Synonym a Day

In 1952, the Chicago Daily News reported that Big Joe [Rostenkowski] had three no-show employees on his committee payroll. . . . The next year, in an anti-corruption editorial, the Sun-Times called . . . Big Joe and a couple of other aldermen “the council’s worst specimens.” In 1955, the same paper termed Big Joe “an undeviating member of the plunderbund that now controls the council.” (Peter Carlson, “Dan Rostenkowski Goes Down in History,” Washington Post, 10/17/1993.)