In an interview on NPR following Tuesday’s 9/11 hearings. Former Illinois Governor, Big Jim Thompson, gave a shout out to “all the Chicago cabbies.”

Because, you know, every time I’m in a cab, the driver has one ear on the cell phone, and the other on Gretchen Helfrich.

But seriously, what’s up with that? Did he get in tight with the cabbies while making the rounds of Chicago’s art galleries, back when he was threatening to open one?

Has Big Jim, like most Illinois officials, been “gotten to” by the cab driver lobby? Is he flubbing 9/11 testimony in a mindblowingly complicated terror plot?

Or does he suspect, as I do, that the residents of the many mental health facilities he closed down in the 80s have found a new role in society?