Honestly, I never heard any pundits suggest that a black person should or would be appointed to fill Obama’s seat. I DID hear a lot of them say it would of course be a Democrat, and I heard a lot about Illinois Dems nixing the idea of a special election to fill the seat. But that was because they were afraid, with some justification, that IL voters would be ill-disposed toward Dems at the moment and might end up electing a Republican.
Obama himself announced that he wanted an African American months ago, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported in October. So did Rush, who launched a petition drive a month ago. Laura Washington was reporting two weeks ago that Black leaders were very concerned about losing the Senate seat. I heard it from talking heads all the time, though admittedly I watch MSNBC more than the others. But it has been a concern for some time, and quite naturally so. Asserting that nobody noticed it or had anything to say about it would be just downright weird.
And another wrinkle has me pondering. Ponder, ponder. Why is Da Fitz asking for more time for his delivery of an indictment? He hasn’t got enough? Well, damn! maybe he doesn’t!
As weird as this sounds, maybe not. Now, TG!IANAL, but seems to me that all this stuff on tape is revelatory, but not actually criminal. I may muse out loud about leaving the countryside strewn with the remains of disemboweled mimes, but until I actually snuff one, or at least buy a knife, I’m not guilty of anything more than good sense and taste.
OK, we got The Blog (“Beware of The Blog, it creeps, and leaps,…”) on tape talking about how he might commit a crime. Selling a Senatorial seat would surely qualify. But unless I’m very much mistaken, thinking about a crime, even talking about a crime, isn’t a crime. You gotta actually do something.
So…maybe he gets away with it? Why else would Da Fitz ask for a King’s X while he gets his shit together?
Hell YEAH! Look, guys, I suckled at the teat of Illinois politics since I moved back here when I was 11 and, yeah, I admit to being a party-first type, but this country is currently mightily fucked up and we need to change that. I’m not letting any damned Republican win SHIT if I have anything to do with it. They are the enemy. I’m holding my nose, happy that Burris is clean, and fully expecting he will either, in two years, realize he’s too old to run again and step aside for someone else, or run again, having proved himself independent from Blago.
And an eleven-grand donation to Blago from a high-powered lawyer? I spit on it! Maybe it seems like a lot in Delaware or Wisconsin, but in Illinois you can’t buy SHIT for eleven grand! ESPECIALLY not a senate seat. It’s pocket change.
When Obama played the race card to get the nomination that is OK. Whenever Obama got in a spot his campaign cried foul and race. Of course Obama says “Let’s not talk about race,” all the while asking his people to do it.
I think it’s LAUGHABLE that on TV we had African Americans saying “I am glad Obama one because it helps us to have people like us and our roots we can look up to.”
Sorry but Obama is WHITE and AFRICAN, NOT African-American.
It’s bloody sad Obama plays up to blacks claiming to be an Africa American, when his roots are from Africa, not going back through the slaves and coming to this country in chains. Obama’s people know nothing of this.
Yet when G-Rod gives the go ahead to Roland Burris a GOOD African American, he gets slammed. Burris deserved to be elected to whatever state office he ran for, but people downstate wouldn’t vote for him because he was an African American, not a half white person playing up his skin color NOT HIS ROOTS to get elected.
Gee I wonder if a really dark guy from Southern India was born in Uganda and said had a kid if the kid said “I"m African American,” would anyone accept him?
No.
Burris is a good man, if anything he’d be a much better president than pseudo black man Obama, who was elected because OPRAH thinks he’s cute.
Too bad Burris wasn’t white enough for Oprah to like, he’d be president today
Should auld acquaintance… hic … be forgot…
Sleep it off, hey?
Dude, get help.
Yeah, sure, the hell. Fuck Roland Burris. He tried to send an innocent man to the gas chamber even though DNA evidence proved he was innocent AND another man had confessed to the crime!
In 90’s, Burris Sought Death Penalty for Innocent Man
The Deputy attorney general resigned rather than continue to prosecute Cruz. The fucking lead detective in the case “resigned in protest over prosecutors’ handling of the case”!!
Fuck Roland Burris. I don’t want him as my senator.
“You people have had hours and hours to prepare.” Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada
Because he has more than he can get done in a few days. There are thousands of hours of phone conversations, for one thing. Transcribing just one thousand of those hours would take 125 man-work-days, assuming transcription occurs in real time with no breaks or miscues. In addition, the selling of Obama’s seat is just one of many charges going back years. The criminal complaint was 76 pages long. You can read it here. And finally, Blagojevich is not the only target of the complaint.
Scheduling interviews, depositions, and grand jury presentations have had to take into account two concurrent national holidays, severe weather, and a polically charged transition of power at the very top of government. This whole, “My god, they’ve had since yesterday — what the fuck is taking so long” mindset is infantile and ignorant in its conception.
I heard that since all this became public, a lot of people have come forward with more information and Fitz and his crew are sifting through the new stuff too.
Wait, I just found the cite.
Since you quoted me, I’m assuming this refers to me. Or, at least, it didn’t occur to you to make any distinction as you spill your spleen. Which is pointedly nasty as well as pretty much undeserved.
Knock it off, OK? Or find someone who deserves a ration of shit from you.
Now, if I may, to the matter at hand…
Entirely plausible. Fitz is a bulldog, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he sought to make a solid case into an iron-clad case. Nothing wrong with that. But it does more or less imply that his case against The Blog is not “iron-clad” as of yet.
Plus, if he gets The Blog into plea-bargain mode, he will gain the advantage of direction, The Blog can tell him where to look, and what to look for in this vast assemblage of evidence, no? I don’t see much likelihood that other malefactors are going to skate, now or later. Javert was a pussy next to this guy! And more power to him, says I.
I am not, by any stretch, implying that The Blog is not a slime ball. That ship has sailed.
But clearly, it would be best if this thing is done sooner rather than later. Which implies, at least to me, that Fitz showed his cards a bit prematurely. My respect for the man leads me to think he acted in the interests of good government, he wanted the people to know what was going on, and I agree. Even if, by some legalistic miracle, this revelation might make it difficult to convict, it should have been done. There are things more important than whether or not The Blog actually does time, and that is the truth be known when it is important to be known.
I am pondering, which is akin to speculating. So maybe.
It was also in post #17. 
If this is true (not that I doubt the sincerity of the post, but that the charge is so horrendous, one must be a bit cautious…)
If this is true, the man is beneath contempt and unworthy of pity. Our “criminal justice” system is bad enough when it works, unspeakable when cynically manipulated.
Shit like this makes the Baby Jesus puke His little guts out.
He said as much when he announced the charges, that Blago’s impending sale of the Senate seat forced him to act before he was really ready.
Don’t doubt you for a moment, Elvish, old sot, but might you point that out? Missed that, I did.
It’s a restating of Fitzgerald’s news conference by a third party, but here it is:
I gotta give Blaggy his props for fighting to the death.
I can’t do it. He’s caught dead to rights and all he’s doing is wasting time and money–our time and our money, we citizens of Illinois–putting up a farcical defense that consists entirely of trying to have the tapes where he is clearly asking for more than “appreciation” for a United States Senate seat appointment. He’s using the Bush defense. Obfuscate and lawyer up. Unforgivable.
Had he resigned I would have been able to give him the smallest modicum of respect. Now, I hope he gets the harshest sentence possible plus three years. We oughta get some measure of revenge for the complete boondoggle this follicle-challenged fuckwit has put us through!
The Nicarico case was–and still is–a mess, but at that point Cruz had been convicted twice and Brian Dugan, who probably was the murderer, wasn’t talking. Burris said, “It’s not for me to place my judgment over a jury, regardless of what I think. A jury has found this individual guilty and given him the death penalty. It is my role to see to it that it is upheld. That’s my job.”
The real monsters were the prosecutors, including Jim Ryan, who was elected Burris’ successor as Illinois Attorney General on the strength of his prosecutions. And after Cruz was finally acquitted and seven people were tried, but acquitted, for framing him, Ryan’s name was tarnished enough that he lost in his bid to become governor to…Rod Blagojevich.
Quick background: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2005/11/backgrounder_th.html