Massive Corruption/Arrests surround Obama Senate Replacement

Propaganda, Spam, and Trolling: A whole lotta Buffalo droppings

Which is why all the story links have been removed, right?

But let's take a look at the article Mr. Roam provided in response to me. I would protest his reading comprehension, as he completely missed the point of what I was correcting about my own prior post. Nonetheless:

Barack Obama Met With Illinois Governor About Senate Successor
By Mark Impomeni​

The story comes from AOL's "Political Machine". The author, Mark Impomeni, has some certain problems with reality. Consider the headline: "Barack Obama Met With Illinois Governor About Senate Successor".

Check that out. Barack Obama met with Illinois governor.

Even Impomeni's article doesn't establish that. The headline misrepresents the article content. What is at question is David Axelrod's statement that the President-elect spoke with Blagojevich at all. Axelrod said yes. Obama says no. Axelrod retracts. Impomeni does not wish to believe that retraction. There you have the story.

This is not the first time Impomeni has had trouble representing reality. At a time when Karl Rove was refusing to answer a specific question, Impomeni wrote a headline insisting that he did, in fact, answer the question. He seems to operate by the philosophy of, "If you say it enough, people will believe you". The facts aren't particularly important to him.

Among more conventional news sources—for instance, those with less editorial content, and whose occasional mistaken assertions of fact are actually accidental°—we find a much different story:

Additionally, historian Roberd Dallek, when asked whether the Blagojevich scandal could taint Obama as he moves into the presidency, dismissed the question as scurrilous. He told NPR, "It's a non-issue, so why raise it? ... I can't remember any incident where a president-elect was called out because of some former associate."

And, for the record, we might recall that Republicans have spent the last several years defending President Bush against all manner of accusations, but in this case, we might consider Karl Rove, who once framed the FBI in a desperate and successful bid to boost sympathy for a Texas Republican who ended up winning an election.

And yesterday, Monica Davey, the Chicago Bureau Chief for the New York Times explained on To the Point:

Now let's take a look at some of the other information Mr. Roam provided:

From the article he quoted:

The anti-DNC propaganda he quoted contradicts itself. "Democrats Urge Kansans to Vote Illegally", the propaganda headline says. Yet in the article text, Brad Bryant, the state elections director for Kansas' Republican Secretary of State, said, "I don't know if it's illegal." As with Impomenti, the headline is a talking point with no established factual basis. The hope is that if they repeat it enough, people will come to believe it.

None of this says there aren't valid questions to be explored, but any real answer is pushed away by this third-rate propaganda. It should be noted that the NoDNC propaganda is bylined as a staff report "With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com". Mr. Limbacher published a three-hundred page screed against Hillary Clinton and an editor for Newsmax; we'll be coming back to that site, repeatedly, as we go along.

The uncited article quote Mr. Roam offers us is a Wall Street Journal opinion column. Again, while there are valid questions to consider, real answers are pushed aside; it helps to go with opinion articles because facts are more easily misconstrued. In this case, we must look to Mr. Roam; the WSJ opinion pertained to the question of whether absentee ballots encourage vote fraud, and any attempt to use that article to construe a larger pattern of party-sponsored fraud is inappropriate. Indeed, the article even undermines that proposition:

Then we come to an interesting case:

Mr. Roam cites an article from the McAlester News-Capital & Democrat—a newspaper in southeast Oklahoma, carried by zWire. The word "Democrat" only appears—in any form—twice on the page. One sentence in the article states, "Four races were on the Sept. 19, 2000 ballot in Haskell County, all of them Democratic runoffs, according to Haskell County Election Board Secretary Marcia Goff." The other is a copyright notice for the McAlester News-Captial & Democrat.

We should note that nearly every election in the United States is subject to fraud. And yet, our neighbor Mr. Roam is so desperate to make vote fraud an issue pertaining to Democrats that he is getting a bit desperate. "Investigators did not indicate in the charges who they believed were hurt or helped by the alleged cases of voter fraud," wrote James Beaty for the MNC&D. Interestingly, whoever was helped or hurt, they were all Democrats. It seems difficult to attribute that kind of action to the party.

But, you know, whatever works for those who find reality too limiting.

The link Mr. Roam cited is a 404, but the NoDNC link is still active. Richard Lawrence Poe is a Freeper, contributing editor to NewsMax.com, former editor of FrontPage, and a reporter for the New York Post who pitches the site SlapHillary.org on his blog. While his article about dead Indians touches on what we might otherwise consider valid issues, there is absolutely nothing of substance in his attempt to tie Hillary Clinton's election as a U.S. Senator for New York to elections in South Dakota. Indeed, the connection he attempts to draw verges on the bigoted:

I can tell Mr. Poe this much: the Native population in New York isn't that large. 62,283 in South Dakota equals 8.3% of the population—754,844—according to the 2000 census. In New York, 82,461 represents approximately 0.4% of the 18,976,457 people counted in 2000. By contrast, my own state, Washington, came out with a higher number of Native Americans than either state—93,301—that represents 1.6% of our population as of 2000. So even if every American Indian in New York voted for Hillary Clinton, the Republican candidate, Rick Lazio, would still have lost by over 750,000 votes. At every level, from the raw number of Native Americans in New York, to their portion of the state's population, and in relation to the electoral result even if we entertain the most absurd presuppositions about how corrupt they are, Poe has overstated the case in order to make his editorial argument seem more compelling. And yet, perhaps for balance, Poe turns around and offers us this bit of insight:

Rather anti-climactic, I'd say. The whole article is about the fact that Poe really dislikes Hillary Clinton.

It doesn't really take a whole lot to figure why someone would dig up the editorial instead of the news article. NewsMax.com was founded by a man named Christopher Ruddy, who received funding for the venture from the one and only Richard Mellon Scaife. Ruddy, who rose to prominence covering the death of Vincent Foster, did that work for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review after the editor of the New York Post recommended him to the PTR owner Scaife. His work was later used for anti-Clinton advertisements funded by the Western Journalism Center, which was established by WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah; the ad campaign, which raised over a half-million dollars, including $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation, which is controlled by ... you guessed it, Richard Mellon Scaife. In 1994-95, Scaife piped $330,000 to the WJC through various agencies. The NewsMax editorial is predictable.

It refers to a New York Daily News article about double voting in New York and Florida. And, predictably, NewsMax overplays the value in order to foster just the kind of dishonest scandal Mr. Roam seeks to foist upon us.

In 2007, Justin Leavitt published a paper, "The Truth About Voter Fraud", through the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. In the Introduction to the paper, Leavitt opens by noting that "Allegations of election-related fraud make for enticing press", and he explains,

In considering "The Research Landscape" for the paper, one might think he used our own Mr. Roam as an example:

For its part, the New York Daily News "found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election", although Buettner acknowledges that the records analyzed "don't allow for an exact count of how many people vote in both places, because millions of names are regularly purged between elections". However, we might not wonder at NewsMax's preference to make only a vague reference to the NYDN article: Norman Siegel, 84, a Republican registered in both New York and Florida, had voted twice in seven elections, including four presidential contests.

Additionally, the NewsMax editorial left out some important considerations:

Of the issue in New York and Florida, the Brennan Center notes,

But Leavitt also notes one of the problems with allegations of double-voting such as raised in New York and Florida:

And amid it all, we find what phrases like "rule of law" really mean to conservatives:

A truly unfortunate development in our electoral history. Unfortunately, nobody thought of the possibility before the election. Of course, that's the problem when the lawyers get involved: once a legal verdict is required, the law trumps any sense of moral propriety. This obvious appeal to emotion, based on a book by FOX News' Washington deputy managing editor, who is also a former White House correspondent for the conservative newspaper Washington Times, and reporter for the Washington Examiner, a free daily that doesn't seem to like black people. Bill Sammon, a regular on FOX News talk shows, is also the recipient of an affectionate nickname from President Bush, reportedly either "Big Stretch" or "Superstretch". To the other, while the excerpt published by NewsMax depicts Democratic lawyers in a sinister light, we cannot conclude that this is any particular bias on Sammon's part. It could be that Republican lawyers and activists came out looking badly, and it well could be that subsequent pages discussed the legal issues at stake. But then we would again be wondering at NewsMax and its agenda, which seems to have more to do with muckraking and propaganda than actual reporting.

I would reiterate here that the last story was a bit odd because it deviates from the secondary theme:

The primary theme, of course, being Mr. Roam's hatred of Democrats.

Al Santoli's article is properly an opinion piece ("The most obvious casualty caused by the Brixey-Sanchez election coup ....") that deals with votes that, for various reasons, should not, according to the law, have been counted:

In the case of felons voting, Leavitt notes,

In the vast majority of these relatively few cases, the error is systemic. Both the electoral and correctional systems contribute to the problem, and a lack of information is the most prominent among culprits. While, in the end, these votes can become crucial to the outcome of an election°, it is a tremendous, even disingenuous leap to extrapolate the issue into one of widespread fraud. Leavitt did investigate the 1996 California election to which Santoli refers, and found, regarding Orange and Los Angeles Counties, "Even assuming there were no matching errors, and leaving aside the critical question of intent, if all 552 remaining individuals were in fact noncitizens when they cast their votes, the overall noncitizen voting rate would have been 0.017%." (19) Seventeen one-thousandths of one percent is a coup?

Regarding Florida (2000) and Washington (2004), the Leavitt states, "We are not aware of any reports of citizens voting despite knowing that they were ineligible." Investigating similar claims in Wisconsin in 2004, he reports, "We are aware of sources documenting seven cases in which the voter knowingly voted while ineligible, yielding a fraud rate of 0.0002%."

Of noncitizens voting, Leavitt wrote,

Additionally, Leavitt reports that the state of government records is such that in many cases, accusations of a noncitizen voting is, in fact, erroneous, as the voter has been properly naturalized, and the relevant agencies are slow to updated their records. "In Washington state in 2005," according to Leavitt, "an individual asked county offices to investigate the citizenship status of 1,668 registered voters based on their 'foreign-sounding names.'" In 2004, a whole two votes were determined to be cast in King County, Washington, by noncitizens. Leavitt notes that neither could be shown to have knowingly broken the law. "Given these votes, the rate of documented noncitizen votes — without proof of fraud — in King County was 0.0002%." (19)

Or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where an analysis of 370,000 voting records over a nine-year period found four occasions in which citizens apparently voted before their proper naturalization date. "Even if all four of the matched records accurately represented noncitizen votes, the rate of noncitizen voting among the city records examined would have been 0.001%." (19)

And it goes on. Hawaii, 2000. Some 553 "apparent noncitizens" allegedly registered to vote. 144 showed that they were properly naturalized citizens; 61 canceled their registration, and the rest were stopped at the polls. "There are no reports of which we are aware that any noncitizen actually voted," Leavitt noted. "To the extent that noncitizens were actually represented on the rolls, officials attributed the registrations to mistake rather than fraud." And in 1994, INS reviewed 10,000 names of registered voters and found a whole twelve noncitizens with names matching the rolls. In 1998, claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens turned up no evidence that any of the 1,200 people investigated had voted. "But even if all six had voted, the overall noncitizen voting rate
would have been 0.001%." (19)

Long-term pattern of vote fraud? Thousandths and ten-thousandths of a percent?

One might be tempted to think that intelligent people should look at the source quote and mutter to themselves, "Ed Gillespie? Okay, whatever." But that wouldn't be fair. As the saying goes, if you throw enough darts, you'll eventually hit the bulls-eye.

And this is an interesting case. BallotPedia describes the complaint in terms that leave no real question for doubt:

Their reference for that? Well, Ed Gillespie. That's it. No other source. Just the Chariman of the Republican National Committee.

Jim Lindgren, writing for The Volokh Conspiracy, noted at the time:

Indeed, the next day, the Los Angeles Times reported:

Given how important this "long-term pattern" of fraud is supposed to be, perhaps Mr. Roam, or one of our other conservative neighbors—or, I don't know, how about anyone—might help us follow up on this story? Lindgren's point is valid: Such a spurious call would be a crime. What was the result of the investigation?

We can, at this point, turn to Mr. Roam's response to PJdude1219:

KOB? STL Today? Las Vegas Review-Journal? The Plain Dealer? Maybe, but we wouldn't know, since those articles and links are omitted.

And if you wonder about those omissions, the reason is clear enough. As we see with the examples he did give, the basic assertions concerning long-term and widespread vote fraud simply aren't supported when the facts are given any basic scrutiny.

The bait and switch Mr. Roam has offered us is a fairly transparent tactic. Throw opinion articles at people, hide sources, try to overwhelm people with innuendo, and you can generally expect that people won't follow up. If you make the mountain high enough, most won't bother climbing.

In following the first link Mr. Roam offered, we find that he has simply taken his accusations, or headlines, or whatever you want to call them, straight from NoDNC. And, at least in the context of plagiarism, that's not a problem. However, it is trolling. It is, essentially, spam.

There are five bullet points after the last quote box (Ed Gillespie). These are all listed at that first link. The remaining thirty-two or so links are not. Given the sheer dishonesty of the arguments put forth in the several propaganda pieces Mr. Roam did quote, do we really wonder why those links are omitted?

The reality is that the information he has presented does not support his basic accusation of long-term or widespread vote fraud. This is merely a propaganda attack founded in Mr. Roam's hatred of the Democratic Party, a blind hatred he shares with some others around the nation.

Many who post here will, from time to time—and some more than others—post editorial opinions and commentary as a form of argument. In and of itself, conveying this information is not problematic. However, it would appear that Mr. Roam prefers to let other people think and speak for him. And it is a poor choice when your chosen advocates wallow in lies.

Perhaps some think this sort of behavior is somehow valuable, or even minimally useful. It is, in fact, detrimental. Attempting to flood a discussion with dishonest histrionics only serves to obscure facts and rational considerations. This is harmful to whatever community it occurs in, and whoever willingly and deliberately undertakes such an endeavor chooses to denigrate and degrade those communities. What are we to think of such disgusting behavior? We can only applaud it, because calling it what it is, and regarding the participants accordingly, is apparently one of the worst insults one can hurl at another.

I'll take my chances, but only to a point. That tantrum of lies and hatred was sick. Pathetic. Worthy of ridicule. One may well wonder what such sleaze contributes to humanity. Speak not the answer, though, because that value is so low that even the sleazemonger ought not endure such criticism. It just wouldn't be fair, would it?
_____________________

Notes:

° mistaken assertions of fact are actually accidental — Nobody's perfect, of course, but there is a difference between acknowledging this reality and depending on it. Or, more specifically, there is a difference between accidental errors and deliberate misrepresentations.

° these votes can become crucial to the outcome of an election — In 2004, the first count of votes in the Washington state gubernatorial race declared Republican Dino Rossi the victor by a margin of 42 votes out of 2.8 million cast.

Works Cited:

Impomeni, Mark. "Barack Obama Met With Illinois Governor About Senate Successor". Political Machine. December 9, 2008. http://news.aol.com/political-machi...ith-illinois-governor-about-senate-successor/

Halloran, Liz. "Obama Distances Himself From Blagojevich Scandal". National Public Radio. December 9, 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98058184

Olney, Warren. "Bad-News Blagojevich Back at Work". To the Point. KCRW.org. December 10, 2008. http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp081210the_price_of_gasolin

Limbacher, Carl, et al. "Democrats Urge Kansans to Vote Illegally" NoDNC.com. November 22, 2002. http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=19

Editorial Board. "Chicago, Wisconsin". Wall Street Journal. October 26, 2002. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110002530

Beaty, James. "Arrests made in voter fraud case". McAlester News-Capital & Democrat. October 22, 2002. http://www.zwire.com/site/5791478.html

Poe, Richard. "Did Dead Indians Vote For Hillary?" NoDNC.com. October 21, 2002. http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=32

—————. "Richard Poe". FreeRepublic. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.freerepublic.com/~richardpoe/

—————. "About Richard Lawrence Poe". Poe.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.poe.com/about/

"South Dakota: History, Geography, Population, and State Facts". InfoPlease.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108270.html

"New York: History, Geography, Population, and State Facts". InfoPlease.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108252.html

"Washington: History, Geography, Population, and State Facts" InfoPlease.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108286.html

"Newsmax Media". Wikipedia. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsMax.com

"Christopher Ruddy". Wikipedia. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_W._Ruddy

"Western Journalism Center". Wikipedia. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Journalism_Center

Buettner, Russ. "Exposed: Scandal of Double Voters—46,000 registered to vote in city & Fla." New York Daily News. August 22, 2004. http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2004/08/22/2004-08-22_exposed__scandal_of_double_v.html

Leavitt, Justin. "The Truth About Voter Fraud". 2007. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf

"The Washington Examiner". Wikipedia. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Examiner

"Bill Sammon". Wikipedia. Accessed December 11, 2008 . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Sammon

"Bill Sammon". SourceWatch.org. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bill_Sammon

Santoli, Al. "Dornan Fights to Overturn Vote Fraud". The U.S. Veteran Dispatch. January-February, 1997. http://www.usvetdsp.com/story31.htm

"Democratic National Committee". BallotPedia.org. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Democratic_National_Committee

Gillespie, Ed. "Statement From RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie On The DNC Making Fraudulent Phone Calls". NoDNC.com. November 1, 2004. http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=65

Lindgren, Jim. "Election Fraud and Phony Phone Calls". The Volokh Conspiracy. November 1, 2004. http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1099368208.shtml

"Get-Out-the-Fraud Efforts Underway". Los Angeles Times. November 2, 2004; page A-22. http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/02/nation/na-calls2

See Also:

"AOL/Red State Blogger Today's Worst Person In the World". YouTube.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1naC-48Vl5Y

"Author Spotlight: Carl Limbacher". RandomHouse.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=46954

"DNC Vote Fraud Content". NoDNC.com. Accessed December 11, 2008. http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=24

 

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tiassa, doesn't it ever seem futile to compose such a comprehensive response? How do you have time to do that?

 

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I think he's on welfare, so income is not a problem. But I also think he gets his jollies by posting that kind of thing ....makes him feel superior to the rest of the people at sciforums!

Baron Max

 

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I did provide the information to find it, the Author, Header and the date of publication, Google had no problem finding the article, simple Google search.

 

Just a question, how is two people arrested MASSIVE?

 

Hell I am retired and I don't have the time to do the massive post that Tiassa put together, or the time to read them.


They are nothing but agitprop ,liberal evangelism anyway.

 

Tiassa is not human but in fact an advance AI.

 

This and that

Of course it does.

But every once in a while, it's necessary. In the end, it's intended to make a point in a completely different direction. Of course, it most likely won't be understood—or even bothered with—on that count, either, but at least it's there for future reference.

Writing is about the only thing in the world I know how to do. The most difficult part of it is keeping track of all those links.

In the meantime, with a sick daughter sleeping it off all afternoon, hey, it's something to do.

• • •​

I addressed this point, Mr. Roam.

That must be why you prefer that other people do your dirty work.

Seriously, though: Stop with the spamming.

(chortle!)

Whenever you feel like backing that up, Mr. Roam, I'll happily give your response whatever consideration it deserves.

 

A Trolling Roam gathers no ... um ... never mind

Begging your pardon, most esteemed spammer Mr. Roam, but I was wondering if you had some objection to articles that can actually fulfill their headlines?

 

The original article referenced in the OP referred to the amount of corruption as "massive", not the number of arrests (so far). But it certainly wouldn't surprise me if more arrests were still forthcoming in this case.

Tiassa: Nice rundown of the various sources referenced by Bufallo.
MOD NOTE: PLEASE BE SURE TO ALWAYS INCLUDE LINKS TO ANY MATERIAL YOU QUOTE (assuming the material is available online). POSTS WITHOUT APPROPRIATE LINKS WILL BE DELETED.

This is common courtesy. It takes only a moment for you to include the link, and it is very helpful in determining the context of the material quoted. Also, regardless of whether the quoted material constitutes "fair use" in a legal sense, we should always try to give the original author all the credit he deserves.

 

Why is he allowed to keep working as a Governer after he's been charged with corruption and soliciting bribes?

 

good question, I would guess its because of the way the US system is structured. In australia the pollie would be forced to step down until the charges have been delt with. It would also probably go to the privlages commity for there own internal investigation as well.

 

In The United States elected representatives are supposed to represent the will of the people...most often not the case. But that is the basis upon which the law was structured. So the consitution is very cautious about removing elected officials from office. He must first be found guilty of something. Thus far he has not been found guilyt in a court of law. Until then, he is presumed to be innocent. At this point in time he has only been accused. He has not had an opportunity to defend himself. If he is found to be guilty they should throw the book at him. But things get a little chaotic if you go around removing people from office because they have been accused of wrong doing. Heck if that were the case junior would have been removed from the presidency long ago.

 

joe you missunderstand my point, there was an incident in australia a few months ago. A NSW minster and his wife (who was a federal back bencher) had an aleged ultication in a nightclub with the staff of that night club.

The matter was refered to the NSW's police but in the mean time the minster was stood down pending the results of the investigation. He wasnt sacked, and when the investigation cleared him he was reapointed to the misters job. He ended up being sacked anyway because it turned out he lied to the premure but thats beside the point

you dont leave teaches working while they are being investigated for pediophila
You dont leave police working while they are being investigated for sale of narcotics
you stand them down pending the results. Now they SHOULD be stood down WITH pay in my opinion because yes they are innocent until found guilty but they still should be removed from the situation until the investigation ends.

The same goes for politions, if they are acused of coruption and the police find enough merit in the acusations to charge them then they should be stood down until either the charges are dropped or they are found not guilty

 

Our founding fathers were very supicious of concentrated authority. So the only body that can remove and elected official is the legislative body through the impeachment process. And that is what is being called for here. The state legislature could and should impeach the governer and give him a trial. The process should not take long.

 

http://news.aol.com/political-machi...ith-illinois-governor-about-senate-successor/

Barack Obama Met With Illinois Governor About Senate Successor
By Mark Impomeni
Dec 9th 2008 8:28PM
Filed Under:eDemocrats, Barack Obama, Featured Stories, Scandal


At a news conference today, President-elect Barack Obama said that he had no contact with disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) or anyone on the governor's staff about potential replacements for Obama in the United States Senate. But that statement directly contradicts Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod, who told a local Chicago television reporter less than two weeks ago that Obama did have a conversation with Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy.

"I know [Obama has] talked to the governor, and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."
Axelrod issued a statement retracting the comments, saying they were, "mistaken." But that explanation does not seem credible. Axelrod is Obama's closest adviser and is widely credited with being the mastermind of his election campaign. It is simply not believable that he would be mistaken about the basic fact of whether or not a meeting had taken place between the Governor of Illinois and the President-elect. And it is equally not believeable that he would be deliberately misleading on the subject.

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He can keep working as Governor as long as the people of Illinois, and their representatives in State government, allow him to.

AFAIK in Illinois, certainly in many other states, he can run for reelection from his jail cell.

The expectation is that he would be impeached and removed, of course. Illinois may also prohibit felons from holding that office. But barring that, the voters elected the guy - that counts for a lot.

If one overzealous or bribed police chief and DA combination could knock a Governor or Congressman out of office for an indefinite time at whim, the situation in the face of major controversial legislation or action would be a mess.

 

Right now, everyone's asking, "Where's Rahm? He's not been seen much since this scandal broke. This news report says he spoke with Blogojavich multiple times and that the FBI most likely has recordings of those conversations because they occured after the wiretaps were in place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwXS...l-spoke-with-hot.html&feature=player_embedded

 

The bloggers from Chicago are mostly guessing he was the guy telling Blagojevich to get bent, and instigating all the bad Blago language transcribed in the affadavit. He is also one of the two prime suspects - Jarrett being the other - for being the person who dished to Fitzgerald enough to get a warrant for the taps and all that good stuff, and put a burr of urgency under that good gentleman's normally calm and methodical saddle.

If you recall, Blagojevich was not even invited to head the Illinois Democratic delegation to the Dem nominating convention in Denver - and he didn't, apparently, get the message even from that very pointed warning.

 

That is not what the News Report indicates, multiple contacts, yes multiple contacts, how long does it take to tell some one to fuck off.

Grape is the Best Flavor

TruNews - Christian news network
Video: Emanuel spoke with Illinois governor about filling Obama's seat ... and the governor regarding the open senate seat. Craig Wall has the exclusive. ...

www.trunews.com/ - 58k - Similar pages