{"id":1989,"date":"2008-12-09T12:01:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T16:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=1989"},"modified":"2008-12-09T12:07:41","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T16:07:41","slug":"illinois-trainwreck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/12\/09\/illinois-trainwreck\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois Trainwreck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looks like Illinois is certainly living up to its rep<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning.<\/p>\n

[ . . . ]<\/p>\n

A three-year federal corruption investigation of pay-to-play politics in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration has expanded to include his impending selection of a new U.S. senator to succeed President-elect Barack Obama, the Tribune has learned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This quote<\/a> – apparently caught on tape – would be funny, if it weren’t so, you know, utterly appalling:<\/p>\n

“I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, Illinois, let’s set a record for how quickly an incumbent has been ejected from the governor’s mansion.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> If it seems that I’m being a bit hasty (and truly, given the demonstrated willingness of the DOJ to do the Republicans’ political dirty work, that would be a fair concern), I urge you to check out the DOJ release itself<\/a>, or read TPM’s evolving summary coverage of it<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Convincingly damning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looks like Illinois is certainly living up to its rep: Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. [ . . . ] A three-year federal corruption investigation of pay-to-play politics in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration has expanded to include his impending selection of a new U.S. senator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}