Breaking news – U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Randall Samborn said both Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested today. Authorities aren’t yet releasing details about those charges.
The stunning, early morning visit by authorities to the governor’s North Side home came amid revelations that federal investigators had recorded the governor with the cooperation of a longtime confidant and had begun to focus on the possibility that the process of choosing a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama could be tainted by pay-to-play politics.
Here are additional news articles about Govenor Blagojevich.
Hey Red – I didn’t see a mention of this scum governor’s political party affiliation in your headline or article. Let me help you with that:
DEMOCRAT !! DEMOCRAT !! DEMOCRAT !!
I am sure that had this creep been a Republican, that would not have been missing from either your headline or article. Biased much?
Oh junior, take a few deep breaths.
Gotta love that haircut. 70s sportscaster.
Junior,
A creep is a creep. Party affiliation is of little consequence. Your lack of fully grasping the gravity of Blagojevich’s alleged wrong doing is stunning.
Did he learn from Mike Carona? This looks a lot like Carona’s modus operandi.
But actually, I think it is the Daley machine at work.
You are so right, but we are trying to adapt to a changed environment where there is no Democratic America and Republican America just honest Americans and dishonest Americans.
I don’t suppose that kind of change is possible for an old partisan hack like yourself, though.
“Trust, but verify” applies to pundits from both major parties.
Case in point. On my drive back from LA I listened to Sean Hannity broadcasting two sound bites. One from an Obama team member and the second from the president elect this morning.
My caution is not to take things out of content or misread timing.
While I did not vote for nor did I support senator Obama I caution the KABC listeners that while the senator states not having spoken to the IL governor, what is missing is when did that other conversation take place. Was that exchange over the past week or AFTER the governor was taken away by the fed’s? Big difference Sean Hannity.
Although Obama said he did not speak to the governor and his aide said he had, you need to add whether this also included Obama mentioning having a dialogue on the possible sale of his seat in Congress in that call which you have jumped on. When did those two exchanges occur?
Unless you can tie these communications together there is no smoking gun story here.
Keep hearing more about this character; he’s a big Elvis fan, and very foul-mouthed, every other word is the F-bomb. He was going around saying things to wired people like: I’ve got the f–king position of a lifetime to give away here, how much do you want to f–king pay me? Happy to say Barack comes off clean as a daisy: When asked (while being secretly taped) if Team Obama had expressed any preference for Barack’s replacement, Dirty Blago replied, “Yeah but they didn’t offer anything but their f–king ‘APPRECIATION,’ so F–K ‘EM!”
I’d known this scumbag was under investigation for a few years – about as long as Jefferson. Yes, Junior, he’s a Democrat! Democrat! Democrat! So what? Remember when I got all happy about Ted Stevens’ convictions and made a fun post about that a couple months ago, and you thought you were clever when you said “How will you feel when Dollar Bill Jefferson gets convicted?” Well, I wrote good celebratory posts about both of them, didn’t I?
http://orangejuiceblog.com/2008/10/senator-ted-stevens-convicted-on-all-seven-counts/
and
http://orangejuiceblog.com/2008/12/dollar-bill-jefferson-d-la-finally-defeated-by-first-viet-congressman/
And I also notice that, in my titles, I mentioned the Democrat’s party and didn’t mention the Republican’s. Why? Because it is not newsworthy when a Republican is busted for corruption, while it is unusual for a Democrat.
And why is that? Obvious reason, the Republicans have had all the power for a long time and it’s not worth bribers’ money buying off the minority party. (I expect more Dems to fall prey to the temptation in the coming years.) But I also think Republicans are more susceptible to corruption because they really do believe that there should be no limits on what people with money can do with that money – it’s part of their actual ideology, and often they go to jail firmly believing they’ve done nothing wrong!
These last two man-bites-dog stories happened in the cesspools of Chicago and New Orleans, which, like Santa Ana, have long wallowed in one-party rule, which is never good no matter which party is in power.
Good on the Feds who seem to be going after corruption regardless of party. Patrick Fitzgerald, who busted dirty Blago, is most famous for going after Scooter Libby – as well as he could anyway, with all the protection the Bush criminals gave him…
Brother Larry was writing while I was. Good job, Juice-brother, listening to Hannity critically. Keep it up and you’ll see he’s one of the most dishonest voices in the media.
Read the criminal complaint. Mrs. Blago appears to be adept at tossing out the F*+k bomb! It’s a riveting read.
Great input, guys!
In addition, it looks like this guy is a major bully and is basically unliked by all. He’s extremely unpopular and has been difficult for a long time. It looks like the main objective is to cut off his power so that he cannot continue to taint a process of appointing a replacement senator for Obama’s vacancy. I posted this early this am to give you all a heads up, not as some kind of partisan post. Looks like most everyone understood that.
Gads, junior, you’re starting to look like you’ve got a situational moral compass. Of course there is criminal behavior in all parties. Now that we’ve seen you jumping for joy over a DEMOCRAT! DEMOCRAT! DEMOCRAT! getting busted for corruption, let’s see how you deal with the next GOP criminal that emerges from the pack.
It must be in the air or the water in Springfield. Party affiliation seems not to matter. Isn’t there a Repub. governor from Ill. sitting in prison right now?
LOL, anon… a reader on TPM joked earlier today: “Question: if he goes to prison could he share a cell with former GOP Gov. Ryan, just to show Americans that Democrats and Republicans can live together in peace?”
This is bleepin’ beautiful: the press conference of today’s Elliot Ness, Patrick Fitzgerald (experiment: can I actually post a video on comments? We shall see – or else it will end up a post.)
VICTORY IS MINE.
Statewide its been like an average of 2 politicians a year for the past 30 years according to Rachael Maddow today.
#9
I read the complaint, but I am left wondering where’s the smoking gun?
I’m no attorney, but if I were an elected official and the local paper wrote trash about me, I might be inclined to talk trash about getting the (bleep, bleep) writer fired. And it might make me feel good to think I could impede the sale of Wrigley Field. Which brings me back to my original observation … where’s the smoking gun tidying up these criminal complaints?
I don’t think stupidty is a crime. If it were, this swag should be put away for life.
Nowhere in the lead paragraph of the article “Political plotting” [Front Page, Nov. 10], published in The O.C. Register about Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, did “Democrat” appear after his name. Readers had to go to deep into the article before they found out that Blagojevich is a Democrat.
Point of fact, if one does a search for the word “Democrat” in the online Chicago Tribune article, the word “Democrat” does not appear until the eighth paragraph. Had Blagojevich been a Republican it would be a different story; the political party would be named in the opening paragraph. On the major public TV world news programs, at least the ones I watched, I never once heard the party that he was affiliated with. How, then, can the fourth estate and the talking heads on television keep a straight face when they deny that they are not in the hip pocket of the Democratic Party?
Ron Simon
San Juan Capistrano
From OC Register Letters to Editor
Junior, still with the Democrat-Democrat-Democrat? Now you’ve got an ally! You and Ron Simon of SJC can gripe together about the OC Register’s anti-Republican bias!
It looks like Red Vixen wasn’t the only “journalist” who saw this not so much as a partisan thing but as a crazed loose-cannon Chicago politician just like his predecessor in office, Jim Ryan (a Republican! Republican! Republican! [who also happened to be a hero on the death penalty])
Vern,
Cut Junior some slack. It isn’t often that he gets to climb aboard his moral high horse and beat it to death.
With Ted Stevens, Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramhoff, Scooter Libby, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Vito Fossella, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard among others, there hasn’t been much room for scandals involving Democrats.
Besides it has to be awfully depressing knowing that his party and his president have helped create the current climate that we are living in.