By Steve Rhodes

How did this man get elected twice to the governorship of America’s fifth-largest state?
That’s a media meme that took hold as the trial of Rod Blagojevich began to wind down last week.
The media analysts largely ignored their own role in Rod’s rise; instead it was, um, Rod’s charm that was to blame. And the political establishment. And voters. Everyone but themselves.
But the media was complicit in the rise of a man who had no business running a state. Let’s take a look.

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Posted on July 27, 2010

By Scott Buckner

* Chicago River reverses itself. Also no longer be “green.”
* Memorial statue erected – on Block 37.
* Citizens confused by CTA trains and buses running on time.
* One-day parking meter holiday declared. No, make that 75-year parking meter holiday declared.
* Children in Hell enjoy unprecedented Snow Day.

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Posted on July 26, 2010

By Matt Farmer and Steve Rhodes

After all, there’s an opening and both the team and the city need fresh looks.
1. The home plate umpire will only be able to get the Cubs starting lineup if he submits a pre-game FOIA request.
2. He will have no idea any of his players are using steroids right in front of him.
3. Each of next season’s 81 guest conductors for “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” will be named Vanecko.
4. The commissioner will order Daley to attend anger management therapy in July after Daley threatens to put a gun up the butt of Cubs announcer Bob Brenly.
5. Position of bench coach will be renamed buffer.

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Posted on July 21, 2010

By Karen Weise/ProPublica

Last December, a $500 donation could buy a ticket to a fundraiser that, the invitation said, would feature “Bojangles’ Fried Chicken, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, And Mel Watt, of course!” Two days later, Watt, a Democratic congressman from North Carolina, withdrew a provision from the House’s financial reform bill that would have regulated loans from car dealers.

This event and several others have come under scrutiny by the Office of Congressional Ethics, The New York Times reported yesterday. The ethics office sent donors and party hosts a formal request for documents relating to a number of fundraisers for members of Congress in the run-up to the House vote on financial reform last December.

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Posted on July 16, 2010

By Bill McMorris/Illinois Statehouse News

Rod Blagojevich’s former second-in-command said the Illinois governor didn’t just run from his executive responsibilities, he hid from them as well.
Bob Greenlee, who served as deputy governor for Illinois in 2008, said Blagojevich would dodge former budget director John Filan by hiding out in the bathroom. The game of hide-and-seek came at a time when Illinois was running a multi-billion dollar deficit.
While that may seem immature, at least he was at the office – an atypical occurrence, according to Greenlee’s testimony Thursday at Blagojevich’s federal corruption trial. Blagojevich usually worked from home or his Chicago campaign headquarters, Greenlee said, only coming into the office for two to eight hours a week.
Greenlee had a busy job tracking Rod down to sign or veto laws and discuss policy. He would regularly get late evening calls from the governor for advice. But in the 2008 election season, Blagojevich kept Greenlee and his staff researching possible scenarios for the U.S. Senate appointment that would be his to make if Barack Obama won the presidency.

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Posted on July 9, 2010

By Illinois Statehouse News

Rod Blagojevich told FBI agents they had little to worry about in a 2005 interview; he had a “firewall” in place to separate governance from fund-raising.
But those words provided little comfort to those the former Illinois governor allegedly tried to shake down.
Prosecutors introduced the jury to one of his alleged targets, road builder and former fundraiser Gerry Krozel. He testified that Blagojevich, his brother and co-defendant Rob Blagojevich and Lon Monk approached him in September 2008 with a proposition.
The governor had been fixating on the idea of a multi-billion dollar tollway construction project, at a time when the state was strapped for cash, making legislators less than eager to add to the budget. Blagojevich allegedly assured Krozel he had a way around the General Assembly – but it came at a price.

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Posted on July 7, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

1. “Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge’s ‘Midnight Crew,’ a federal jury convicted him Monday on all three counts of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying about the torture in a civil lawsuit,” the Tribune reports.
Assignment Desk: Why did it take decades for Burge to be prosecuted? Please trace the route this case took, and who else obstructed justice every step of the way. From U.S. Attorneys to police officers to City Hall.
2. “The Burge verdict is a major victory for the U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the prosecutors who argued the case before Judge Joan Lefkow and a slap in the face of Cook County State’s Attorneys who repeatedly turned a blind eye to the torture,” John Conroy writes.
“The prosecution came 37 years after Burge first used electric shock to interrogate Anthony Holmes and decades after county prosecutors had evidence that serious crimes had been and were being committed by Burge and detectives under his command. Even as a dozen men awaited execution on the basis of suspect confessions, county prosecutors declined to investigate whether those confessions had been coerced and whether detectives had perjured themselves in testifying about how those statements had been extracted.”
Even as a dozen men awaited execution.
What say you, former Cook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley?

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Posted on June 29, 2010

By Astralopry 2010

“WASHINGTON – So Guillen has access to President Obama’s private cell phone and is his newest BFF? Unlikely, but as the Sox showed in Friday’s 2-1, 11th-inning win over the Nationals, anything is possible. Just add Guillen’s story to Watergate and the grassy knoll. What couldn’t be disputed was the fact that ‘The First Fan’ was in attendance at a sold-out Nationals Park . . . Was Guillen even telling the truth about his text? Who knows? But it was the perfect city for another conspiracy theory.”
With Obama on hand, sizzling Sox survive Strasburg
June 19, 2010
BY JOE COWLEY jcowley@suntimes.com
* * * * * * * * * *
See also: Blago Goat Gate
SLIDESHOW: “GOP calls Obama spiritual-manager a quirky Venezuelan tyrant?”
SOUNDTRACK:

Kenny Baker: “Johnny The Blacksmith” (1970)

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Posted on June 21, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

Expert tracking from the estimable ProPublica.
*
Date: April 30
Headline: BP Had Other Problems In Years Leading to Gulf Spill
Excerpt: “BP, the global oil giant responsible for the fast-spreading spill in the Gulf of Mexico that will soon make landfall, is no stranger to major accidents.
“In fact, the company has found itself at the center of several of the nation’s worst oil and gas-related disasters in the last five years.”

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Posted on June 18, 2010

By The Mental Health Movement

On Tuesday, June 15, 2010, the Mental Health Movement presented Mayor Daley’s staff with the following list of demands:
1. Save our clinics.
Put up the funds to keep our clinics open and fully staffed even in the case where there are state cuts. It would take $18 million or 0.3 percent of the city budget to fully fund and staff city mental health centers
2. Hire more psychiatrists.
Right now there are 3.5 full-time equivalent psychiatrists for the 6,000 patients that come to the mental health clinics of the city of Chicago. That’s just not enough psychiatrists.

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Posted on June 16, 2010