U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said the governor's actions forced his office to intervene. "Gov. Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree," he said. Fitzgerald said Blagojevich's "conduct would make [ Abraham] Lincoln roll over in his grave."
What a shitbag Fitz is. He knows he will be out of a job in January, so he "had" to act quickly. The timing of the arrest was the key to the whole deal.
Of course, the operative who runs "Hillary is 44," a fraud of a Democrat if there ever was one, is now promoting the GOP talking points that a special prosecutor should be appointed in the Blago matter. It should have been apparent from the get-go this guy was NOT a Clinton supporter but was peddling anti-Obama talking points in order to sow division among Democrats. Somebody was feeding him the talking points about Rezko, etc., for this was one of the first sites on the net to write about it. ALL Rodriguez EVER did on his site was bash Obama. Sure, he'd throw a bone now and then to the Clinton supporters to make them think he was on their side, but it was gradually becoming MORE obvious by the month this guy is a fraud, more even than his target.
Naturally, Obama should reject such horseshit of appointing a special prosecutor, and Democrats in Congress should shoot any such crap down. The GOP has already tainted the judicial system with judges and so forth. We don't need this bullshit anymore.
The timeline says it all:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich became the state's first Democratic chief executive in more than a quarter of a century after vowing to reform what he labeled the culture of corruption surrounding his predecessor that had fed deep cynicism among Illinoisans.
But little more than a year after replacing George Ryan in office in 2003, Blagojevich found his administration at the early stages of what became a host of state and federal investigations into allegations of wrongdoing involving state hiring, board appointments, contracting and fundraising that battered his tenure.
In their prosecution of Blagojevich fundraisers and allies, dubbed "Operation Board Games," federal prosecutors detailed a scheme that began only months after Blagojevich took office in which top fundraiser and adviser Antoin "Tony" Rezko conspired with longtime GOP government apparatchik Stuart Levine to split kickbacks from a state pension deal. Rezko also helped ensure Levine's reappointment to a state pension board.
As part of the investigation, in which 13 people have been indicted or convicted, kickbacks were often the prescribed price of doing high-level business, be it the pension board for state teachers or the panel that decided whether hospitals could expand their facilities. And the extortion efforts went beyond merely enriching the participants to include soliciting campaign funds for Blagojevich.
Blago found himself in the middle of this GOP scheme.
He refuses to step down, but I don't know how long he can hold out. It is Democrats who are trying to force him out, but they were playing right into the GOP's hands when they pushed for a special election instead of doing the following:
Other Democrats in Washington edged away from calls for a special election to fill Obama's place in the Senate, hoping that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn would soon become governor and fill the vacancy on his own. That would assure the party of holding the seat, and on a far faster timetable than any balloting would allow.
That's what SHOULD happen in this case, but I don't expect the Republicans to go along with this. Maybe a few Democrats finally got it in their heads this isn't about what Blago did or didn't do but about the GOP trying to steal two Democratic seats as payback for Obama winning the White House.
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