The Illinois state senate on Thursday convicted Governor Rod Blagojevich of abuse of power, removing him from office amid charges that he tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama.
More than two-thirds of the 59 senators, acting as a jury following the two-term Democrat’s impeachment on January 9, voted to find him guilty, effectively ousting him from office.
The vote was televised live from the state capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. Blagojevich is the first governor in Illinois history to be impeached and removed from office.
(Reporting by Andrew Stern and Michael Conlon, Editing by Peter Bohan)
“I reject and denounce pay-to-play politics and have no involvement whatsoever in any wrongdoing,” said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
“It is impossible for someone on my behalf to have a conversation that would suggest any type of quid pro quo or any payments or offers,” Jackson told ABC News. “An impossibility to an absolute certainty.”
Liberals do not like taking responsibility for, well, anything. Responsibility is for Republicans and conservatives. Hence Barack Obama’s evasiveness and Rahm Emanuel’s arrogance.
The Electoral College has not met yet, and Obama has not been sworn in, and ALREADY this administration is tainted.
To the millions of gullible people (dead or alive) who supported Barack Obama’s vacuous gibberish for the last 2 years, you are responsible for America’s slow descent into tyranny. Yes, you.
Q: Have you ever spoken to [Illinois] Gov. [Rod R.] Blagojevich about the Senate seat?
Obama: I have not discussed the Senate seat with the governor at any time. My strong belief is that it needed to be filled by somebody who is going to represent the people of Illinois and fight for them. And beyond that, I was focused on the transition.
Q: And that was before and after the election?
Obama: Yes.
Q: Are you aware of any conversations between Blagojevich or [chief of staff] John Harris and any of your top aides, including Rahm [Emanuel]?
Obama: Let me stop you there because . . . it’s an ongoing…. investigation. I think it would be inappropriate for me to, you know, remark on the situation beyond the facts that I know. And that’s the fact that I didn’t discuss this issue with the governor at all.
[Emphasis added]
Of course. This is typical for Barack Obama.
Obama is either denying or avoiding the question. The man is surrounded by radicals, racists, Communists, crooks, and poverty stricken relatives, but for some reason, he never knows anything about them. Obama is always confused, surprised, or saddened (or all three) by their actions, and thusfar he has not been able to properly judge the character of the people with whom he associates.
We are constantly reminded about The Messiah’s assumed intelligence, as if a high I.Q. is an automatic for a Democrat, but nothing of substance ever comes from his mouth. On the contrary, he has consistently uttered streams of denials and vague responses about a variety of topics. His lone positive comments in the last year and a half involve the pliable and elusive “hope” and “change.” Obama’s supporters did not seem to care about the Oprahfied nonsense they were being fed daily. This evasive man is now our President.
By the way, the images above are cached images. If you visit the original link, the November 5th story is no longer available. I can’t imagine why. According to Wikipedia:
“9. Pursuant to the criminal laws of the State of Illinois (720 ILCS 5/33-1(d)), ROD BLAGOJEVICH is prohibited from receiving, retaining, or agreeing to accept any property or personal advantage which he is not authorized by law to accept, knowing that such property or personal advantage was promised or tendered with intent to cause him to influence the performance of any act related to the employment or function of his public office.”
Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges.
Blagojevich and Harris were accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy that included Blagojevich conspiring to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. The governor was also accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.
Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning.
A Blagojevich spokesman said he was unaware of the development. “Haven’t heard anything — you are first to call,” Lucio Guerrero said in an e-mail.
The stunning, early morning visit by authorities to the governor’s North Side home came amid revelations that federal investigators had recorded the governor with the cooperation of a longtime confidant and had begun to focus on the possibility that the process of choosing a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama could be tainted by pay-to-play politics.
Blagojevich was taken into custody hours after the Tribune reported that the investigation into allegations of pay-to-play politics within his administration had been expanded to include his pending choice of a Senate replacement for Obama. The Democratic governor has said he expects to make a decision on the state’s next senator in weeks.
Sources told the Tribune that investigators intensified their investigation into Blagojevich amid concerns that the process of choosing a new senator could be tainted. The actions by federal authorities came a day before Blagojevich’s 52nd birthday.
The Tribune previously disclosed that federal investigators had recordings of Blagojevich. Those recordings were aided by the cooperation of longtime Blagojevich confidant and former congressional chief of staff John Wyma.
On Monday, Blagojevich said he has done nothing wrong in his stewardship of the state and challenged critics to record him because his discussions were “always lawful.”
Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL)
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been taken into federal custody at his home, the Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources.
The newspaper said on its website that the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago would not confirm the information.
Blagojevich was the subject of a federal corruption probe.
Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and 320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors in November.
Unemployment (Household Survey Data)
Both the number of unemployed persons (10.3 million) and the unemployment rate (6.7 percent) continued to increase in November. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, as recently announced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of unemployed persons increased by 2.7 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points. (See table A-1.)
Congratulations liberals. In your constant quest for power, in your emotion-induced stupor, you have managed to ruin the best economy on the planet. And all of this from the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, and an assortment of other liberals suffering from malignant economic illiteracy.
Yes, congratulations to all of you. In two short years, your zealotry and intentional disregard of basic market principles has shoved environmentalism down our throats, science be damned; it has raised gas and food prices; it has destroyed the housing market, several major banks; it has raised the unemployment rate, and corroded any remaining confidence in the American economy.
And how did the American public respond to all of this massive incompetence? By voting more of you jackasses into the House and Senate.
[B]ack in September, Drudge reported that Oprah had been heard to say that she would never interview Sarah Palin. Not long after the Drudge flash, Oprah issued a press release where she denied the reports of the mean things she said about Palin. Oprah made some vague claim that she had “decided” not to open her show for political candidates despite the fact that she was an open participant in Barack Obama’s campaign and had the now president elect and his wife on her show several times during the campaigns.
So, now Oprah is wide eyed with shock that Palin has snubbed her thus far?
Talk about clueless!
The Self-Anointed Patroness of Relativism DID invite Obama on her show merely TWICE. She openly kissed his ass campaigned for him. But when Palin was discussed, suddenly politics was rather dirty for Her Oprahness and, well, can Governor Palin come on the show AFTER the campaign is over?
Meanwhile, the rest of America is expected to believe that none of this support for The Messiah had anything to do with race. Oh no.
You know America is racist country when its top job is held by a man whose father was Kenyan and its biggest entertainer is a black female who is a billionaire. I wish the rest of the world was that racist.
Remember why most Republicans, other than Colin Powell, abandoned the soon-to-be convicted Ted Stevens. And the names of Mark Foley and Larry Craig are now understandably infamous. It is altogether fine and proper that Republicans turned on their own miscreants, who needed to be turned on for their various misdeeds.
But why in the world is Rep. Charles Rangel still the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee which oversees U.S. tax policy — especially at this critical juncture in our nation’s financial history?
I say “Why?” not out of sarcasm, but out of real bewilderment: Rangel’s record of financial and ethical improprieties is no longer a matter of hypocrisy, but rather one of probable criminality.
Let us count the ways: (1) Rangel paid no federal income tax on some $75,000 in rental income from his Caribbean villa — that lapse would result in a felony tax-evasion charge for the rest of us who dared to try that year in and year out. (2) Something called Nabobs Industries gave $1 million to something called the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York — and, apparently in exchange, got tens of millions of dollars in tax waivers from Rangel’s committee. [...] (3) Rangel seems to be claiming his New York campaign office as his home in order to continue to garner rent-control exemptions, improperly saving him thousands of dollars through aggregate subsidies. That someone who oversees the drafting of American tax policies and regulation cannot follow them himself is now a statement of fact, not baseless slander.
An Augsburg College student says she was attacked and punched on election night, because of her support for Sarah Palin.
18-year-old Annie Grossmann tells KARE 11 she was assaulted after attending an election night party.
“They saw the pin and they started calling me racist, and I’ve never seen these girls before,” said Grossmann.
Grossmann says 4 women confronted here, one of them grabbed her, began shouting at her, and wouldn’t let her go.
“After about 5 minutes or so I just got really sick of it, just holding me there by force. So I kind of pushed her back and started walking away. She grabbed me by the shoulder, I turned around, and she punched me in the eye,” she said.
Bruce Grossmann, her father, says the punch caused his daughter to hit her head on a wall behind her. He says she sought medical treatment for blurred vision. She missed a couple of days of hockey practice and may have suffered a slight concussion.
Augsburg officials do not believe the suspects are students at the school. Grossmann filed a police report; Minneapolis police say they’re still looking for the suspects.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday that they will not bring criminal charges against Eliot Spitzer for his role in a prostitution scandal, removing a legal cloud that has surrounded the former New York governor since his epic downfall eight months ago.
U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said investigators found no evidence that Spitzer or his office misused public or campaign funds for prostitution. Investigators found that Spitzer solicited high-priced call girls, but federal prosecutors typically do not prosecute clients of prostitution rings.
As part of our ongoing investigation into issues surrounding voter fraud, we have discovered a VERY disconcerting situation. And this time, it’s not in Ohio.
It looks like out-of-state volunteers and staffers are registering and casting ballots in the battleground state of New Mexico, too.
One example is Shayne Adamski. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, is actively involved in politics and was a California delegate at the Democratic National Convention just 2 short months ago. Adamski is also a paid employee on the Obama campaign, and he traveled to New Mexico to help get out the vote in this swing state. All of this is quite admirable.
However, according to the Bernalillo County Clerk, Adamski registered to vote as a resident of Albuquerque on October 5. That’s just 38 days after he was representing the state of California as a delegate on the final day of the Democratic National Convention. He also requested an absentee ballot. (We do not yet know if he cast a ballot, we are waiting to hear from the County Clerk.)
Query: Wouldn’t a single database whereby each state could check in WHICH state each voter is registered alleviate potential for fraud?
Or is that too obvious for this government?
Tiffany Wilson and I traveled to New Mexico with photojournalist Gary Orr to check things out.
We were able to speak with Carlos Sanchez, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign, but he declined to comment on Adamski’s specific situation. Unfortunately, we were unable to speak with Adamski himself due to campaign policy.
What exactly was this “campaign policy”? (Did you ask?) Besides “cover your ass at all times” ?
Since we can’t talk to Adamski directly or get information about him from the campaign, we don’t know whether or not he moved to Albuquerque and/or intends to reside here, but we were curious: are out-of-state campaign workers eligible to claim residency in New Mexico and cast a ballot?
Does not each state have a residency requirement/period of residency prior to voting?
We realize that New Mexico does not abide by the Ohio Revised Code, something we have become very familiar with in the past few weeks. In Ohio, you must be a resident of the state 30 days prior to the election AND have the intention of residing there permanently. Was this the case in New Mexico?
THIRTY DAYS? That’s IT?
We asked the Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver this very question. Contrary to what we have discovered in Ohio, she said that out-of-state volunteers WERE in fact able to register and to vote in New Mexico.
When we asked how this was allowed, she replied: “It’s not that it’s allowed so much as that it’s not enforced. There is really no enforcement mechanism in place to evaluate whether someone’s submitting a registration based on a temporary address.”
Concerning? Yes. [Shelby Holliday, do you always react this casually to the fact that America has become a fuckin' Banana Republic? -- Ed.]
But that’s not the end of the story.
Example #379, 628, 432, 987 of government stupidity.
Imagine a Republican pulling this kind of stunt. Do you think the criminals in the media would be utterly comatose about it?
(Meanwhile, liberals want this same government to RUN OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.)
Two people were arrested Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace at their headquarters in Galax.
Galax Police Chief Rick Clark said officers were dispatched shortly before 1 p.m. to the Galax Republican headquarters on East Grayson Street when a caller reported someone had sprayed office workers with Mace.
Responding officers arrested Daniel Cason Meinecke, 29, and Cara Annis Hindman, 26, both of Galax.
Meinecke was charged with one count of misdemeanor assault, Hindman was charged with five counts of misdemeanor assault.
Mike Stevens says he and other Republican campaign volunteers were attacked on Monday when they were sprayed with pepper spray after an altercation with two people over campaign signs. Photo by April Wright
Do you live in Ohio? Helen is watching you. Yes you.
Helen Jones-Kelley has donated $2,500 to the (drumroll) Obama Campaign. Just a coincidence, of course!
Ace of Spades adds: “[Joe Wurzelbacher's] name was also searched at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, in the Toledo Police Department’s criminal records, and in the office of the [Attorney General].”
I thought liberals prized privacy. Unless you inadvertently get Obama to reveal his redistributionist (i.e., theft) policies. Then your privacy is meaningless.
This is just the tip of the iceberg under an Obama Presidency. You have been warned.
The sort of Stalinist tactics employed below normally happen in third world countries. Of course, Obama’s entire mentality, his whole campaign, is of the third world (stubborn devotion to disastrous ideologies, voter intimidation, brazenly public registration fraud, media forces protecting him and those close to him, etc.).
And lawyers wonder why the public dislikes them (almost as much as it dislikes journalists).
Great Van Susteren at Fox News posted a story on an attorney named Thomas Rosenberg who sent a less-than-friendly e-mail to a couple of student journalists who dared expose registration fraud. (!!)
Tiffany Wilson and Shelby Holliday [of Palestra.net] (not professionals) are AGGRESSIVE in pursuing voter fraud in Ohio and have uncovered ACTUAL voter fraud. They are also not afraid.
As a result of their journalism, votes already cast for President have had to be withdrawn.
So what is the students’ reward for exposing crime??? An intimidating letter from the Senator Obama campaign lawyer to one of the students?? See below and then you tell me…
From: Rosenberg, Thomas
Date: Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 2:32 PM
Subject: At least in today’s blog you spelled my last name right
To: tiffany
In other words, I am going to read what you write and watch what you say. Hopefully you will be fair and impartial as you told me you would be.
Thomas L. Rosenberg
Roetzel & Andress, LPA
Columbus, OH 43215
trosenberg@ralaw.com
[emphasis mine]
Assuming that the above e-mail is legit and has not been altered, Rosenberg was either not thinking when he sent the e-mail or he’s usually this much of a jerk most of the time.
Because I am such a friendly and helpful blogger, I’d like to offer my e-mail address to Thomas Rosenberg in case he wishes to send me attempts at intimidation: sisyphus2008@yahoo.com.
According to Greta, Mr. Rosenberg has apologized:
“UPDATE: 1:10pm — I was told the lawyer apologized to the Palestra journalist..and said he did not mean it to be an intimidation.”
I commend Mr. Rosenberg on acknowledging his lapse in judgment. A friendly suggestion: think first and type later.
Imagine if the most recent liberal asshole, Chad Michael Morisette, had chosen to express himself by hanging an image of Barack Obama (or any other Democrat).
A Halloween decoration showing a mannequin dressed as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose from the roof of a West Hollywood home is drawing giggles from some passers-by and gasps of outrage from others.
The mannequin is dressed in brunet wig, glasses and a red business suit. Another mannequin dressed as John McCain emerges from a flaming chimney.
Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene.
Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other time of year, but it’s within the spirit of Halloween.
He says “it should be seen as art, and as within the month of October. It’s Halloween, it’s time to be scary it’s time to be spooky.”
It’s time to be a liberal moron? Yes, you got that down perfectly.
Notice that the “spirit of Halloween” apparently applies to Republicans only. (Mr. Morisette also had an image of John McCain coming out of “flames.” What a regular Michelangelo, this Chad Michael.)
Is it possible to disagree with Republicans and conservatives with a modicum of logic and class?
Why is it that artists are the last people to understand what art is?
UPDATE II: Palin’s image is now being used (without her permission) to sell a sex toy. Classy. The box states that “this is a parody” as if that absolves them of using someone’s image for profit. And the Photoshop work is bloody awful.
All of this “change” and “hope” is really rocking my socks. (Note to the jackasses who created the above piece: you can excercise your free speech rights and be respectful/civil/decent/courteous. If you’re really in a daring mood, you might even try to construct a logical argument.)
Meanwhile, American feminists have nothing to say in Palin’s defense, proving once again that they care only about CERTAIN women (i.e., abortion lovers).
I believe it is the realm of school children to deface photographs of people they don’t like.
The hypocrisy of liberals on this topic is staggering.
[T]he notion that the McCain campaign, and conservatives more broadly, have stooped to an unprecedented level of “sleaziness” with negative, nasty and mendacious campaign tactics has become the accepted media narrative over the past several weeks. “Smear” is the word you most often hear nowadays next to “Republican.” But while it may be true that some in the conservative fever swamps have resorted to ugly tactics, they don’t hold a candle to the left’s rhetoric over the past eight years.
Liberal pundits are attempting to outdo one another in describing just how unscrupulous conservatives have become. In The New Yorker last week, Hendrik Hertzberg referred to McCain-Palin rallies as “blood-curdling hate-fests.” Frank Rich went one step further in The New York Times, decrying the “Weimar-like rage” of the Republican Party base, evidenced by a few attendees at a Sarah Palin rally who shouted “terrorist” and “off with his head” when she mentioned Barack Obama. Rich’s fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman remarked that attendees at GOP gatherings have been “gripped by insane rage” at the prospect of an Obama presidency. Ascribing the oafish behavior of a handful to an entire political party, The Nation magazine slams the “GOP’s machinery of hate” in an editorial patronizingly entitled, “Waiting for the Barbarians.”
If my inbox is to be believed, there are certainly people on the right who believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim lying in wait to foist jihad upon the United States. And there are people who oppose him because of his name or his race. But one has to have been asleep during the Bush years to think that nuttery is exclusively a conservative phenomenon.
What about the left’s conspiracy theories? A not insignificant portion of liberals in this country believe that a small group of Jews, er, the “neocons,” took control of the government following 9/11 to fight wars on behalf of Israel. Is not this slander as odious as the Internet rumors about Barack Obama?
Time columnist Joe Klein fits the profile of the liberal hypocrite beset with disappointment over McCain’s alleged degradation. He recently apologized to readers for writing earlier that John McCain was “honorable.” This from a man who just a few months ago alleged that “Jewish neoconservatives” were disloyal Americans because their “plump[ing]” for war in Iraq and now Iran “raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.”
While the Stalinist/two-faced media trumpets any negativity among McCain/Palin supporters, I’ve collected a list of stories showcasing how tolerant and compassionate liberals are. (These are merely the ones that I found. I am certain there are others. The list does not include, for example, violence against pro-lifers.)
“what I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage. When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull. And I’m not the only one! I had simultaneous IM conversations with many friends, who said things like, ’she seems like a fucking monster” and “this feminist wants to murk that idiotic cunt.’ “
Despite many cases of ill behavior by leftists, the media usually ignores such incidents. Atleast at Reuters, they’re more concerned with exaggerating the supposed “racism” in America.
Naturally, the media has not trumpeted the recent story on Florida Representative (and Democrat) Tim Mahoney. Recall that a couple of years ago, the media certainly did make sure to cover Mark Foley’s “sex scandal” in which no sex actually occurred. Not that I defend Foley, of course. E-mailing teenagers is not a good idea especially if you’re a public figure. Our unbiased and objective media, however, seems to think that e-mails to teens is infinitely worse in immorality than cheating on one’s wife and then attempting to bribe her with 6 figures.
The affair between Congressman Tim Mahoney and Patricia Allen began, according to current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising “a world that is safer, more moral.”
The new Democrat Behaving Badly is the Mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. Eliot Spitzer atleast had the scruples not to lie about his trysts with Ashley Alexandra “Kristen” Youmans DiPietro “Dupre.” Not so with Kwame Kilpatrick.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former top aide pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges they lied under oath about having an affair. The mayor and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty appeared for separate hearings in the scandal that is threatening to prematurely end Kilpatrick’s second term.
"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them..." -- Thomas Jefferson
"I predict the future happiness of Americans if they can prevent the government wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. " -- Thomas Jefferson
“Journalists are like dogs. When ever anything moves, they begin to bark.” -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America' . . . is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it." -- Thomas Sowell
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell
"The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period." -- Oriana Fallaci
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." – George Bernard Shaw
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." – Robert Heinlein
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." – Barry Goldwater
"America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand
"The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it." – Harry Browne
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." – Edmund A. Opitz
"It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." – Charles A. Beard
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." -- John 8:32
"Criticizing these reporters is like booing at the Special Olympics." -- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Stumble It!