2009

The Fine Whine of the Chicago Tribune

ArchPundit January 13, 2009 No Comments

Back to the Recall Hobby Horse.

• Every time we encounter one of “The Blagojevich 26,” the Illinois state senators who didn’t vote to let you decide whether to add a recall amendment to the state constitution, we’ll think of Rod Blagojevich. (Twenty-five of “The Blagojevich 26” are Democrats. The leader who put them up to this cheap trick? Departing Senate President Emil Jones. That’s right, he too co-chaired the Blagojevich campaign in 2006.)

Petition gathering could have only started if it had been passed in November and we wouldn’t be getting rid of him until April.  Even as slow as impeachment is going–recall would have been slower.

The real problem is that no one wanted to face up to the need for impeachment earlier.  While that wasn’t going to work with Jones as Senate President, it was the only relatively quick solution to the problem.

The Best Thing About the Next Governor

ArchPundit January 12, 2009 No Comments

Pat Collins nails it:

In Other Great News

ArchPundit January 12, 2009 No Comments

Eddie Jackson of the East Saint Louis City Council is now a Member of the House.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
December 16, 2005 Friday
FIRST EDITIONTapes indicate bribery plan by police chief
BYLINE: By Michael Shaw ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
SECTION: METRO; Pg. C12
LENGTH: 404 words
DATELINE: EAST ST. LOUIS

Former East St. Louis Police chief Ron Matthews helped arrange a $3,000 bribe to a city council member, according to taped conversations presented Thursday at Matthews’ trial.

Matthews, 56, faces charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury.

On Thursday, the third day of the trial in federal court in East St. Louis, the jury heard secretly recorded conversations that alleged efforts by Matthews and others to influence the hiring of the police department’s internal affairs officer.

Prosecutors allege that the effort was intended to hire someone who would protect an auxiliary police officer with a criminal record.

The man doing the recording was Matthews’ then-deputy chief and friend, Rudy McIntosh, who was an FBI mole.

In the recordings, officials discuss an officer named Mario Fennoy whom they say agreed to pay a city council member $3,000 in exchange for assurances that he would be selected as internal affairs officer.

At one point Matthews speculates whether Fennoy can handle the task of stalling a federal investigation into the auxiliary officer.

“Can he come up to gear fast enough to do that (expletive)?” Matthews asks McIntosh.

Prosecutor Hal Goldsmith has said that officials eventually backed off the effort to install Fennoy. The council member, Eddie Jackson, returned the money, Goldsmith said.

Neither Fennoy nor Jackson could be reached for comment Thursday.

He gives refunds. Great customer service.

CNN Reports Burris Likely to Be Sworn In This Week

ArchPundit January 12, 2009 No Comments

Dandy.

On the good side, he’s a blog material creating machine

Daily Dolt: Illinois Review

ArchPundit January 12, 2009 No Comments

Eaton is upset she didn’t get a call back on Friday from her State Rep:

Why do I call Davis “bigoted”?  East of I-57 his district is heavily black.  West of I-57, it is not.  Need I say more?  Those of us in Davis’ district west of I-57 are ignored. He doesn’t care what we think, because he gets all the support he needs east of I-57.  We are Davis’ dis-enfranchised voters, and he demonstrated Friday he could care less.

The story of how this district came to be is partially my fault, or so an Illinois lawmaker/friend told me.

In 2002, when the Democrats were re-drawing senate and state rep districts, my then-State Rep, now-Senator Maggie Crotty (D-Oak Forest) told a Republican lawmaker that she drew an “X” on my house and told the map drawers, “I don’t want that woman in my district…”

And lo, and behold, though I live in a subdivision with those from another district, my neighbors aren’t too happy, as all of us –because of Senator Crotty’s map demands — were drawn into a House and Senate district centered far east of us, in the heavily black communities of southern Chicago, Harvey and Markham, making our Republican-leaning precinct irrelevant to district voting.

Now, not only is Will Davis our state rep, Senator James Meeks is our state Senator.  (And Bobby Rush is our Congressman.)

I don’t think disenfranchised means what she thinks it means.  There’s so much more to take in, but I’ll let the whole experience wash over you.

And the Lobbyist 1 Story Starts to Make it Around

ArchPundit January 9, 2009 No Comments

Sun-Times:

SPRINGFIELD — A potentially troublesome new detail emerged about Roland Burris’ controversial U.S. Senate appointment Thursday after a state House panel voted unanimously to recommend Gov. Blagojevich be impeached.

For the first time, Burris indicated that he asked Blagojevich’s former chief of staff and college classmate, Lon Monk, to relay his interest in the Senate seat to the governor last July or September.

“If you’re close to the governor, you know, let him know I’m certainly interested in the seat,” Burris said he told Monk.

That testimony appears to differ from an affidavit Burris submitted to the impeachment panel this week in which he stated he spoke to no “representatives” of the governor about the Senate post prior to Dec. 26.

Federal prosecutors, who identified Monk as “Lobbyist 1” in their criminal complaint against Blagojevich, indicated they tapped Monk’s phone in November as Blagojevich moved to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

Rod vs The House

ArchPundit January 9, 2009 No Comments

Predictable and pitiful.  I’m pretty sure I could have guessed the entire thing other than the Tennyson quote.

What a Class Act

ArchPundit January 9, 2009 No Comments

Using disabled people and children for cover.

Your No Vote

ArchPundit January 9, 2009 No Comments

Apparently it’s Patterson.

Done.

ArchPundit January 9, 2009 No Comments

1 Vote against, not sure who it was yet