How Drunk Were the Dead?

Even John Kass gets into the act, never once asking what the media have glossed over for more than two years now:

• What was the BAC of the two deceased traffic offenders? Where is the video of them pounding beers or shots or fizzy mixed drinks?

We've never been ones with the blinders on here. We've never declared Ardelean to have been sober. We've lambasted plenty of other drunks for the damage they cause and the embarrassment they bring to this city, this Department and the legions of men and women who do their jobs and go home to their families.

Drunks killing drunks is a tragedy to one side or the other all the time.

But we don't just charge the survivors. And we don't just throw probable cause, decades of established court procedure and historical precedent to the trash heap of history because one party happens to be a police officer, despite the recent history of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.

And we'll also point out that this story was never ever about justice for the dead. This entire incident was about revenge, using the court system as the hammer. Judge Gainer made a decision that no one was going to be happy with, but the decision to err on the side of caution is one of the unfortunate byproducts of our system of government. Did the system fail? We cold name dozens of crooked politicians who got off on technicalities, rapists who walked free, killers released who went on to kill again - there's an entire trail of carnage that can be laid at the feet of the justice system. But it's what we live with.

We've said it here many times - we aren't above the law, but we certainly aren't below it either.