If you missed Cook County Board President's appearance on WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, it's worth watching in full.  Carol Marin's effort to get to the bottom of the Tony Cole controversy led to some pretty tense moments. 

As he makes the media rounds regarding this scandal, Stroger seems to think reporters should be satisfied with his vague and all-around mysterious explanations of what occurred.  But as the following clip shows, his answers only spawn more questions:

Here's the transcript:

STROGER: When anyone is hired, their name goes to the inspector general's office.  The inspector general sends it to the FBI and the State Police and they do a background check.  The background check brought up all of these things that you've just read.  And from that, he [Tony Cole] was fired.

MARIN: But the background check wasn't executed by the time you hired him?  I mean, he was ultimately fired.  But he's been in place for some time.

STROGER: Yes, our background checks go through the state police.  The state police get background checks from all over the state.  So I suspect they just put us in the queue and that is usually 2-3 months.

MARIN: So you only got the word last week?

STROGER: Yes.

Stroger says the background check process takes "2-3 months." Cole appeared on the county payroll on October 14, 2008 -- about six months ago.  But Stroger didn't receive the report on Cole until two weeks ago?  Huh?

It's this type of stuff that makes Stroger's media criticism so ridiculous.  Speaking of which, the Sun-Times editorial board has more questions for the board president, including one on the background check.