The Impeachment

Among all of impeachment material in the Chicago Tribune is a piece by John Kass. The point of the article is that Rod Blagojevitch should now get his butt into the prosecutor’s office and start talking. But he went rather literary. Talking about the former governor taking a run:

Rod will run past the Biograph Theater, site of one of the great untrue myths of Chicago, which says that a woman in red pointed out bank robber John Dillinger to the FBI. It wasn't the woman in red. It was the Chicago Outfit that tipped them. At least that's the story the wise guys tell, and I believe them, the Outfit giving up a freelancer who had no protection, no organization, a freelancer like Dillinger bringing unnecessary heat.

There's a certain Chicago logic to it: When freelancers bring heat to organizations, they become problems. But problems can be solved.

The theory here is that all of the politicians are on the take and they threw Blagojevitch under the bus to save themselves. I can stipulate there must be some truth to that theory. Just how much is a mystery to me. 10%? 90%? I don’t know.

One thing the Defenders keep saying is that no one has proven that Blagojevitch is guilty of anything. And we are all innocent until proven guilty. They are ignoring the fact that an impeachment trial is not a criminal court. He was fired from a job. The Illinois Assembly didn’t deprive him of Life and Liberty. Just the pursuit of public office in the state of Illinois.

Even if he didn’t mean to imply that the vacant Senate seat was literally for sale. Even if he didn’t shake down a children’s hospital or demand that editorial staff be fired. (All of which I believe he did.) I. Don’t. Care.

He was ineffective on a good day. Positively toxic in the last year or so. Don’t get me started on the taxpayers’ private plane and the fact that he never moved downstate. Even without a federal indictment hanging over his head. His removal was in the best interest of the state of Illinois. And that’s what it’s all about, Charlie Brown.