Is It Just Us...

...or was this about the quickest determination of "suicide" in a Chicago death investigation in recent years?

• The death of Chicago School Board President Michael Scott was ruled a suicide this afternoon by the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. He died of a gunshot wound to the head, officials said.

Of course, the web Scott operated in is now a hotbed of conspiracy theories. The list of people interviewed in the Sun Times article is a veritable "Who's Who" of political intrigue and insider connections:

• A stunned Rev. Jesse Jackson showed up at the scene...
• U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, issued a statement...
• Ron Huberman, who replaced Duncan as schools CEO, was at Scott’s Near West Side condominium this morning to offer condolences to family and friends. He was joined by schools spokeswoman Monique Bond...
• Cook County Board President Todd Stroger issued a statement...

The list of aldercreatures is extensive, too. And then there are the intriguing parts:

• Scott was Daley’s long-time go-to guy but raised eyebrows earlier this year when he disclosed to the Sun-Times that he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating how students were selected for the system’s elite selective-enrollment high schools.

• In August, he was forced to answer questions about his involvement in a development proposal near the the proposed Douglas Park Olympic site.

  He insisted he would not profit from the deal.

• On Monday, Carothers cut off a conversation with a reporter when asked whether he had recorded any conversations with Scott.

Questions, and more questions. Especially about that wire Ike was wearing.

UPDATE: Even John Kass is wondering - especially about the location, location, location:

• And in Monday's daylight, after the TV cameras had left, it seemed reasonable that Scott could have easily made his way there.
  
  But the night before, in the dark, it would have been all but unnavigable. He would have had to walk right under the cement counterweight for that old drawbridge, then scramble underneath an iron fence, then down a little embankment overgrown with weeds and strewn with trash.
  
  He'd have walked over broken bottles, old rags from some homeless wanderer. There was a syringe on the ground.
  
  Scott would have walked out along part of the cement river wall running under the bridge. It is about 5 feet below street level, next to an old boarded-up bridge house. It's quiet, even in the day. At night it would be all but silent.

Even J-Fed contributes to the conspiracy!

• "We know what the ME ruled," said Police Superintendent Jody Weis. "But there are a lot of questions out there."

Hmmmmmm.