Illinois' senior U.S. senator, its junior U.S. senator (who also happens to be the Democratic nominee for president) and all of Southern Illinois' congressmen are asking U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to do one thing:

Review the findings of several Veterans Affairs investigations at Marion VA Medical Center for possible criminal violations.

It is a completely reasonable and legitimate request.

To recap: Outpatient surgery was halted in August 2007. A subsequent VA review found at least nine deaths between October 2006 and March 2007 were "directly attributable" to substandard care.

Furthermore, of an additional 34 cases the VA investigated, 10 patients died after receiving questionable care that complicated their health.

Additionally, The VA's investigators called the hospital's then management "dysfunctional and inefficient."

Those investigators also found bad employee morale stemming from concerns including sexual harassment, forced retirements of elderly staff and the quality of patient care, including the hiring of poor physicians.

To put that all into one sentence: Veterans were dying needlessly and the Marion VA had become a horrible place to work.

VA Secretary Dr. James B. Peake visited Marion earlier this month. Then, and since, he has seemed at most ambivalent toward an outside review of what happened at Marion.

What sticks in the craw of the public, including local veterans, is that no one seems to have been held responsible.

The director of the facility was transferred, and he retired only early last month.

A ranking manager based in Kansas City has been transferred to Washington.

One surgeon has lost his medical licenses.

Peake's remark, "We don't do public floggings," has become somewhat infamous in Southern Illinois.

No one's asking for public floggings.

But 19 people are dead.

In the world outside federal government employ, everyday people face scrutiny when someone dies unexpectedly.

Police, prosecutors, coroners, and child welfare agencies, for instance, routinely look into what happened and try to determine if one person's actions led to the death of another.

Sometimes criminal charges are deemed warranted and sometimes they are not. Sometimes ordinary and largely decent people are charged with crimes; sometimes they are convicted. If so, it is then for the court to decide the balance of punishment and rehabilitation.

We don't know if anyone need be criminally charged after the deaths at Marion.

All we are asking is that the people responsible for oversight and care at the Marion VA face the same scrutiny that any other citizen of this country would be expected to endure.

One would certainly assume that the Department of Justice has people qualified for that task - people with experience, expertise and perspective.

To its credit, the VA has shown it has the ability and fortitude to investigate. But the question remains, can the VA police itself?

Attorney General Mukasey, the public needs your department's services. And the nation needs to know the federal government and its employees are held to the same standard as the citizenry.