I’d say the last decade or two of Balkan history has long since proved that while many Serbs may be seriously lacking in moderation, reasonableness or any sense of proportion in life, they sure ain’t short of chutzpah. Folks like Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic veritably oozed chutzpah ;).
So says this half-Serb, anyway :p.
Oh, believe me, there have been enough South Slavs in my life that I don’t doubt that Blagoevich has all sorts of tendencies, I thought they’d find a linguistically Slavic name for them rather than resorting to Yiddish. 
Are there any Illinois lawyers who can link or post the relevant Illinois Constitution/Statutes re: impeachment and conviction of a governor?
“The House of Representatives has the sole power to conduct legislative investigations to determine the existence of cause for impeachment and, by the vote of a majority of the members elected, to impeach Executive and Judicial officers. Impeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. If the Governor is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected. Judgment shall not extend beyond removal from office and disqualification to hold any public office of this State. An impeached officer, whether convicted or acquitted, shall be liable to prosecution, trial, judgment and punishment according to law.”
Illinois Constitution (1970), Art. IV, Sec. 14. There are no Illinois statutes that I could find pertaining to impeachment other than the one which created the panel now looking into the allegations against the Governor. I’ve read elsewhere that a Governor of Illinois has never been impeached before.
IANAIllinoisL.
What in the hell in Blago blathering about? Were the tapes faked? If not, then he is clearly soliciting a bribe for an open Senate seat appointment.
He gave a speech like he was Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Who is he trying to fool?
I don’t care if the tapes were illegally obtained (which I would LOVE to hear the argument for that). Maybe that would keep him out of jail, but there isn’t an “exclusion rule” for removal from the IL Governorship.
Actually, it’s not that clear. If there are no tapes of him actually trying to make a deal, then they don’t have solicitation. What they evidently have is Blago talking about what he’d LIKE to do, but it sounds like they may not have any tape of him actually trying to do it.
Ya want chutzpah? Get a load of this!
[Bolding mine] Wow, is that vague. Not even a mention of “high crimes and misdemeanors”. In the absence of a dead hooker or a live 10-year-old boy, Blago could fight an impeachment and conviction for decades.
Agreed.
Poor Blago, most of this is about reducing embarrasment for the Obama administration and the Democrat party as a whole. He’s caught in the middle.
Yeah, that’s what’s going on. Sure. Are you going to embarrass yourself like this for the next eight years?
Well I suppose it is possible that Blago’s Chief flunkee was scamming Blago. Maybe his claims of having made solicitations (and having revieved promises of firing people and of payments) on Blago’s behalf to the Trib and to Children’s Memorial Hospital were just stories he was making up to satisfy a boss. But that will be a hard sell to a jury, let alone to the rest of us.
It is true that if all they got is what is on the tape transcripts released so far then he has a small chance of beating it in court - he just desired to solicit a bribe, planned to solicit a bribe, but we do not have solid evidence here that such a desire and plan was in fact actualized. Of course if any witnesses confirm solcitation - say, the administrator at Children’s, or Rezko turn’s belly up (as it seems he will), or his flunkee rolls over for some leniency in sentencing, or so on - then the conviction is a slam dunk. Meanwhile there is plenty to impeach with, with just the incontrovertible evidence that such was his desire and his plan. He could perhaps fight impeachment if he had a network of loyal friends in the Illinois House and Senate. But he has very few friends. They almost all hate him and they all want to curry favor with the powers that are to come - be that Quinn, Lisa Madigan (they are all already brown-nosing Dad), or someone else. The public already hated him and now want him to disappear. The fact that he does not yet see that only stepping down can prevent his impeachment is yet more evidence of the seriousness of his delusional state.
Poor Blago.
And, of course, any friends he might have can already see the campaign ads linking them to Blago. They’d probably prefer a dead girl or live boy to being associated with helping Blago stay in office.
Fine. Like I said, that may help him beat the criminal rap. I really don’t care about that.
But if I was a member of the IL legislature, and I had a Governor talking about how he would like to get X amount of money from this candidate for the Senate seat, how he wants the other candidate to give his wife a cushy job, and how Obama only wants to give him appreciation, and “Fuck that!”, then that man is not fit to serve as Governor.
All I need to know is if there is any dispute that it was him on the tape. If it was, then I vote to impeach and convict.
What does Obama have to do with it?
What The…!!! has a long-standing, possibly pathological hard-on for the O-Man, dating at least back to the earliest primaries.
Yeah, barring some kind of incredible, paradigm shifting new information explanining the tapes. he’s still completely dead politcally and still eminently impeachable. He might be able to escape prison, though.
Because the constitutional language is vague – giving no indication at all of what constitutes “cause for impeachment” but leaving it to the legislature to make that determination in each specific case – Blago is toast. Burnt toast.
I think it’s cute.
Ooh, this is interesting . . . Blagojevich just pardoned 22 people. (Just to show he is still governor, I guess . . . nobody can fault him for this exercise of power . . . and maybe to plant the “pardon” meme in a few minds . . .
)