Wow. Why does news like this always break when I’m at work?
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich did the perp walk for his Chicago neighbors this morning. Others have written plenty about the facts of the indictment (here, here, here, here, and here). You should know two things:
1. There’s a chance Obama will pardon Blagojevich before he goes to court. Why? Because Obama is too close not to. Blagojevich is NOT AN HONORABLE CROOK. He will throw Obama under in a heartbeat. With the Justice Department expanding the Rezko-Obama land scandal investigation, with two of Obama’s closest associates (Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod) and Obama himself having served as paid adviser’s to Blagojevich , the risks to the new administration are too great to allow the governor to go to trial. UPDATE: John Kass, writing in the Trib, wonders if Blago will sing for reduced charges. Told you this would get interesting.
2. The indictments were timed to precede Obama’s inauguration. This indictment would have been buried, the tapes destroyed, had Obama’s justice department learned of the scope of the corruption. Fitzgerald had to move before the transition team learned that the FBI had the goods on Obama’s buddy.
3. This whole episode is a great lesson in how Democrat politics works. Blagojevich was using the power of the state purse to control the news coming out of the Chicago Tribune, to funnel money from a children’s hospital into his own pocket, and to control a labor union. This is Democrat at its best. The only difference between Chicago Democrats and the others is that the Chicago breed are too stupid to cover their tracks.
This should be the most interesting story in the news for the next month. If Obama pardon’s Blagojevich , look for the GOP to take back the House in 2010.
UPDATE David Axelrod previously endorsed trading political appointments for cash in a 2005 Chicago Tribune Op-Ed. Obama’s circle of corrupt friends gets more disturbing by the minute: Axelrod, Baglojevich, Franklin Raines (who danced around Congress today), Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko . . . who am I missing?
UPDATE The Chicago Tribune’s Wednesday editorial is up online. It’s brief and reveals nothing new, but it’s worth reading, nonetheless. The sheer ballsiness of Blagojevich is astonishing. The stupidity, if portrayed in a work of fiction, would render the script amateurish. What were you people thinking when you voted for this idiot? And what does it say of Obama’s vaunted judgment that he campaigned for and worked for the most ineptly corrupt politician in the history of America’s most corrupt city and state? Staggering is an understatement.
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