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BY MIKE CETERA

Amen.

I've always found it strange and slightly irritating that every time I drive through an I-Pass lane, I have to read a sign with Gov. Rod Blagojevich congratulating himself. I cop the same slightly annoyed attitude whenever I travel to the airport and must be welcomed by Richard M. Daley.

So, I'm all for a law that would ban "state officeholders from having their names appear on tax-subsidized billboards and electronic signs promoting government programs." Unfortunately, I don't think this bill goes far enough.

BY MIKE CETERA

So, Joe Birkett's son got caught in a pot bust. So what? Now we have confirmation his family isn't infallible either.

The arrest of Nicholas T. Birkett would have been relegated to the police blotter -- at best -- if he wasn't the son of the DuPage County state's attorney.

Instead, Joe's son becomes just another statistic in this country's "war on drugs." We are left to either empathize or mock a politician and his son.

BY MIKE CETERA

Stephanie Kifowit correctly points out in a story last week that she wouldn't be an alderman without the benefit of a primary.

Kifowit finished second in a three-way primary in 2002. During that same primary, former Aurora Alderman Kenneth Hinterlong bested current 5th Ward Alderman John "Whitey" Peters by 49 votes. Peters went on to win in the general election. But he, too, would be out of a job if it weren't for Aurora's primary system.

Interesting trivia, but so what?

BY MIKE CETERA

In 2007, Gov. Rod Blagojevich killed funding -- about $6 million -- for the anti-violence group CeaseFire, which had a fledgling Aurora chapter. An administration official at the time said the state could not afford to spend money on the program.

Nine months later, the governor on Tuesday proposed a $150 million anti-violence plan that encourages funding of "community-based programs (to) keep our children safe."

You see, now the governor wants to find a way to Stop. Killing. People.

If only there were a such a program out there...

But, wait, it gets better. The governor, in proposing his new Community Investment Works program, which -- as of yet -- has no funding source, appears to have used a rather flattering news story about what CeaseFire has accomplished to advocate his own plan. If CeaseFire is so great, why did he block funding?

BY MIKE CETERA

Parents who preach traditional values should be apoplectic. But there has been virtually no backlash over two local high schools' selections for spring musicals that deal in very adult issues. Have we turned a tolerance corner, or have people just stopped paying attention?

West Aurora High School just wrapped up its performance of "Rent," a rock opera that centers around a cast of gay characters struggling to make a life "under the shadow of AIDS." Related story here.

And Oswego High School is set to perform "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" later this week. "Sweeney Todd," is a musical revenge story about a barber turned serial killer. Related story here.

BY MIKE CETERA

Here's something nobody is talking about: Shootings are down, way down, in Aurora this year.

Through Wednesday, shootings had dropped by more than 50 percent when compared to the same time period last year, according to Aurora Police Department statistics.

The numbers
25 shootings between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2008
53 shootings between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2007

Those figures put Aurora on pace to record 75 shootings this year. Wow.

BY MIKE CETERA

A week before the Super Bowl, a neighbor told me about an annual betting pool he and his buddies enter. Such pools are not hard to find -- a trip to your local watering hole is about all it takes.

This pool offered up "squares" that corresponded with the score of the game at the end of each quarter. If the score matched your square, you earned a piece of the pool. Simple as that. The Aurora bar where this pool took place sold squares at $1,000 a piece. Shocked at the price, I declined my neighbor's invitation.

I offer up this anecdote as validation of Elburn Mayor Jim Willey's understatement in addressing the bust of a similar gambling operation in his town: "I don't believe this is only happening in Elburn."

Of course it's not. But the question is why do these anti-gambling laws -- which are selectively enforced -- exist?

BY MIKE CETERA

Eyebrows were raised, but the word "tenuous" also was uttered more than once during our afternoon meeting Monday when editors discussed where the mention of Dennis Hastert in the Tony Rezko trial should be played in the paper.

Read the trial accounts here and here.

From the Sun-Times:

Tony Rezko associate Elie Maloof just testified that when he received a grand jury subpoena, Rezko told him not to talk to the feds. Why?

"The federal prosecutor will no longer be the same federal prosecutor," Maloof just testified that Rezko told him. What did Rezko mean prosecutor Chris Niewoehner asked? "That Patrick Fitzgerald would be terminated and Dennis Hastert will name his replacement. The investigation will be over."

All of the accounts I've read dance around the suggestion that Hastert was involved in a plot to sack U.S. District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Hastert denied the suggestion himself on Monday.

Yet this isn't the first time the former speaker's name has been invoked during discussions of Fitzgerald's potential dismissal.

BY MIKE CETERA

On its face, charging a kid with a crime that could land him in prison for as long as 30 years for lighting a roll of toilet paper on fire seems a bit like overkill. People convicted of reckless homicide have been given less time.

But when you consider what could have happened after the 17-year-old allegedly started a blaze in a bathroom earlier this week at West Aurora High School, such a penalty seems far less extreme.

BY DAVE PARRO

While the conviction Monday of six Insane Deuces gang members made headlines in Aurora, it got little attention elsewhere. It should have, however, because proving conspiracy might be the most powerful tool police and prosecutors have in bringing down street gangs here.

Federal prosecutors successfully used racketeering laws to prove a conspiracy to commit murder and sell drugs in Aurora over a period of time. Some of the gang members will be facing life sentences under strict federal sentencing guidelines.

It's not the first time the RICO Act, originally used against the Mafia, has been used against street gangs. But it's a new tool in Aurora, and the guilty verdicts this week could be a sign of things to come.