Funny about that. Carroll County is in the Northwest corner of Illinois, about two hours west of O'hare Airport.
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Many years ago, when I lived in Carroll County, the United States Army kept their entire nuclear arsenal at the Savanna Ordnance Depot there. It was secure by remoteness, but it was more secure by secrecy. In the three years I lived there, I knew there was an ammunition plant, but knew nothing about the nuclear presence. Now it has been gone for more than ten years.
Now the presence of an Interstate to Chicago nearby has shrunk the distance (or at least the time) from Chicago by half. And thanks to MSNBC, and the Governor of Illinois, there is no secret about the future use of a local (underused) prison. Thomson Correctional Institute in Thomson, Illinois is a minimal security prison. Normally prison guards watch from towers looking into the prison grounds. But this time the guards will need to watch outside as well, for there is little to stop an assault on a prison this isolated, yet so near the metropolitan areas of Saint Louis, Chicago, Madison, and Minneapolis. That's right, a few hours in any direction and they could meld into massive populations of sympathetic supporters. It is the stuff that bad movies are made of. But is that so far-fetched in this day and age?
Every day we get a new surprise of just how stupid we have become as a nation.
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