I can't believe I was stuck in a meeting right when the press conference was coming on. I'll have to find it somewhere tonight.

freakishly smart 12 yr old?

Unless he doesn't like fiction -- He still ought to love it. It is about ultrasmart kids who have to work and be smarter than everything around them

and most of the freakishly smart 12 yr olds I've met are very rarely emotionally beyond 12.

Besides , all the adults I know that have read it , love it. So why wouldn't a 12 yr old?

Any Freudians around want to try analyzing Blagojevich's frequent use of the word "fuck" and variants?

HIS response was to start having press conferences that the media and The (White) Man were out to get him.

Well... I do find it...troubling that of all the (mostly white) city government, the 2 that get federally indicted are a) black and b) vociferous advocates for their primarily minority constituencies.

I mean, that's weird, right? And then you've got Sal DiMasi (old school white guy Boston pol) is basically saying to anyone who even looks like they might ask him about his financing, FUCK YOU I'LL KILL YOU. And everyone's like... um, OK.

And then you've got Sal DiMasi (old school white guy Boston pol) is basically saying to anyone who even looks like they might ask him about his financing, FUCK YOU I'LL KILL YOU. And everyone's like... um, OK.

I've heard he's not safe yet. He may have the senate cowed, but I don't think that goes for the FBI, as Tom Finneran found out.

But corruption ain't anything new in Boston, where one of the most prominent former state reps was the brother of the #1 guy on the most-wanted list. Of course, the FBI wasn't a whole lot of help in that particular case.

Wow, never thought I'd be grateful for the whacko gun nuts...no, wait. Still not. But a bit closer than yesterday.

Unless he doesn't like fiction -- He still ought to love it.

Cool. I may get that and the sequel for him then.

The FBI had been investigating Blago for some time now. So why did they arrest him today?

"Governor Blagojevich has been arrested in the middle of what we can only describe as a political corruption crime spree," Fitzgerald said. "We acted to stop that crime spree."

Fitzgerald is a pretty blunt guy, but even by his standards, the news conference was harsh. "The conduct we have before us is appalling," the prosecutor said. "There's politics and there's crime, and sometimes when people get in trouble is when they start to blur those lines." He spelled out exactly why he was so disgusted by the allegations:

This required unusual measures and there are a lot of things going on that were imminent. There's a bill sitting on a desk that we think a person who was supporting that bill has been squeezed to give $100,000. And to let that bill be signed, to me, would be very, very troubling. There's a hospital -- a children's memorial hospital -- believing that it's getting $8 million, but its CEO has not coughed up a campaign contribution, and the thought that that money may get pulled back from a children's memorial hospital is something that you cannot abide. There is an editor that they'd like fired from the Tribune, and I laid awake at night, worried whether I'd read in the paper in the morning that when there were lay-offs, that we'd find out that that person was laid off.

The FBI's Grant was just as damning: "If [Illinois] isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor."

[link]

"a children's memorial hospital"

Gee, would that be Children's Memorial Hospital do you think? Pretty cagey there, Fitzpatrick.