“Let no joyful voice be heard! Let no man look to the sky with hope in his eyes!” says Davy Jones inPirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as his captives slave away on his ship. “And let this day be forever cursed by we who ready to wake…the Kraken!”
Alexei Navalny, 2011 photo from Wikipedia.
This well-known quote from a surreal character in a popular movie is a remarkable fit for the mood unleashed in Russia by President Vladimir Putin with the death of 47-year-old Alexei Navalny, an unparalleled advocate of Russian democracy, who suffered for his commitment with confinement in an Arctic prison after repeated attempts to end his life with poison. Putin, who has no apparent compunction about eliminating his opponents in any way possible, seems determined to become not only the Davy Jones of Russia, but of the world. If there were any doubt that his minions operate across the globe, consider that just yesterday (February 19), Maxim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter last August, was found shot to death in Alicante, Spain. There is a long history of such assassinations by Russian agents of known dissidents abroad.
But the most compelling visions of his intended dystopia are those of the arrests of hundreds of Russians doing nothing more than laying flowers at memorials for Navalny. They are not even allowed to mourn their dead in peace because that would allow them to look to the dreary Russian winter sky with hope.
Hope for those with love in their souls, and passion in their hearts, is forbidden in today’s Russia.
If you have any doubt on that point, consider the position of Metropolitan Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has supported Putin in his quest for conquest of Ukraine and once described Putin’s rule as “a miracle of God.” The church has actively suppressed opposition to the war against Ukraine among its own priests, recently expelling one for his refusal to read a prayer for Russia’s success and for his anti-war remarks. The position of the Russian Orthodox leadership, securing its own comfort from oppression through complicit support for Putin, denies spiritual solace to those who seek a better day in their homeland and whose consciences are troubled by the unnecessary death and destruction he has unleashed. The church has sold its soul in a historical quest for sovereignty under an evil regime. (There are echoes of such behavior among certain churches in the United States that have aligned with Donald Trump as a matter of transactional convenience, but let’s save that discussion for another day.) In this sorry role, the Russian Orthodox Church has degenerated into a mere arm of the state, enforcing social conformity in the face of powerful demands for a voice of conscience to lift the morale of the Russian people.
Image from Shutterstock
It remains for courageous advocates like Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, to brave the foul winds spreading from Russia and keep the candle burning. It remains for the rest of us outside Russia to recognize and confront the dangers posed not only by Putin, but by the “useful idiots” who continue to justify autocracy.
We are probably all born with a certain focus on our own needs. The first job of a baby is to survive, but ideally, we learn from parents, especially, but also from others around us that somebody else cares and takes care of us when we most need the help. With any luck, we learn to extend that same concern from ourselves to others, and as we grow, we learn how we can support and cooperate with our fellow human beings. Empathy must be taught, and not everyone learns, or learns well.
I would like to believe that this article will reach someone and cause them to think about any potential victims of their actions. Maybe it will, but I also doubt that the most violent among us are reading my blog. I have good reason to suspect that my content over the past eight years, while apparently attracting more than 31,000 subscribers, has not provided much raw meat for those who feel the need to attack others to get what they want. They may not read much at all. But I can hope.
But I must wonder sometimes whether perpetrators of violent crimes, especially those involving theft, give much consideration to their victims. The overwhelming majority of victims of violence mean something to someone. In some cases, they may have networks of friends upon whom they are positive influences. They may be positive assets for local communities, whether those be neighborhoods, religious congregations, schools, or extended families. They mean something to other people, and the community will be weaker without them.
Or do their attackers just see them as vulnerable prey, much as a bobcat might view a rodent when the cat is hungry?
I keep wondering about one such recent victim in Chicago. We have plenty of victims in Chicago, often of gun violence, though in this case no gun was involved. His car was the object of desire, and a 73-year-old man, moving slowly, became the target of an attempted carjacking. The two youths hit him in the head, then pushed him in the chest, and he died of a heart attack. Two young men, 18 and 17, now face serious charges and may end up sacrificing many years of their lives in prison. Their future looks bleak.
Keith Cooper at a 5K “Ditch the Weight & Guns” walk & run in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.
Keith Cooper, the victim, was a member of Augustana Lutheran Church, to which I belong, and a vital, active part of the Hyde Park neighborhood that surrounds it. He was a proud Marine Corps veteran, having joined in 1968 at age 21 and served in Vietnam. When you needed a volunteer, he was likely to be there.
Keith with daughter Keinika, her husband Curtis Carlton, and granddaughters Alyna and Mikayla. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.
“He just loved to help,” his daughter, Keinika, says. “He was a community-based individual.” When she was growing up, she recalls, he taught his children that “you can’t complain if you don’t do anything.” Ever seeking to mentor those he loved, he brought granddaughter Mikayla, now 11, to Sunday school when he came to church. Keinika said he joined Augustana about ten years ago. He was, however, already familiar with the church from growing up in the neighborhood near 54th and Kimbark on Chicago’s South Side.
But it was more than growing up near the church. Keith told the current pastor, the Rev. Nancy Goede, that he had been baptized there as a child. Keinika had Sunday school attendance slips from 1959, when he was 12. Later, as a teen, he served as an acolyte. He drifted away in his teens, but returned as a mature adult. In recent years, I often served with him as an usher.
Keith Cooper with daughter Keinika. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.
He joined the church shortly after two heart surgeries that were necessitated by a torn aorta and involved heart valve replacement. Keinika describes her time in the waiting room as “nerve wracking.” Her father underwent rehab to rebuild his body. For this very reason, she says, when she learned of the nature of the attack the day it occurred, she knew why his heart failed. She knew, she says, that he would not survive.
That is, however, part of the problem with random victimization of an old man the attackers never knew. It probably never occurred to them that their physical assault could result in death. They knew nothing of this personal history, or why he seemed to be moving slowly, if that was their perception, but now they own the consequences. As Judge Charles S. Beach II said in addressing Frank Harris, the 18-year-old, as they were charged in court with murder, “To say that it’s painful for me is an understatement—because anytime that I see a young man such as you before me with such a terrible thing on their shoulders, it’s painful for us and society and just about everyone.”
As Keinika asked during an interview with me last week, “Did you all even think this through?”
Kimbark Plaza at E. 53rd St. and Kimbark in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.
What is stunning about the entire incident is that it occurred in broad daylight in a busy commercial strip, Kimbark Plaza. It occurred roughly between 12:30 and 12:40 p.m. in a crowded parking lot, with numerous surveillance cameras. There were reportedly dozens of witnesses in nearby stores, many of whom came out, including an off-duty paramedic who tried to revive him as he lay on the ground, unresponsive, until police arrived. Sadly, he was already dead when an ambulance brought him to nearby University of Chicago Hospital. He had been at Kimbark Plaza to run errands. He often shopped for groceries at Hyde Park Produce.
Meanwhile, having failed to open the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, the two young men fled but were identified and arrested by police about a half-mile away, trying to change clothes in a synagogue courtyard. Harris was about to become a senior in high school, but the two had some prior arrests, including other carjackings in May and last December.
Keith will be sorely missed by those who knew him—and there were plenty who did. As the Hyde Park Jazz Festival grew as an area attraction each summer, it was Keith who helped arrange for some artists to perform at Augustana. When volunteers were needed to park cars for events like the Jazz Fest or the 57th St. Arts Fair, earning parking fees to support the church, it was most often Keith who could be found collecting the fees and directing people to available spaces. For his 74th birthday, which would have occurred July 22, his Facebook request was to raise $500 for his beloved church. My wife attended one of his AARP-sponsored driver skills refresher courses at the church for seniors who could then get small discounts on their car insurance. Keith was the host. Keinika says he was involved in a recent Juneteenth festival. I could go on, but you get the idea. Church, school, neighborhood, the city of Chicago, he loved them all and supported them all.
From years of passing conversations with him, I gathered the impression that part of his motivation may have come from his own struggles. At one point earlier in his life, he was briefly homeless. He knew what that felt like and gladly assisted with a monthly community breakfast for disadvantaged people. Bill Tompsett, a retired attorney and long-time member of Augustana, says he helped by greeting people as they arrived, but when he was missing for a few weeks, Keith asked him why. Bill explained that he had hurt his back and could not stand for two hours to greet people. Keith assured him that he could still greet people sitting down, and he resumed his duties. Little things like that mattered. Keith did several jobs in his life, including driving trucks and selling jewelry and books. His daughter told reporters he had “tons of books,” among which he particularly liked black history and science fiction. In retirement, he was driving a Lyft car to earn extra money. Keith knew from personal experience that there are many people struggling to survive in our community, and he sought to help where he could.
It is noteworthy that more than 100 people gathered at Kimbark Plaza on Friday evening, July 16, two days after Keith died, to honor his life and offer prayers, holding candles while West African drums were played.
“Talking drums” performing at the visitation for Keith Cooper, July 24, 2021.
Those “talking drums” were also present a week later, on Saturday, July 24, for a visitation in the Augustana fellowship hall, at which members of the U.S. Marine Corps also presented a flag to honor his service. Dozens of participants in the event responded to Keinika by offering one-word descriptions of Keith such as “kindness” and “commitment.” Two days later, following a moving funeral service, his ashes were interred in the memorial garden outside the fellowship hall, where he joined other saints who preceded him.
Augustana’s memorial garden
The city of Chicago and Hyde Park lost a valuable, generous, and committed citizen because, once again and too often, some people, too often too young, chose a path in which they failed to consider who their victim might be, what he meant to those around him, and what they took from their community as a result. It was all very sad, and I kept thinking during the funeral, all very unnecessary.
This week, it seemed as if the world was determined to break
my heart. I am sure I am not the only one who felt that way, but I may be the
one who puts two seemingly unrelated events together and wonders how we come to
such a pass. I often write about how we can minimize losses from natural
disasters, but today’s topic is tragedy wrought by humans upon others.
Illinois
Let me start closer to home. In Crystal Lake, an outer-ring
Chicago suburb, a five-year-old boy, “AJ” Freund, was found in a shallow grave
in an isolated site near his home. Police found him during an investigation
triggered by the boy’s father, who called 911 to report that he was missing.
Police dogs tracing his scent at home found no evidence that he had walked out
the door. Interrogation of the father, a 60-year-old attorney engaged to a
former client in a divorce case, the boy’s 36-year-old mother, caused the police
to become suspicious of the couple themselves.
It turned out that the Illinois Department of Children and
Family Services (DCFS) had been involved with the family since the boy was born
with opiates in his system, clearly indicating a drug problem for the mother.
One police report a few months ago indicated that the home was filthy with pet
feces and utilities were shut off, but DCFS apparently found concerns about
neglect “unfounded.”
So, how did AJ wind up in his shallow grave? According to
the police, the couple kept him in a cold shower before beating him, resulting
in his death from head trauma. Needless to say, the couple are now in jail,
facing murder charges, and are separately secluded from the rest of the McHenry
County jail population for their own safety.
I don’t wish here to focus on the court case. Judge, jury,
and prosecutors will make their own determinations as the case proceeds, and
like anyone else, the parents are entitled to a defense. What concerns me is
what needs to happen at DCFS to prevent many more children from being similarly
harmed. This is an agency with serious problems that must be solved.
In the past four years, we had a governor with a serious
empathy deficit, who preferred to engineer a stalemate with the Democratic
legislature over the state budget while bills went unpaid and progress at
agencies like DCFS sputtered, and numerous nonprofit social service providers
went unpaid for months on end. But Republican Bruce Rauner did not
initiate the crisis at DCFS, which is a product of neglect and malfeasance by
several prior administrations, not to mention the frequent unwillingness of the
legislature to prioritize funding for social services. But funding is not the only
issue.
How bad has it been? According
to today’s Chicago Tribune, “DCFS
has churned through 14 previous leaders since 2003 and has seen its budget and
staffing dwindle.” This turnover implicates two previous Democratic
administrations as well as that of Rauner, who had his own revolving door for
DCFS executives in the last four years. No one can establish stability and
quality of services in such an environment. We can only hope that Gov. J.B.
Pritzker, who took office three months ago, can make this a priority and
turn the situation around. He has brought in Marc
Smith, previously the head of a suburban social service organization, and
more importantly, has requested a $75 million increase in funding for the
agency. He is taking heat for proposing to amend Illinois’s constitution to
allow a progressive income tax in order to gain new revenue from high-income
residents, but the money must come from somewhere and the state needs to
balance its wobbly budget.
But let me get more personal here. And I do take this
personally.
My wife and I have been foster parents since 1991. Two
daughters we adopted are now grown, and there are grandchildren. We also have
guardianship for one grandson at the moment, so we have a long history of
interaction with DCFS. Like many other foster and adoptive parents in Illinois,
we have long had reason to question the managerial culture of the agency, which
has tended to emphasize restoring or maintaining the custody of natural parents
whenever possible. I understand that generally, but not when there is obvious
abuse or neglect and caseworkers either fail to take notice or fail to act to
protect the children. As headlines have often suggested, that happens more than
we may want to know. AJ has become the
latest case in point.
Long ago, two children from a large family reached out to
connect with us, and we often let them visit and share their story. We relayed
some concerns to DCFS. As a teacher, my wife fell into the category of mandated
reporters under state law. Doctors, school officials, and others who may
suspect or witness abuse or neglect are legally obligated to report it to the
DCFS hotline. In this case, nothing happened until one child died of starvation.
Then the remaining children were placed in foster care.
On another unrelated occasion, I became concerned about belt
marks on a three-year-old child. I called the hotline, where an imperious
responder told me that “under Illinois law, parents are allowed to use corporal
punishment to discipline their children.” Appalled by her disinterest, I raised
my voice: “We are talking about belt marks on a three-year-old!”
“Mr. Schwab,” she
responded sternly, “it is not illegal for parents to use corporal punishment.”
Stunned by this indifference, I faced the same dilemma I am sure has confronted
others in the same position: Where do we go from here?
Such responses, to be sure, are not always the case. They
simply happen too often. Sometimes, an overburdened caseworker takes shortcuts
or fails to investigate. The point is that something must change.
Some Illinois legislators—from both parties—were seeking answers
from DCFS officials at a hearing in Springfield yesterday. I hope they are all,
finally, serious as hell about fostering positive change and not just grabbing
headlines in a dramatic case. Too many children’s lives and welfare are at
stake.
Sri Lanka
By now, I don’t imagine there is a need to rehash the
details of recent
bombings in Sri Lanka. It would have been hard to escape the news: suicide
bombings by apparent Muslim extremists in three hotels in Colombo as well as
several Christian churches on Easter Sunday, killing well
over 250 people. The body count has varied, in part because it is difficult
to count bodies that have been so badly burned and blown apart. Exactly who
planned what is not entirely clear yet, although authorities have blamed a
homegrown Muslim militant organization, National Towheed
Jamaat. Whether there are ties to Islamic State is a subject of
investigation. The precise motive is something that remains unclear.
This comes just a month after the attack by an Australian
white supremacist on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, which I discussed
last month. I noted that I had spent time in New Zealand in 2008 as a
Visiting Fellow for a research center in Christchurch. Thus, I found it
disturbing in part because of a personal connection.
It so happens that I spent 10 days in Sri Lanka in 2005 as
part of an eight-member interdisciplinary team of Americans invited by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects to assess damage
from the Indian
Ocean tsunami and recommend options for rebuilding. In the weeks before the
trip, I made a brief, stumbling attempt to acquire some familiarity with the
dominant national language, Sinhala, but found it daunting. But I find such
efforts allow me to breathe in a little more of the ethos of the nation I am
visiting. And from further reading and from talking to our hosts, I learned
some very interesting facts about Sri Lanka.
The civil war that once raged is now over, but that was not
the case then. We traveled from the capital, Colombo, on the western coast
of this island, along the coast to Batticaloa, halfway up the
eastern coast, before we were forced to turn west through the Central
Highlands of Kandy back to Colombo. The Northeast and the Jaffna Peninsula were
under the control of the rebel Tamil
Tigers. Along the way back, we encountered some military checkpoints.
Caught in the middle of this long-running tragedy were the people of many rural
villages and smaller cities. As one architect on our team from New Mexico, who
was a Vietnam veteran, commented, “The rural people are the ones who always
take it in the shorts.”
But this struggle had little to do with Muslims or
Christians, except coincidentally. They were largely bystanders. The battle was
between the Sinhalese
majority and the Tamil
minority, which wanted rights to sustain its own Tamil language
and culture in a multicultural nation. That sounds fair enough, but the Tamil
Tigers became an incredibly vicious movement that had few compunctions about
sending suicide bombers to blow up public buses. They demanded a Tamil homeland
in the regions they controlled. Thousands of Sri Lankans died during decades of
armed insurgency. Finally, the rebellion was suppressed by the government about
ten years ago.
When we arrived, a cease-fire negotiated by Norwegian
diplomats was in effect, but 35,000 Sri Lankans had died as a result of the
tsunami—drowned in a wall of water, washed out to sea, crushed beneath
shattered buildings. The southern and eastern coasts were devastated. A nation
that had suffered so much needless death suffered even more at the hands of the
forces of nature, reinforced by a noticeable lack of preparation for such an
event.
Even before I left for Sri Lanka, I experienced a personal connection to it all. The Rev. Eardley Mendis, a Sri Lankan-American pastor, had worked as the custodian for Augustana Lutheran Church, of which my wife and I are members, while studying at the nearby Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. By 2005, he was the pastor of a local Lutheran church largely supported by Asian Americans. But his wife and daughter had returned to visit family in Sri Lanka over Christmas in 2004. When the tsunami struck on December 26, they were aboard the coastal passenger train that was destroyed by the second major tsunami wave, largely due to lack of warning of the impending danger. Eardley’s daughter survived; his wife did not. I interviewed him over lunch before I left Chicago. Later, during the trip, a villager in Peraliya took me to see the demolished train, stored on a side track as a memorial. For me, it was one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the entire tour.
The ghostly memorial of the train after the tsunami, May 2005
This man then showed all of us what was left of his home by the sea, including his makeshift oven, where he cooked meals that he sold to travelers along the road. That was his now fragile livelihood.
David Downey, Alan Fujimori, and others visit with my new acquaintance and his makeshift, post-tsumani home.
Sri Lanka has had a measure of peace for most of this decade
since the end of the Tamil Tigers insurrection.
A note on Sri Lankan demographics is in order at this point.
About two-thirds of the nation is Buddhist, mostly of Sinhalese ethnicity.
About 15 percent are Tamil and largely Hindu. The remainder of the nation mostly
consists of two religious minorities, half Muslim and half Christian. The
Muslims are mostly descended from traders who occupied the coastal cities since
medieval times, with Sri Lanka about midway between the predominantly Muslim
Arabian peninsula and predominantly Muslim Indonesia. While a very small number
of Christians are descended from European colonial settlers of centuries past,
most are converts of native Sri Lankan ancestry. The churches, both Catholic
and Protestant, are part of the fabric of modern Sri Lanka.
And so it may seem curious that one minority might attack
another, but it is far more important to know that the vast majority of Sri
Lankans of all faiths have had more than enough of war and bombings and
sectarian violence. The perpetrators of the Easter bombings appear to include some
children of a wealthy spice dealer in Colombo. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
apparently has expressed doubt that the father knew what the children were up
to, but the police rightly seem determined to find out. Muslims, like other
people across the planet, sometimes experience the pain of children who choose
an evil path. The Bible is replete with such stories.
So, for the moment, Christian bishops are warning worshipers
to stay home and avoid danger. Churches and other houses of worship no longer
appear to be sanctuaries, but targets. Here, it is probably worth quoting the
words of the chairman of one Colombo mosque, Akurana Muhandramlage Jamaldeen
Mohamed Jayfer, in an Associated
Press story today, describing the attackers as:
“not Muslims. This is not Islam. This is an animal. We don’t have a word (strong enough) to curse them.”
My only comment would be that he may have inadvertently
insulted the animals, who merely hunt for food. Only humans harbor hatred
powerful enough to motivate such heartless mass murder.
Photo of Gov. Bruce Rauner, from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Rauner.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, elected in 2014 and up for re-election this year as the Republican nominee, has made manipulative politics the centerpiece of his first term, at the expense of passing a budget through a Democrat-dominated legislature. Illinois has had such split governance before, but other governors at least understood that their first responsibility was to pass a budget so the state could pay its bills, even if that required some compromise. Rauner instead has thrown down the gauntlet repeatedly, often on issues such as right-to-work legislation that were not directly related to the budget but became his bludgeons to get what he wanted. The result was a two-year stalemate that saw Illinois continue many of its programs under court mandates rather than through legislation. Finally, enough Republicans bucked their own governor last year to force the issue and approve some tax increases to begin to pay down the state’s backlog of debts to social service providers, school districts, and state universities, among others.
You might think that, by now, Illinois would have had enough of such counterproductive, divisive politics. Compromise and disagreement always have co-habited in politics, mostly by necessity. Even in the era of Donald Trump, even in a gubernatorial election year, acting like an adult should still count for something.
Instead, Rauner on Monday used his line item veto power to revise a gun law passed by the legislature to attempt to reinstate the death penalty. The gun law would establish a 72-hour “cooling-off” period following the purchase of an assault weapon. Legislators have considered several proposals in response to the recent wave of incidents of gun-related violence around the nation and in the state. Rauner also stated that he believes the 72-hour rule should apply to all gun purchases, and proposed other gun-control measures, but it is hard to take him seriously when he makes the legislation contingent on an unrelated death penalty provision. Rauner understands all too well the political divisions inherent in gun policy, having barely survived a primary challenge from St. Rep. Jeanne Ives, a right-wing Republican from Wheaton, in the conservative evangelical heart of the Chicago suburbs. It is far easier to see a streak of raw cynicism behind Rauner’s move: How desperate are gun-control advocates to get something passed? Desperate enough to split the Democratic base by supporting reinstatement of the death penalty?
It is important to understand just how cynical this is in the context of recent Illinois history. The last Republican governor, George Ryan, placed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000 because he found himself increasingly troubled by the number of wrongful convictions in Illinois and the possibility that, in denying clemency, he could be signing the death warrant for an innocent person. In 2003, before leaving office, Ryan commuted the sentences of all death row inmates. Despite considerable criticism at the time, Ryan mounted a stout defense of his actions.
This has been no small matter in Illinois. The list of exonerations in recent decades runs on for pages. The City of Chicago has already paid out more than $100 million in reparations for wrongful convictions resulting from forced confessions, extracted through torture, by police detective Jon Burge, subsequently convicted himself in federal court for obstruction of justice and perjury. That is not even close to the end of the story; the overall total of settlements for police misconduct, according to the Better Government Association, totaled well in excess of $500 million by 2014. Thus, the move by Ryan served to open the floodgate of grievances and reservations that finally led the legislature to abolish the death penalty in 2011, signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn.
In the meantime, Ryan himself went to federal prison on corruption charges, followed a decade later by his Democratic successor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who himself seemed intent on proving that one need not be an adult to hold high office. Blagojevich is still appealing a 14-year sentence and hoping for clemency from President Trump. Illinois has had a colorful, but hardly confidence-inspiring, political history.
It is thus small surprise that there is little voter sentiment for what Rauner has now suggested. The notion that it may be better to let a murder convict sit in prison, where at least he or she may still be alive if or when a wrongful conviction is overturned, seems to have become the dominant sentiment among most of the body politic. Illinois does not need to revisit that conclusion so soon after achieving this historic landmark in its long history of criminal jurisprudence. We still don’t know what other innocent persons might be sitting on death row if the state had not ended the death penalty.
Rauner is trying to parse the distinction between potential wrongful convictions and legitimately convicted murderers by limiting the application of the death penalty in his amendatory veto language to those who murder police officers or kill two or more people. Asked why his proposal should not include murder of firefighters or teachers, Rauner declared himself open to expanding the list of victims for which the new death penalty would apply.
And thus, Rauner begins the process of frog-marching Illinois back into its dark past, picking scabs and reopening old wounds from a past that most of us have already chosen to put behind us.
Rauner also introduced in his amendatory veto a new standard of “beyond all doubt” in place of “beyond all reasonable doubt” for such convictions. But in practice, how does a jury, or a judge, truly distinguish one from another? If any doubt exists about convicting a defendant in a murder trial, shouldn’t that doubt be “reasonable” before it is even considered? In light of past miscarriages of justice, who will guarantee a just result before imposing the death sentence? Rauner’s tweaking of language does almost nothing to resolve the manifold doubts that moved public opinion toward the elimination of the death penalty in the first place.
The legislature, as always, has two options. One is for enough Democrats and Republicans, bipartisanly sick of this brazen manipulation, to override the amendatory veto with a three-fifths vote in both houses. The other is to do nothing, in which case the legislation goes nowhere. Legislators are also actively pursuing other measures concerning state licensing of gun dealers. The possibility of approving Rauner’s version of the bill creating the cooling-off period is, in fact, almost nonexistent, and Rauner’s true goal may be to satisfy the Republican right wing by killing the gun-control measure that passed and blaming its failure on Democrats. If so, voters may want to consider just how cynical they want their governor to be.
