Republican voters are suggesting the 2nd Congressional District replace one felon, former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. with another after picking ex-convict Paul McKinley as the candidate to run for the seat recently ceded by Jackson.
McKinley, a convicted felon who served nearly 20 years in state prison for burglaries, armed robberies and aggravated battery, declared victory.
According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, McKinley was sentenced to concurrent three- and four-year sentences in 1978 for burglary and armed robbery in Cook County. In 1981 he was sentenced to four years for burglary, according to a prisons agency spokeswoman. In 1985, McKinley was sentenced to five years for two counts of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm and 30 years for armed robbery. He was paroled in 1997, according to the state.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith