-By Warner Todd Huston
Rahm Emanuel hasn’t even officially set his first foot in the Mayor’s Office and he’s already had his first political misstep: He hired a transition team member that has ethics problems.
Last year Judy Erwin was forced to resign as director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education because she was caught using state offices and money to do campaign work for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Erwin was also found to have engaged in campaign fundraising for Obama while she was on the clock for her state job.
The inspector general investigation found that Erwin repeatedly violated the state prohibition on political activity between July 2008 and February 2009 and “co-opted” her staff by involving them in her activities.
The Chicago Tribune reports that Erwin cooperated fully with the investigation into her actions and later resigned agreeing to a $4,000 fine for her actions.
Erwin claims that she never informed Emanuel of her past ethics violations.
In any case, Emanuel has already associated his nascent administration with a woman that readily and repeatedly broke the law.
Nice start, isn’t it?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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