In his commentary titled: "The Rules Kept Changing; Dan Rostenkowski Didn't", Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko, a frequent Rostenkowski critic, wrote "Nobody should be taking pleasure from Rostenkowski's misfortune. Not unless you have never, ever, broken even a minor law and gotten away with it, fudged a bit on your taxes or violated any of the Ten Commandments.' "Only a few decades ago, none of this would have been happening. That's because the rules changed. Most of the things he was nailed for would have been legal and common or, at worst, nickel-dime offenses when he began his career in Congress." Royko also questioned the motives of federal prosecutors, "Rostenkowski was a big political fish-the kind of trophy that an ambitious federal prosecutor loves to stuff and hang on his wall…That's what did Rostenkowski in – a federal prosecutor's personal ambitions."