* Phil Kadner whacks Sen. Dick Durbin but good for asking that the president commute George Ryan’s prison sentence…

[Durbin] sides with Ryan’s pitiful wife, apparently forgetting the story of Tammy Raynor.

Raynor worked at a driver’s license facility under Ryan and saw the bribe-taking. When she protested, she was harassed. Her life was threatened. She was transferred.

But wherever she worked, she took notes on the corruption that she saw and stuffed them in the pockets of a multi-colored winter coat that she wore even in the summer.

At one point, Raynor claimed her mother passed Ryan’s wife a note, at a fundraising event, explaining the situation Raynor was in. Ryan’s wife, the woman Durbin feels so bad for today, said she never got the note.

I believe Raynor, whose testimony helped send Ryan to prison.

Durbin feels bad for Ryan. He feels bad for Ryan’s wife.

But he feels no sympathy for the honest people who live in this corruption-infested state.

I’m not surprised. You don’t get to be a U.S. senator from Illinois thinking about the little people.

* Mark Brown is outraged…

It’s hard to be against mercy. We all should strive to be merciful and compassionate.

But we also ought to have some standards as to when we show mercy, and the line doesn’t start with crooked politicians who fight, stall and postpone their convictions until they’re old enough to be considered more sympathetic.

Let me preface anything else I say with this: I’ve always liked Durbin. I respect him. I think he tries to be a decent public servant. But I think he’s so wrong on this one it’s ridiculous, as was his attempt at justifying his decision.

Basically, it all boils down to the fact he knows the Ryans personally and is therefore familiar with what a hardship the ex-governor’s prison sentence has been on Mrs. Ryan in particular.

He explained his decision in the context of spending his entire public life trying to correct government injustices of one sort or another that have been brought to his attention by members of the public. He chalked up the Ryan clemency bid as just one more example of that.

When pressed, though, Durbin said he couldn’t remember ever seeking clemency on behalf of anybody else. And he also backpedaled from the notion that Ryan was the victim of any injustice.

* The Sun-Times editorial board examines some problems with Durbin’s logic…

The senator’s notion of fairness is not informed by the facts in Ryan’s case.

If Ryan is released early, he will have spent less time in prison than two friends convicted in the case — Ryan’s aide, Scott Fawell, who did the dirty work, and businessman Lawrence Warner, who profited from the dirty deals.

Hardly fair or proportionate.

Often, special early release is reserved for the most penitent of prisoners. Ryan is the exact opposite. Years after his conviction, he has yet to apologize to the people of Illinois or, more specifically, to the Willis family, who lost six children in a fiery crash in 1994. Ryan’s corrupt secretary of state office gave a license to the unqualified truck driver involved in that crash.

Durbin said he hopes Ryan will apologize — when he gets out.

What a backward notion. And again, hardly fair.

Even if Ryan were to apologize while standing on the prison steps, we would have to question his sincerity. Ryan’s wife has said his conscience is clear.

* The Tribune editorial board published an open letter today to President Bush…

President Bush, you know George Ryan as an affable governor from your past. The people of Illinois know him as a criminal whose first-tier legal team couldn’t sway jurors from convicting him on 18 corruption counts.

We urge you, Mr. Bush, not to tell the preyed-upon people of Illinois that public corruption doesn’t matter.

We urge you to demonstrate that the difficult work of courts and jurors does matter.

We urge you not to free George Ryan.

* And the Daily Herald, like just about everybody else, brings up the dead Willis children…

George Ryan wants to spend time with his family. We think he should continue to reflect in prison on the fact that a bribery scandal in the secretary of state’s office he led resulted in the deaths of the six children of Rev. Scott and Janet Willis.

Our sympathies lie with them.

* Sneed is Sneed…

Sen. Dick Durbin, who asked President Bush for former Gov. George Ryan’s freedom Monday, feels he did so with approval.

• • The approval? Whenever Durbin faces a tough decision, he “thinks about what the late Sen. Paul Simon, a very compassionate man, would have done,” said a Sneed source.

• • The upshot: “Durbin believes Simon would have given a nod of approval to his action. Paul Simon is his North Star when it comes to politics,” the source added.

• • Backshot: In a rare expression of public compassion from a politician, Sen. Durbin gets Sneed’s award for bravery. It’s not easy knowing you’re going to be flooded with hate mail for doing what you think is the right thing. Sneed is told Sen. Durbin was inundated with negative messages the day after he announced he was thinking about asking President Bush to commute Ryan’s federal corruption sentence.