Free Republic

The beauty of being a billionaire in politics is that you can say you're not beholden to anyone. And J.B. Pritzker, Democrat and billionaire, is running for governor of Illinois. When you're a billionaire in politics, nobody can buy you. So you don't have to fall to your knees and beg the political money men, then bounce up like a medieval jester to tell voters you're an independent who'll speak truth to power. So being a billionaire isn't all that bad a thing in politics. But wealth can't save you from moronic self-inflicted wounds. If you're a Pritzker, you can...

Most aldermen, most politicians are hos," corrupt Chicago Ald. Arenda Troutman said, rather famously, on federal tape. She wasn't speaking about gardening tools, was she? Troutman was talking about the politics of Chicago, which is, if you've forgotten, the political corruption capital of the United States. Troutman represented the South Side's 20th Ward. At her 2009 sentencing, she squirted a few tears, sobbed, prayed, begged and then got four years in federal prison anyway. And on Wednesday her replacement, Ald. Willie Cochran, a former Chicago police officer who campaigned as something of a corruption buster, was himself indicted on federal...

Without suggesting an outcome for the upcoming trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, lets take a look at some obvious parallelisms. In Illinois the Governor is indicted and impeached for DISCUSSING a MONETARY quid pro quo in exchange for the appointment of an individual acceptable to the current President for his former Senate seat. In Pennsylvania (prior to the acknowledgement by the administration of tea party influence)when the president was still entertaining the fiction of a 60 vote filibuster proof senate, current Democrat nominee Joe Sestak is by his own admission (on several public occasions) offered by the administration...

Lawyers for embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich want two key aides to President-elect Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. subpoenaed, according to Chicago media reports. Blagojevich's legal team has asked the Illinois House panel that members of Obama's incoming administration testify before the House impeachment committee, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, WBBM-TV and the Chicago Sun-Times reported late Wednesday. Ed Genson, Blagojevich's chief lawyer, said testimony from the aides will prove the governor's insistence that he did nothing illegal to fill Obama's now vacant U.S. Senate seat. The news comes days after...

The president-elect's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, failed to show up as expected at the Chicago presidential transition offices. Reporters, who had wanted to ask questions about contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, immediately set out on a search for him but to no avail. According to an unsubstantiated report, a MSBBC News cameraman was in the Green Room and saw Emanuel double dipping the meatballs into the sweet and sour sauce. After a few rounds, he thought the congressman looked a bit pekid. He even imagined that he heard the Obama appointee mumble, “Why, why, why?” In the mean...

Barack Obama has flatly said that he has “not discussed the Senate seat with [Rod Blagojevich] at any time.” If that is true — and Obama will undoubtedly be asked the broader question of whether he communicated in any way with Blagojevich on the subject — then the big story in the Blagojevich scandal is the role of intermediaries. Throughout the criminal complaint filed against Blagojevich, there are references to unnamed individuals who play important roles in the scandal — and who know a lot about what went on and who was involved. None of those intermediaries is more intriguing...

*SNIP* The notion that a newly elected president who is also a sitting U.S. Senator would have no "contact" whatsoever with the governor charged with appointing his Senate successor is a fantasy. *SNIP* By sheer accident, there is a current example of this kind of thing right alongside Obama himself -- Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Like Obama, Biden is a sitting Senator and must yield his seat. The Governor of Delaware, indeed, has already announced "her" choice to fill the Biden vacancy: none other than Biden's longtime Senate chief of staff Ted Kaufman. Does anyone seriously believe this appointment occurred...