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[Jim Lindgren, December 10, 2008 at 5:58am] Trackbacks The Blagojevich Timeline: Everything Fits Easily Except Obama's Monday Denial. Most people have misunderstood the timeline of the Blagojevich Senate scandal. Pretty much everything fits except Barack Obama's statement yesterday that he knew nothing about it. If we didn't have Obama's denial to contend with, the actions of all the parties, including those purporting to speak for Obama, are consistent with Obama and his staff learning about Blagojevich's corrupt plans on Monday, Nov. 10. Consider the timeline, as revealed in the complaint and press reports: 1. On the weekend of Nov. 8-9,...

Politics: The career of Roland Burris, a political cipher from Illinois who became a U.S. senator and the lamest of ducks, is over. He can now retire into the obscurity he so richly deserves.Having obtained the seat under a cloud of typical Illinois corruption, Burris announced Friday he won't run for a full term in 2010. He was appointed by the former and recently impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich who, among his other accomplishments, tried to auction off the seat formerly held by Barack Obama. Blagojevich was forced out of office and may soon join other Illinois governors who went on...

Transcripts of a tape made from an FBI wiretap shows Sen. Roland Burris promised to "personally do something" in response to an appeal for money for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign fund. The promise came in a phone conversation with Blagojevich's brother, Robert Blagojevich, who is head of the campaign fund. Burris repeatedly says how much he wants to be appointed to President Barack Obama's former Senate seat. In response to an appeal for money from the governor's brother Burris says: "I will personally do something." The transcript was released Tuesday as part of a motion by the U.S. attorney's...

A defiant Roland Burris returned to the Senate on Tuesday, staring down a resignation call from his Illinois colleague and a muted reaction from fellow Democrats. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he privately urged Burris to step down and suggested Burris’s hold on his seat has become more precarious as he faces an Illinois perjury investigation and a Senate Ethics Committee probe. When informed of Durbin’s comments, Burris told The Hill: “I have no reaction to that.” Burris’s Democratic colleagues continued to stay silent Tuesday, suggesting an absence of public support. He participated in the party’s weekly policy lunch,...

Tony Rezko is out of "the hole." The convicted businessman -- poised to become a crucial witness in the massive corruption case against ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- was quietly moved out of a downtown jail and into another facility in mid-December. Authorities seeking Rezko's cooperation pushed for the move after Rezko complained about being held in the tough confines of solitary imprisonment, known as "the hole," even as he was providing information to prosecutors. Records show Rezko was released Dec. 16 from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago. Kim Widup, the U.S. marshal in Chicago, confirmed that Rezko was...

Alternately praising and upbraiding those who will decide his political fate, Gov. Rod Blagojevich today urged the Illinois Senate not to remove him from office, saying he has "done absolutely nothing wrong" and "never, ever intended to violate the law." "There hasn't been a single piece of information that proves any wrongdoing," Blagojevich said to senators who were mostly stoic. "How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?" The governor's dramatic, 47-minute closing argument unfolded as the Senate prepares to take a historic vote on whether to make Blagojevich the first Illinois governor dumped...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Driven by anger and politics, the Illinois House has voted to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The unprecedented action sets the stage for a Senate trial on whether he should be thrown out of office for corruption and abuse of power. The governor seemed to acknowledge the inevitable when he issued a statement Thursday night that looked past the House vote and predicted a different outcome in the subsequent Senate trial. His statement criticized the hearings leading up to the House vote as unfair and biased. A House committee has been studying the possibility of impeachment since shortly...

I just saw 'Blazing Saddles' on CNNMSNBCBSABC At least I think it was Blazing Saddles. The story was a little bit different than the 1974 classic by Mel Brooks. But the plot was the same. It begins with an idiot governor And then the governor decided to appoint a black man I thought for sure the appointment was designed to drive the racists in Rock Ridge out of their minds. But no - it was to drive the senators in Washington DC out of their minds. Anyway, the new mayor (or was it senator?) heads off to Washington DC. (Or...

Today, JudicialWatch.org posted a press release with documentation they obtained through a FOIA request related to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s contacts with Barak Hussein Obama and his transition team: Washington, DC — January 5, 2009 Includes December 3, 2008, Letter to “Rod” Signed by Obama Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich through the Freedom of Information Act related to Blagojevich’s contacts with President-elect Obama and his transition team. The documents include a December 3, 2008, letter from Barack Obama...

Days before Gov. Blagojevich was charged with trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder, top Senate Democrat Harry Reid made it clear who he didn’t want in the post: Jesse Jackson, Jr., Danny Davis or Emil Jones. Rather, Reid called Blagojevich to argue he appoint either state Veterans Affairs chief Tammy Duckworth or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.

In the midst of two wars and an intensifying economic meltdown, Barack Obama had to take time off last week to answer questions from federal prosecutors investigating charges that the governor of Illinois had put the president-elect's former Senate seat up for sale. With his own lawyer by his side, Obama sat down Thursday with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's staff to tell what, if anything, he knew about Gov. Rod Blagojevich's efforts to cash in on appointing Obama's Senate successor

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is denouncing Republican attempts to link President-elect Barack Obama and disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

There are so many things to love about the Rod Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin. Wait. That’s not right. There are so many bleeping things to love about this bleeping-bleep Blagojevich scandal it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, the folks at the Chicago Tribune are Christmas Pony Happy because Blago tried to strong-arm Trib ownership to fire members of the editorial board. Instead, Trib editors will get to have a big tailgate party outside Blago’s cell window. Newspaper people love that sort of thing. For the more historically minded, it’s a time for...

FYI- ARTICLE SAYS SHE'S ON GRETA TONIGHT--- Sarah Palin, Republican governor of Alaska, says she has wondered how long Rod Blagojevich, Democratic governor of Illinois, thought he might "get away with'' an alleged scheme to sell the Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama of Illinois. "Now is the time, not just for governors, but, for all elected officials to try and start shoring up some trust with the electorate,'' Palin, the Republican Party's losing vice presidential nominee this year, says in an interview airing this evening on FOX News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. "You cannot be...

In a surprising rebuke to the warriors who fought for him through tough times, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday sided with President-elect Barack Obama and scolded the Republican National Committee for fanning the Illinois corruption scandal. On ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked: “The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, has been highly critical of the way President- elect Obama has dealt with this. "He's had a statement every single day, saying that the Obama team should reveal all contacts they've had with Governor [Rod] Blagojevich. He says that Obama's promise of transparency to the American...

THE bullish, foul-mouthed but effective Chicago arm-twister Rahm Emanuel has come under pressure to resign as Barack Obama’s chief of staff after it was revealed that he had been captured on court-approved wire-taps discussing the names of candidates for Obama’s Senate seat. Emanuel’s presence at the heart of the scandal threatens to roil the president-elect’s administration as a Chicago prosecutor builds his corruption case against Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor. Republicans are salivating at the prospect of tying the president-elect to the notoriously corrupt Chicago machine in which he forged his career. Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist,...

The attempt by President-elect Barack Obama to distance himself from the scandal erupting in Illinois took a big hit last night with this exclusive report from Chicago’s Fox affiliate. Sources within the investigation say that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, spoke with Governor Rod Blagojevich on “multiple occasions” about the Senate succession that Blagojevich had wanted to sell to the highest bidder — and that Emanuel will likely be on the FBI wiretaps: (VIDEO AT LINK) On the surface, this makes sense. The notion that Obama and his team had nothing to say about the Senate appointment and had...

Something is rotten in the state," says Marcellus in "Hamlet." Well, it certainly is in the state of Illinois. Yet, on hearing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald describe a plot by his governor to sell his Senate seat -- "conduct (that) would make Lincoln roll over in his grave" -- how did reform President Barack Obama respond? "I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening. ... And as I said, it is a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don't think it's appropriate to comment."

Day Three of Blagogate and Barack Obama still doesn't get it. On Day One, he said it was sobering and saddening but it would be inappropriate for him to comment. On Day Two, he let it be known, through a spokesman and after virtually every other politician in America had already expressed the same sentiment, that it might be a good idea for Governor Rod Blagojevich to resign. So we shouldn't have expected too much from today's press conference. What did we get? Three questions about Blagogate and a fourth one about healthcare - to which, when the questioner said...

Barack Obama on Thursday delivered a primer for the nation on the strange and often sordid universe of Illinois politics as the president-elect promised full disclosure—soon—of any contact between his aides and Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration over a new U.S. Senate pick. Two days after Blagojevich was arrested and charged with trying to sell Obama's former seat, the incoming president weighed in with his first detailed comments about a distracting home front scandal. Obama said he had not been contacted by federal authorities, had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was "confident that no representatives" of his...