Land Of Lincoln...and Daly, Obama, Rezko

Add a new name to the growing rogues gallery of modern Illinois state politics – Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested Tuesday morning at their respective homes, charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery in attempting to sell Barack Obama's vacant Sentate seat. Wow - taken into custody at their homes, that's telling isn’t it? Usually, disgraced soon-to-be-indicted political figures are afforded the dignity of turning themselves in to authorities. I wonder what prompted the feds to take down Blagojevich at home.

For his part, Obama claims that he had not been in contact with the governor about his senate vacancy. However, ABC News is reporting that the president-elect’s senior advisor David Axelrod told a reporter in November that, “I know he’s talked to the governor and that 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 is now backpedaling from this statement saying that he misspoke about the meeting. That’s some misstatement.

The president-elect further added that he had no idea of what was happening with Blagojevich. That’s funny, that’s exactly the same excuse he had for Bill Ayers…and Tony Rezko…and Jeremiah Wright. Notice a trend here? And speaking of Rezko, his name appears over 170 times in the complaint! With Rezko singing like a canary, there's no telling what we'll uncover as we go along.

Even if Obama’s ignorance of the Blagojevich affair is legit, and I believe that it is - beginning a new administration under a cloud like this is not a good start.