"The list of crooked politicians is long, and the list of stupid politicians even longer. But if the criminal allegations made yesterday against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich are proven in court, rarely will a politician have combined the two qualities with such efflorescence.
The second-term Democrat knew that a grand jury probe was under way into corruption in Illinois politics, and that one of his fund raisers, Tony Rezko, had been convicted and is cooperating with prosecutors.
Yet according to those prosecutors, Mr. Blagojevich talked openly in recent weeks about selling a U.S. Senate seat, trading government favors for campaign cash, and punishing the owner of the Chicago Tribune if it didn't fire members of the newspaper's editorial board.
The Governor's comments were taped in court-approved wiretaps and include such self-incriminating classics as: 'I've got this thing [the power to appoint Barack Obama's Senate replacement] and it's [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.'
We recommend the entire 76-page FBI affidavit for every high school civics course as proof of the need for political checks and balances. If convicted, Mr. Blagojevich would be the second consecutive Illinois Governor to be found guilty of a felony, and the fourth in 35 years.
We'd ask if it's something in the water, but that would be unfair to the Chicago River. It is certainly something in the Chicago political culture, where money and government power seem especially fungible.
Among the remarkable facts of the recent Presidential election is that Barack Obama emerged from this political culture virtually untainted -- and with Chicago's political mores all but unexamined by the press.
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said yesterday there is no evidence that Mr. Obama knew about the Governor's allegedly crooked ambitions.
However, as a Chicago-area pol himself, Mr. Obama did help Mr. Blagojevich plot his first statehouse victory in 2002.
Now would be a good time for the President-elect to say that Mr. Blagojevich and his cronies should have nothing to do with naming Mr. Obama's successor. And that, given the taint of corruption that now hangs over any choice, the state should hold a special Senate election." --The Wall Street Journal
(Note; the connections and dealings between Barack Hussein Obama and Tony Rezko were well documented as well as Rezko's dealings with shady mideastern conspirators, yet that was never mentioned the first time by the national media. Neither was the fact that Rezko had extensive ties to Muslim Arab activists nor that Obama's father was listed as "Arab-Kenyan" by the Kenyan government making BH Obama and Arab/American and not "African/American" nor that the elder Obama wasn't some goat herder, he was with the influential Kenyan central bank. Why even bother to mention Obama's support of his East German educated cousin in Kenya who promised Islamic Sharia law if elected and who named his son "Fidel" and daughter "Winnie" after two of the world's more famous and despotic Marxists??)gs
"I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening." --Barack Obama, friend and ally of Gov. Blagojevich
"I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them." --Obama adviser David Axelrod on 23 November (Axelrod now says he was "mistaken" when he said that)
(so anyone who believes Obama's public claims about his relationship with the corrupt current and former Illinois governors just wants to believe a lie.)gs
"There are enough connections between the worlds of [Rod] Blagojevich and [Barack] Obama that the whole thing has the potential to grow beyond a colorful Chicago tale of corruption to entangle members of the Presidential transition team [and] to test Obama's carefully cultivated reformist image." --Massimo Calabresi
"So, do the rest of you now have some idea of the depth of corruption in Chicago and Illinois, and why some of us were so concerned about electing a president who emerges from this cesspool?" --columnist Dennis Byrne
"And so we understand that we've got to provide a, a, a blood infusion into the patient right now to make sure that the patient is stabilized, and, and that means that we, we can't worry short term about the deficit. We've got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving." --Barack Obama
"You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over." --Barack Obama, announcing his plan for $700 billion in "public works"
"I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the Second Amendment. Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven't indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word." --Barack Obama, who still promises to make the so-called "assault weapons" ban permanent (on his site under Crime and Law Enforcement), which would ban most of the guns Americans have been buying since the election.
