting spectacle.

 

[DonP]

It's a message they say!

The idiot U of I professor that nominated him was on WLS radio last night explaining that this was really done to give the Nobel committee a chance to "send President Bush another message, like the did with the Jimmy Carter".

That's all the prize means anymore. A chance for leftists to send messages. I'm afraid it has no real meaning to most people since Arafat was named. Of course back then people truly believed he wanted to achieve some kind of mutual peace arrangement.

I'm sure a secondary objective was to flatter that fat slob and sway him into granting a blanket commutation for everyone on death row.

You have to understand though, Ryan wants to be really nice to everyone in prison now, they will be his neighbors sooner than he thinks. Following in the fine footsteps of previous Illinois givernors like Otto Kerner, Dan Walker etc.

He even approved $16 million in funding for a new prison near his hometown of Kankakee in a poverty stricken minority area. (Yes, Jesse Jackson showed up down there Monday morning to speak on behalf of minority contractors who should build the prison. Several of whom, in an incredible coincidence, happen to be related to Jesse)

Illinois Governers motto: "Will the defendant please rise".

Don P.

 

[schild]

Next we'll hear about Blagojevich being nominated for president of the NRA!

 

[Jeff White]

I think the state bar association is pushing the nomination. Ryan will need the money to pay his legal fees.

Don, I really think he'll be indicted whenhe leaves office. Daley used this case to run the governors office by proxy for Ryans entire term. He's useless to him now, and the Federal prosecutor is reputed to be a Daley man.

The Democrats still owe us an inprisoned governor to make up for Dan Walker.

Jeff

 

[bad_dad_brad]

Ryan is so typical of the kind of politician that has his roots in Chicago. Downstate Illinois is totally dominated by the machine up north. Lived here all my life, but when I retire soon, I am moving to Florida!

 

[Nanook]

I had the same thought this morning when I read about his nomination. The million dollar prize could go to pay his legal fees.

If I'm not mistaken, I think it was on his watch that carrying a concealed weapon by an ordinary citizen became a class 4 felony instead of a misdemeanor.

Safe Neighborhood Act indeed. Safe for criminals. As Don Gwinn said, it's no small feat to be considered the most corrupt politician in Illinois. "Vote early, vote often" comes from Illinois.

 

[M1911Owner]

Ummm, there's something seriously wrong with this thread.

The Nobel committee doesn't ever release the names of nominees for Nobel prizes. The statement that he has been nominated is therefore completely bogus. I don't doubt that there are people out there trying to get him nominated. But we don't know, and will never know, who has actually been nominated (except, obviously, for the person who is eventually awarded the prize).

 

[DonP]

The guy who nominate dhim did the release

The Nobel people didn't announce it, it was the guy and his anti captial punishment group that announced that they were nominating him. The publicity is all theirs and the media.

They did a big press conference about it and pulld the law professors and defense attorney's into the mix, just to revolt almost everyone with a conscience and common sense.

I think the only guidelines for nominating someone is that the nomination must come from a reputable individual or group. That should leave out trial lawyers, but I guess a professor is another matter.

Don P.

 

[Don Gwinn]

The committee didn't make the release. Perhaps that disqualifies him, but it's not like he had a snowball's chance of winning anyway. The news organizations in Springfield are all reporting this as a genuine story, so if it's a hoax, it worked well.

I too believe that Ryan is "Official A" or whatever the code name was and that he's going to face indictment as soon as he's no longer governor. As you say, he's not useful to anyone once he's out. However, he has close to $3 million in campaign funds that he gets to keep when he leaves office (that's illegal now, but he's "grandfathered" because he's been in so long.)

And yes, Ryan was a huge proponent of the Safe Neighborhoods Act, which made UUW a felony. He also held press conferences where he held up a police unit's fully-automatic M-16 and said "This is not the kind of gun I remember hunting squirrels with as a boy in Kankakee."

 

[mack]

Don,

One minor quibble with your post, you state:

"He is quite probably the most corrupt politician in Illinois"

I think to be accurate that should read:

"He is quite probably the most inept corrupt politician in Illinois"

After all, in Illinois we know that the most corrupt politician lives in Chicago, is fawned over by the cowed Chicago press, and has the initials R. D.

Of course Blagovich will take his marching orders from the mayor - who got him elected, (as will the leaders of the senate and house), though I don't know if the more accurate adjective to describe our new governor is corrupt or political wh*re. Maybe it is both.

 

[Don Gwinn]

I don't know about that, sir. Daley doesn't have the machine his father had. I suppose we won't know the answer until they've both been dead a few years and the really salacious biographies come out.

Not that it really changes anything for the better, but Blagojevich will only obey Daley to a point. Anytime Daley is in conflict with Mell, you know which way Blago's going. He wouldn't be a dog catcher without Mell and he knows it!

Anyway, the reason I looked up this thread:

I've been sitting here listening to Gov. Ryan's press conference from DePaul University announcing the pardon of four more individuals, three of whom are on death row. If half of the evidence he laid out is true, then I was wrong earlier when I asserted that only the guilty remained on Death Row. This has really shaken me a bit. We're talking about people who were convicted on evidence literally taken from other crimes! People convicted on nothing more than the testimony of a single drunk eyewitness!

One man had been released, but his record had not been expunged. He was convicted, apparently, of rape on the testimony of the supposed victim. Years later the victim confessed that she had made it all up, and DNA tests proved that whoever had sex with her, it wasn't the accused!

One man in particular was tortured by the Zone Two police in Chicago. He actually waited until they left him alone in the interrogation room and scratched a message into the bench! "My confession is false Police torture me with slaps and plastic bag"

Several of these guys bore physical evidence of having been suffocated with plastic bags. One was convicted when police presented a gas can (the crime was an arson) as evidence. Law professors at Depaul along with their private investigators proved that the gas can was taken from the evidence room! It had been seized from another arson months before.

That's just scratching the surface, but it's disgusting enough. Whatever else Ryan does, I have to respect his stand on this. Maybe it took a politician with no political life left to work up the courage to do this.

 

[Miss Demeanors]

(Yes, Jesse Jackson showed up down there Monday morning to speak on behalf of minority contractors who should build the prison. Several of whom, in an incredible coincidence, happen to be related to Jesse)

An incredible coincidence is right He is the scammer of all scammers.

Don, Ryan had to do something to leave a door open for himself in the future. If he truly cared, he would have done it along time ago. I for one am glad to see that con leaving but not looking forward to his sucessor.

BTW, lance has joined up with the machine. Him and Karl are now some kind of precient captains in Chicago, trying to help his Uncle move on up into the machine

 

[Gray Peterson]

Several of these guys bore physical evidence of having been suffocated with plastic bags. One was convicted when police presented a gas can (the crime was an arson) as evidence. Law professors at Depaul along with their private investigators proved that the gas can was taken from the evidence room! It had been seized from another arson months before.

This is a reason why the death penalty cannot be trusted. Before long, there will be death sentences handed down for gun possession. :/

 

[Don Gwinn]

Well, it's going to be a moot point in Illinois for at least a little while, because word now is that Ryan's going to commute the sentences of every person still on death row. That includes the numbnuts who shot several people dead in a bar up north and was caught by the police still in the act of shooting them (and whose twin brother is now serving a prison sentence for attempting to intimidate the bar's owner by threatening to "finish the job" unless they refused to testify.)

Apparently it's also going to get Dale Lash off the hook. Dale lured a woman from the next town over to an empty house (she was a realtor showing the house) and raped and murdered her in cold blood. The evidence is overwhelming, but his sentence will be commuted. Luckily they just sentenced him to an additional 60 years for som of the incidental charges (kidnapping, etc.) so he'll probably die in prison.

I'm going to have to check into it, but I hope this won't help out the SOB who killed Phyllis Liles. She was a neighbor and a nice woman, and I taught her son the year after she died. She was murdered for having the temerity to stop and help her killer, who had stopped with his hood up just outside Springfield. In reality, he was on the run and just needed a different car. He got hers, but he still felt the need to kill her to keep the number of witnesses down. To my knowledge he has never expressed remorse, not that I'd believe him if he did.

I have mixed emotions about the whole thing. On the one hand, I think execution is entirely appropriate for crimes like murder and rape. On the other, I don't trust my government. I don't trust the police in my small town ('cause I know 'em) and I don't trust the police in Springfield (because they have a long record of racism, beating the crap out of citizens of all colors and coverups) and I sure as hell don't trust the cops in Chicago (needs no explanation.)

Sandy, what can I say about Lance? That figures?

 

[KP95DAO]

My head is about to explode!!!!

I am listening to this piece of human debris, Gov. Ryan. He has supped with Nelson Mandela, heard from Desmond Tutu, and now realizes that the death penalty is wrong, wrong, wrong.

He actually said that the death penalty for a number of "black" men was wrong because they were tried by an all "white" jury.

You know why almost all people are in prison? Because they did the crime!!!!

Where is the duct tape? I need at least two rolls right now.

 

[Don Gwinn]

I agree. On the other hand, this is Illinois we're talking about, not Oklahoma, and there's no doubt our "justice" system is about thirty degrees off.

Still, I can't escape the nagging nausea at the thought that everyone is going to forget what Ryan did for four years just because he let a few innocents and a lot of murderers escape punishment. He even referred to how he "became a reformer" earlier, and that's when it really hit home: he really has done it. In the history books, he has "become a reformer." That's how they'll refer to him.

They won't mention the entire family that died one night because a truck driver who had no business with a CDL hadn't checked his rig, or the fact that the only reason he had a CDL was because he bribed a Ryan employee at Ryan's behest.

I don't know, maybe people felt the same way about Adams when he was alive. Maybe that's how it should be. But that doesn't make me feel a lot better.

 

[M67]

Nominators

New nomination rules, effective from 2003. Compared to the old rules the list of nominators has been slightly expanded.

Any one of the following persons is entitled to submit proposals:

members of national assemblies and governments;
members of international courts of law;
university chancellors; university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology;
leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs;
former Nobel Peace Prize laureates;
board members of organisations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize;
present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (committee members must present their nomination at the latest at the first committee meeting after February 1);
former advisers at the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Observing the rules given in the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the Committee does not publish the names of candidates.

The Nobel Peace Prize may also be accorded to institutions or associations.

The nominators are strongly requested not to publish their proposals.

From the Norwegian Nobel Institute's web site.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of nominations are made every year. Being nominated doesn't necessarily mean that the candidate qualifies for the prize... Note the last line in the quote. Going public could be seen as an attempt to influence the Committee. I certainly do not agree with all the decisions made in the past, but I know one thing for certain; the Committee members will not be amused by any attempt from an outsider to influence them.

Assuming of course that this really is about the prize at all. I don't know anything about Illinois politics, but I would guess this whole thing has very little to do with the Nobel Prize and a lot to do with local polititcs.

 

[Ron L]

Just a question though. It's been alluded to here and on another forum. Why would they wait until Ryan's term is up before arresting or indicting him? Just because he's no longer important or necessary? To whom?

I'm not from Illinois so I haven't been that aware of all the goings-on of Ryan's administration, though I've heard plenty of tidbits here and there. Michigan just elected their new governor (yes, I live in MI, but she is NOT my governor) and quite a bit of the things some of us warned about are already starting to come true. So I'm curious as to why wait? If he's a crook now, he'll be a crook later. Is it actually better that he stay in office until the end of the term as opposed as the new Gov starting?