Blago's Revenge

“As governor I am required to make this appointment.”

-- Embattled Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich announcing his appointment of Roland W. Burris, a former state attorney general, to Barack Obama's empty senate seat.


December 31, 2008

Defiant Illinois Governor Names Pick for Obama Seat
By Monica Davey

CHICAGO — Defying Senate leaders in Washington and a galaxy of political leaders here, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois announced Tuesday that he would fill the Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama, which he has been accused of trying to sell.

Mr. Blagojevich said he would appoint Roland W. Burris, a former state attorney general who was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Illinois. The decision set off efforts to block the move by state legislators, the secretary of state, and, most significantly, Democratic leaders in the United States who said they would not seat anyone Mr. Blagojevich chose.

Still, even as the selection was clearly destined for battles on many fronts, Mr. Blagojevich sounded breezily confident as he introduced his appointee to reporters as the “next United States senator from Illinois.” Having been charged this month with conspiracy to commit fraud and bribery, he said the accusations against him should not taint Mr. Burris, whom he called “a good and honest man.”

Standing beside him, Mr. Burris, who, at 71, is seen by many here as an elder statesman in Democratic politics, seemed to brush aside gaping questions about how federal criminal charges against Mr. Blagojevich might tarnish his potential Senate tenure — and whether he would really ever make it to the Senate chamber in the first place.

“I’m honored that I have been appointed,” Mr. Burris said, “and we will deal with the next step in the process.”

Of the criminal case against Mr. Blagojevich, Mr. Burris said, “I have no relationship with that situation.”

Mr. Obama, on vacation in Hawaii and who, aides said, was surprised by the news of the appointment, issued a statement condemning the move.

“Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat,” Mr. Obama said. “I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it.”

The Senate Democratic caucus, which controls the chamber, issued a statement saying that no one appointed by the governor could be an effective representative, and that Mr. Burris would not be seated. It is not clear, however, whether the caucus can bar a qualified appointee, and the issue may be headed to court.

The choice of Mr. Burris immediately injected the issue of race into the appointment process, which may very well have been part of the governor’s calculation. Representative Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois, who was called to the lectern at the news conference by Mr. Burris, noted that there were no blacks in the Senate and said that he did not believe any senator “wants to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate.”

Senate Democrats are in a panic regarding Blagojevichgate. Try as they might, they can't shake the Blagojevich-sized albatross that is tightly wound around the collective liberal neck.

Who in their right mind would accept an appointment of any kind from such a tainted political figure? Is Burris the winner of the Blagojevich senate seat raffle?

Mr. Burris, a soft-spoken, never flowery speechmaker, seemed an unlikely person to be in this moment. Having been elected as state comptroller nearly three decades ago and later as attorney general, he left public office after a series of bids for governor (including a primary race against Mr. Blagojevich in 2002, in which Mr. Obama had endorsed Mr. Burris). His political career seemed to be over, and he went to work as a consultant at a firm that was formed in 2002, Burris & Lebed Consulting, and also as a lawyer.

Though Mr. Burris and Mr. Blagojevich are politicians of vastly different styles, they have had a political relationship in recent years. After the 2002 primary for governor, Mr. Burris encouraged Mr. Obama to endorse Mr. Blagojevich, and Mr. Burris served at one point as the vice chairman of the governor’s transition team.

Mr. Burris and his consulting firm (which has held, he said, at least one state contract) have made contributions to Mr. Blagojevich’s campaign fund, too: more than $9,000 in cash and in-kind contributions from his consulting firm and at least $4,500 from Mr. Burris personally, state records show. In June of this year, the records show, Mr. Burris gave the campaign $1,000.

Notice the president-elect's name all over this story. No reaction from Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, yet.

Fightin' Blago

“I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, till I take my very last breath. I have done nothing wrong.”

-- Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich during his "I am not a crook" press conference in downtown Chicago today.

Coincidentally, this is the 10th anniversary of the Monica Lewinsky scandal when Bill "I am not a crook" Clinton famously said,

Good Times

Liberal Democratic Corruption: Follow the Blagojevich Stench Wherever It May Lead, Even If It Reaches the "Office of the President-Elect"

“Scarborough Rips MSM: In Wasilla Instead of Investigating Obama-Blago Connection” - video available here.

Excerpts:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: How rich is it that we sit around and say “we don’t know, we have to wait until Obama tells us. We don’t know what these connections, we don’t know whether he really ran the 2002 [Blago] campaign or not”? Again, I will guarantee you, if Sarah Palin had run the most corrupt—if Sarah Palin had run Ted Stevens’s campaign in 2002, and somebody had bragged about it in the New Yorker, the press would have savaged her. But we sit here now, it’s almost Christmas, and we don’t know the truth about it. We don’t know the truth about any of this, because we haven’t done the investigative work . . . I’m convicting the press because they didn’t investigate this past summer, when they were sending all those people to Wasilla, a town of 9,000, they should have been going to Chicagoland.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I think that’s really fair.

SCARBOROUGH: The press never covered --

JOHN HARWOOD: To cover Blagojevich?

SCARBOROUGH: To look at the background of a candidate who had only been in national politics for one year before he decided to run for president of the United States, and was born from the most corrupt political city in America. Do you not think, do we not think, that warranted an investigation? Not to suggest he did anything wrong, but to see what his background was?

HARWOOD: Of course. There was coverage of his background—Ryan Lizza’s piece.

SCARBOROUGH: OK, then tell me this—yeah, Lizza’s the only one that wrote about it and he got kicked off the campaign plane. So here’s my question for you: if we know so much about this, answer this question. Did Barack Obama, was Barack Obama intimately involved in Blagojevich’s 2002 campaign?

Why are some in the MMM (Moribund Mainstream Media) so interested in the Obamafraud's past associations now that the Blagojevich scandal is in full throttle? Why are they all of a sudden surprised that they themselves failed to scrutinize their own liberal god when they had the chance? Will they do the right thing and ask the hard questions and follow the corruption wherever it may lead? Given their past record, I highly doubt it. As far as I am concerned, the MMM is an accessory to the Democratic Party corruption.

Openness and Transparency from the Office of the President-Elect: "Let Me Cut You Off" and "Don't Waste Your Question"

John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune gets schooled on what happens when a reporter veers off script and actually asks the Obamabuddha tough questions. The president-elect is obviously testy and irritated with the question and he was not about to let McCormick finish asking it, much less answer it truthfully. Predictable.

Blagojevichgate, the Obamathug's pre-inauguration scandal, will not rest.

Corruption: Obamastlye

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (above) and his chief of staff were arrested yesterday as a result of a federal corruption probe where Blagojevich is believed to have sought financial advantages in exchange for Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate Seat.

"I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

-- President-elect Barack Obama during yesterday's press conference when asked about what contacts he had had with Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich regarding his U.S Senate replacement

"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's senior campaign advisor David Axelrod on November 28, 2008, during an interview on Fox News Chicago. Axelrod now claims he "misspoke" during the interview and there were no contacts between Obama and Blagojevich regarding the issue of Obama's Senate replacement.

"If it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor."

-- FBI's Chicago office special agent Robert Grant on the Blagojevich probe

Blagojevich arrested; Fitzgerald calls it a 'political corruption crime spree'

By Jeff Coen, Rick Pearson and David Kidwell
Tribune staff reporters

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested Tuesday for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a "political corruption crime spree" that included attempts to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Blagojevich and Harris were named in a federal criminal complaint that alleged a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy aimed at providing financial benefits to the governor, his political fund and to his wife, First Lady Patricia Blagojevich.

Blagojevich was taken into federal custody by FBI agents at his North Side home Tuesday morning—one day shy of his 52nd birthday.

The arrests dealt a tumultuous blow to Illinois government, at once raising questions about the leadership of the state and the fate of the open Senate seat—which the governor alone has the power to fill under the state law.

The allegations against Blagojevich provide a sharp contrast to a Democratic governor who campaigned for office promising reforms in the wake of disgraced, scandal-tainted Republican chief executive George Ryan. The complaint against Blagojevich comes little more than two years after Ryan was sentenced to 61/2 years in prison on federal corruption charges.

Obama hasn't even been inaugurated yet and the scandals are already a part of his future administration. The president-elect was quick to distance himself from Blagojevich by claiming he had not contacts with the Illinois governor about his former U.S. Senate seat and chanting the usual mantra of not commenting on an ongoing investigation. Right.

Earlier this year, Obama's chief campaign strategist David "Dr. Frankenstein" Axelrod said that his boss and Illinois Governor Blagojevich had been talking about the senate seat replacement.

Yesterday Axelrod changed his story and claims that he "mispoke" regarding "direct" contacts between Obama and Blagojevich about the Illinois Senate vacancy. Uh-huh. Sure.

This thing with Blagojevich stinks and there is a waft of it around the "Office of the President-elect." Moribund mainstream media types are bending over backwards to exonerate Obama instead of "letting the facts come out." It's Clinton all over again, only Black this time.

We are sure to hear the predictable criticism of the "guilt by association" charges. But when someone consistently associates with the guilty (radical/racist preachers, indicted slumlords, unrepentant domestic terrorists, and corrupt governors), you've got to wonder about his claims of innocence.