In case you haven't heard, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is facing federal corruption charges for numerous pay-to-play political games, with the culmination being an attempt to sell off President-Elect Obama's vacated Senate seat. No I'm not fucking with you. This dude tried to sell off the Senate seat of the President-Elect of the United States. You keep thinking that no one can out-crook the last super-crook, and then along comes this scumbag.
Keep in mind, Blagojevich was already under investigation, for three years, by Patrick Fitzgerald (yep, that guy). He knew about what happened to George Ryan. I mean, in the wake of all the scandals that we've seen in the last few years, how do you say to yourself, "Hey, let's do more dirty shit. Let's sell Obama's Senate seat?" This is just mind-blowing.
There's a round up of blogger reactions over at Sully's place. This one from Kathryn Jean Lopez caught my eye:
This Illinois Senate-seat news is outrageous and shameful. That said, it warms my heart. Finally, a political scandal you can talk to your children about. No room at the Mayflower. No myspace page. No Gay-American announcement. Just good and evil and money and power corrupting.
Well, there's always a bright side, I guess...
BTW, there is no mention of Obama being directly involved in this thing in the complaint, and absent any evidence to the contrary, I'm convinced he had nothing to do with this, except of course in that it was his seat being offered up.
ADDED: Just to be clear, while there is no evidence revealed yet that Obama was involved in this crooked deal, the investigation isn't over yet, and while I don't believe Obama was involved, Michael Scherer has a point here:
To be clear, the bugging and wire tapping of Blagojevich suggests that Obama was not playing in the corruption scheme. The complaint states, "Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but 'they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.' " But that is not the operating factor here. U.S. Attorney investigations often end with indictments far from where they start. (See the cases of Valerie Plame and Jack Abramoff.) And Fitzgerald is going to continue to follow the facts, which means many more questions for people close to Obama. So regardless of Obama's innocence, this will continue to be a burden for the president-elect and those around him. Politics, like life, is not fair.
Nope. (HT: Instapundit)
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