BBC and NY Times reporting....
"Illinois Governor Guilty of Abuse" -BBC
"Blagojevich Has His Final Say, Making Day of it" -NY Times
Gotta love this passage from the New York Times piece...
"As the nine-seat airplane raced through the skies on Thursday somewhere between Springfield and here, an onboard telephone began to ring. Rod R. Blagojevich, the soon-to-be ex-governor of Illinois, instructed his aides not to answer. It might be the news, he said, that he had been removed from office and that he no longer controlled the state’s thousands of employees or even, especially pertinent, the state-owned airplane taking him home."
The Illinois Governor's office website has already made the switch. Former Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn is the new Gov.
Good call on this one. The guy's a creep.
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Yeah. Politics 'is' a murky game though. It seems the main evidence furnished is: that he made it clear "in some way" that he expected contributions from certian a hospital executive in exchange for children's health care; but honestly, who would actaully do such a thing? (It sounds more like he was making a joke). On that, couldn't he have been implying that hospital exec was a creep for not contributing to the administration who managed so much for childrens health care?--Thats how I read that. I could be wrong though. The other evidence, which seems worse is that he was offering favors (from the office of the Govenor) to a newspaper so they would fire some writers he didn't like. That does not seem out of common practice for a govenor, or even a crongressman or senator. However, if that is true that he tried getting someone fired only because they didn't like him, then I'd have to ask him if it's ok if other people can do that to him. I honestly think that when we weigh all politicians in the balance that there's nothing worth impeaching him over... maybe we fired him because we just see in him what we despise about ourselves (but thats still denial on our part). But I really feel like he got fired over small potatoes.
ReplyDelete-Chris Topolovich, Los Angeles.
You know - yeah Blagojevich should have just kept his mouth shut and continued business as usual. He would have filled the seat with a supporter and gone his merry way. The reality is that it's is just politics. EVERYONE does it, we all know about it. Blago just happened to have a position that had some star power so he was trying to leverage it more. He came out too cocky and mouthy. Had he done things quietly no one ever would have commented on it and life would just go on...
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