Trib's John Kass tells how he fell out with Daley

Despite the fact that we were falling out, I didn't want to be the critic, the hammer. I wanted to interpret and explain. But by the mid-1990s, Daley's hatchet men had rigged employment tests to build vast patronage armies, allowing him to control all of Cook County and become the dominant political silverback male in Illinois.

He was the strongman of the wrought-iron fist, with all those suck-ups around him, laughing at his jokes like hyenas in a children's cartoon. There was a media love fest. And I couldn't take it anymore. -- Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2011