-By Warner Todd Huston
Disgraced former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois passed away today at his summer home in Wisconsin. He was 82.
It says something about American politics that a corrupt influence peddler and ultimately an inmate and ex-con like Rostenkowski had a “summer home,” doesn’t it?
Being part of the corrupt Richard J. Daley Democrat political machine, Rostenkowski was in it up to his neck for his entire adult life and well did he wield that insider power built on deals made in smoke-filled rooms, by under the table agreements, and through influence peddling. He was a true “Chicago way” pol.
For folks our age (those over 40-years-old) Rostenkowski is best remembered as the pol that went to jail over the House Post Office scandal of the mid 1990s. In the end, in 1996, he pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud serving 17 months at the Oxford Correctional Facility in Wisconsin.
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Illinois Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, 1928 – 2010″