According to a report on the Tribune’s ChicagoBreakingNews site, U.S. Sen. Roland Burris won’t be facing perjury charges for giving vague and incomplete answers to the Illinois State Legislature regarding how he came to be appointed by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The county prosecutor says there is “insufficient evidence” to charge him with perjury (read the letter from the states attorney to speaker Mike Madigan).

But is there, really? It seems as if politics-as-usual is at play here, with people going out of their way to protect Burris. But why? My theory is that the powers that be in Illinois are afraid of the backlash if they were to find Burris, currently the only African-American in the U.S. Senate, guilty of perjury and remove him from his Senate seat, causing further embarrassment to the state of Illinois. However, my question to our state leaders is: Which would be more embarrassing, removing the sole African-American Senator from his seat for lying to the state legislature, or finding out later even more embarrassing details of how exactly he came to be senator?

At some point, we’ve got to put our principles ahead of party. We now have two governors that have been convicted of abusing their office, and a third on his way to conviction (no doubt in my mind). The corruption in this state goes deep and has a long history. As a result, many people in this state don’t have much faith in our state and local leaders. We’ve got to clean up our act here in Illinois if we ever want to ever again be taken seriously on a national stage.