Quote:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested by FBI agents on federal corruption charges Tuesday morning. Blagojevich and Harris were arrested simultaneously at their homes at about 6:15 a.m., according to Frank Bochte of the FBI. Both were transported to FBI headquarters in Chicago. In one charge related to the appointment of a senator to replace Barack Obama, prosecutors allege that Blagojevich sought appointment for himself as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Obama administration, or a lucrative job with a union, in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate. Another charge alleges Blagojevich and Harris conspired to demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for editorials critical of him in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-rod-blagojevich-1209,0,7997804.story

Well, it looks like our governor, Blagojevich, has finally been arrested on corruption charges for his many pay to play schemes. To make it even worse, he was even caught trying to sell Obama's Senate Seat. Take a second to take that in. The Governor of Illinois was trying to sell a seat in the US Senate. On top of that, he was trying to use it to grab a spot in Obama's administration (ignoring that he was already under investigation for many other counts of corruption, which would disqualify him for any seat in the executive branch in anyone's reasonable opinion). Even more shocking, is that he tried to bribe the Tribune into firing unfriendly editorialists!

The funniest part is this though, in the recent updates page:

Quote:

Prosecutors also alleged Blagojevich expressed feeling "stuck" as a sitting governor and spent a large amount of time weighing whether he should appoint himself to the vacancy--possibly to avoid impeachment and help remake his image for a potential 2016 run for the presidency. A recent Tribune poll found Blagojevich with a record low 13 percent job approval rating.

He is hated here because of his corruption and his failures as governor, and he still had aspirations for the presidency in 2016??? He must be delusional.


I hope this democratic governor gets put in jail in the same cell as our last governor, the republican George Ryan. I tell ya, no matter what, we're screwed in Illinois no matter whatparty we chose to lead our state.


This has an added piece of shame for me, as Blago is a fellow history major from Northwestern...Ugh...

RobotGumshoe wrote:

Heres to hoping you get someone who is both competent and relatively honest.

With our last two governors being sent to jail, I have a feeling people will be longing for the days when Jim Edgar was the governor in the 90s. He was a competent republican. There's already been calls for him to run in the next election in 2010, anyway, so this might strengthen that as it is. In the immediately future, our Lt. Gov will become governor, and he (Pat Quinn) seems a lot more reasonable.

I have my fingers crossed though

Cattivo wrote:

This has an added piece of shame for me, as Blago is a fellow history major from Northwestern...Ugh...

I forgot, he's a Serbian-American too...although, I think he's a pureblood, and I'm only half-Serbian.

He's like a weird democratic doppelganger of me. Except I have better hair

Greg the White wrote:

If Blago's popular, then he'll just end up having his appointment power taken away. I can't really see a blue state like Illinois firing a popular Democratic governor. You'd have to gauge the immediate public response to the whole ordeal to get an idea of what will happen.

As quoted above: "A recent Tribune poll found Blagojevich with a record low 13 percent job approval rating."

He hasn't been popular for a while now. The only reason he won re-election in '06 was because the Illinois GOP has been shambles since the George Ryan scandal.