Apropos my post yesterday on Emil Jones, Jr., David Freddoso catalogs Obama's machine ways in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

John Kass, the keenest observer of the Chicago Way, weighs in this morning by noting that the history of political nepotism in Chicago is much deeper - and more colorblind - than the current outrage over Emil Jones, Jr..

Lastly, Carol Marin of the Sun-Times writes a blistering column on the raging epidemic of "nepotitis" in Illinois politics and the cynical timing of Jones' decision:

Oh, right, there will be an election. But the primary has conveniently come and gone when other candidates, had they known of President Jones' pending retirement, might have jumped in but didn't. And since the Republican opponent in the general election is none other than Ray "Spanky the Clown" Wardingley, a pitiable perennial, why bother with the general election? Let's just plop young Emil in his dad's seat now.

Nepotitis is a plague that never dies.

At the very same moment Barack Obama, an alumnus of the Illinois State Senate and a mentee of President Jones, is campaigning across America in behalf of change we can believe in and a new kind of politics. Here on the homefront we have his mentor playing the same old, cynical game that treats public office like a family entitlement. And the public payroll like a bequest.

Marin continues:

Now President Jones is pretty angry with us at the Sun-Times and at NBC5. Furious that we have dared to ask questions about how young Emil, lacking a college degree, got an administrator-level state job paying almost $60,000 a year; how his stepson, John Sterling, has been the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state subcontracts at the same time his stepfather was fighting the mandatory disclosure of subcontractors; and how Jones himself has regularly taken out no-interest loans from his million-dollar-plus campaign fund, more than half a million of which he can pull out in personal income thanks to a grandfathered-in campaign provision.

It's business as usual here in Illinois, though it's not a pretty site when viewed up close.