Blagojevich
Friday, December 12, 2008 9:14 PM
Funny. No sooner do I upload this website "Impeach-Them-All," then fate should present us with a genuine candidate for impeachment. Minutes before posting this I googled "Blagojevich + impeachment" and got 86,200 hits. Rod Blagojevich, affectionately known on Twitter as #blago, is the Governor of Illinois who was arrested on Federal corruption charges on December 9 for a variety of alleged crimes including trying to sell Barack Obama's US Senate seat. Wikipedia has much to say about the Democrat from Chicago. Will he be impeached? I defer to the wisdom of a local paper, the Chicago Tribune.
I've been hearing scraps of radio punditry for the past two days, and it seems that there are two possible scenarios: 1. The Blagojevich scandal will ultimately be found to involve President-Elect Barack Obama and might even bring down the Obama presidency; and 2. Blagojevich is the fall guy for Chicago corruption, and after his political demise, assuming it happens by impeachment or other means, Obama will come out smelling like a rose, and the attention of the American public will focus away from Chicago. Of course, both of these scenarios are possible, the second to be followed by the first.
Scandal aside, there are some interesting facts about this colorful political character, who is the second Serbian-American to become governor of a US State. His given name is Milorad, but in politics he calls himself Rod. Before election to the Illinois House in 1992, he served as assistant State's Attorney, specializing in domestic abuse crimes and felony weapons cases.
The Huffington Post claimed that Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel tipped off the FBI about Blagojevich's crimes. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh described Emanuel as "imploding" and accused him on his subscription website of acting like a "wimp", invoking memories of Ken Starr and Linda Tripp. National Review Online reported that Emanuel "occasionally spoke" to Blago "probably" about the Senate seat. None of this publicity bodes well for Senator Obama, who is being dogged by questions about the rather strange birth certificate on his website.