January 2009
ArchPundit
Frank Calabrese Threatens to Murder Federal Prosecutor Markus Funk
Outfit hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. apparently doesn’t know when to shut up.
He’s on the hook for seven murders in a racketeering case — convicted in part by his own secretly recorded words.
He was overhead threatening to kill a prosecutor, Markus Funk.
And he’s now under the kind of security lockdown at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago usually reserved for terrorists — or as his defense attorney, Joseph Lopez, has suggested, Hannibal Lecter.
Mainly odd in that I knew Markus in the late 1980s when he dated a friend of mine. His family owned Funks Seeds in McLean County and he was attending the University of Illinois at the time. Not terribly comforting him, I’m sure, but he’s making all the right enemies.
English Poet Pool
No prizes, but take a guess in comments who the English poet that Blagojevich will quote today.
I’m going with Keats. Even if it isn’t him this time, Blagojevich will get around to him eventually.
Human Shield Bingo
Blagojevich plans to hold a 2 PM press conference today so I think we can safely assume he’ll be bringing in a new crop of human shields. What I’m thinking is that instead of the overdone drinking game every time he says some cliche, we should create some bingo cards for who he brings along.
Take a sheet of paper. Divide it up with a 5 X 5 grid and place 25 different types of disadvantaged people in each box. If you can cross off 5 in a row (up, down, diagonally) you get bingo.
We have the time to figure out the best choices for anyone having a hard time so add to the following in comments:
Kidney Transplant Kid
Parapalegic Homeless Man
Flu Victim
etc.
All of these are very sad cases and to be clear, the point is the Governor is exploiting them and that’s the absurdity of it.
More Gems
The interview is like a smorgasboard. From Josh over at Progress Illinois:
And you gotta love how, towards the end, he accuses the General Assembly of doing their work in a “far away place” (i.e. Springfield).
A 21st Century Frank Capra Movie
On acid maybe.
Blagojevich on WLS
In the third bit, he compares himself favorably to Nixon.
The whole thing is quite a treat.
It’s About A Tax Increase
Gov. Blagojevich continued to hammer away at the rules governing his upcoming impeachment trial this morning, saying the “fix is in in” and Illinoisans would be socked with massive tax increases should he be kicked out of office.
“They want to get me out fast so they could put a huge income-tax increase on the people of Illinois,” the governor said in a 43-minute interview this morning on WLS-AM 890’s Don Wade & Roma show. “And they want to raise the sales tax on gas. . . . If I’m out of the way, they can quietly push this through.”
Even better:
Blagojevich reiterated statements he made yesterday that rules governing his trial are unfair and that he would like to call several witnesses to defend him, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. He also said he’d like to call U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and even U.S. senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Arizona), who he says had worked closely with him.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0HCPPItnYo[/youtube]
About 2 minutes in. I don’t think McCain has the same ‘recollection.’
We’re Back
The problem with all of those GoDaddy notices that you have an expiring domain is that there are so many you tend to ignore them. Oops.
Daily Dolt: New York Times Reporter Robert F. Worth
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
Yet, this happened despite Guantanamo Bay detention being open. And, of course, Obama isn’t suggesting that we release all of the detainees so dangerous detainees won’t be released, just moved depending upon their classification. This isn’t a complication of closing Guantanamo, it’s a complication of a bunch of boobs running our government for 8 years.