Don Daley's still tilting away at his windmill

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune has an interesting op-ed on how King Emperor Mayor-for-Life Richard Daley is irrationally insisting on singlehandedly keeping "his" city's ban on handguns in place, despite the fact that Chicago's law is almost certainly going to be overturned in the near future.

The Windy City is the lone holdout left among the five Illinois cities that had unconstitutional firearm bans on the books when the Heller case was decided. The other municipalities quickly decided to preemptively repeal theirs, rather than face expensive (and unwinnable) court challenges. Daley isn't so pragmatic, nor is he unwilling to spend vast sums of his subjects' money to remain that way:

"He is not impressed that 1) the law almost certainly violates the Constitution, which elected officials are supposed to uphold, and 2) it would cost taxpayers a lot of money to fight lawsuits the city is bound to lose."

Daley doesn't care about such minor details as those. He runs things there, thank you very much, and will continue to do so until the Federal court system alerts him to reality with a binding judgment (and a very big legal bill).

It's a shame that the court won't ultimately be able to stick him personally with the approximately seven-figure cost of being the personification of obstruction of justice and the freedoms of the inhabitants of the city he professes to have so much regard for.