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THE SAD part of Chicago's latest corruption scandal is that the city's greatest columnist is no longer around to interpret it to the outside world. Mike Royko would surely have enjoyed explaining the charges laid against the Illinois governor, the breadth of which even the federal prosecutor describes as "staggering", writes Frank McNally

Whether Royko would have been staggered is another matter. For 34 years until his death in 1997, he specialised in detailing the city's uniquely pragmatic approach to politics, with particular reference to Mayor Richard Daley's infamous machine. In one of he early columns, he suggesting updating Chicago's Latin motto from Urbs in Horto ("City in a Garden") to Ubi Est Mea? ("Where's mine?").