* 10:36 am - Holy moly. The former executive director of a prominent prison watchdog group has been indicted. From a US Attorney press release…

An Illinois prison consultant was added as a defendant in a pending federal criminal case alleging that a former head of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) received approximately $50,000 in illegal kickbacks. The new defendant, Michael J. Mahoney, allegedly paid the kickbacks while representing vendors that had multi-million-dollar contracts with the state prison agency. Mahoney was charged together with Donald N. Snyder, Jr., who was IDOC director from 1999 until early 2003, in a six-count superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury, announced Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Mahoney and others allegedly were involved in paying kickbacks totaling approximately $20,000, out of the approximately $50,000 total, to Snyder.

Mahoney, 63, of Cassopolis, Mich., and formerly of Chicago, until 2002 was the Executive Director of, and a registered lobbyist for, unnamed “Association A,” a not-for-profit prison watchdog organization. He was charged with three counts of mail fraud.

That unnamed watchdog group is the John Howard Association, which fights for prisoners’ rights. What a state we live in. I’ll have documents in a bit.

* 10:42 am - And here they are…

* Press release
* Indictment

* 1:49 pm - The Washington Post’s Chris Cilllizza believes that retiring Republican Jerry Weller’s seat is the fourth most likely in the country to switch hands to the opposing party.