Pay-Rod

Well I already discussed Roland Burris, and so this might seem a bit backwards discussing Governor Rod Blagojevich now, but here it goes anyway. In case you haven't gotten most of the background information about the circumstances, Governor Blagojevich is accused of attempting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. It looks like it should be a rather open and shut case. The FBI has been investigating Pay-Rod for quite some time and has many audio recordings concerning his dealings. Frankly, the guy doesn't seem like a particularly good guy in general and kind of a jerk. Immediately after he was charged, many called for him to step down and resign as governor. Of course he emphatically refused to give up the fight and insisted he would continue forward as the governor. One of the big issues as well was the potential of Barack Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, having conversations with the governor about the Senate seat, which of course turned out to be rather innocuous. Impeachment talks began shortly thereafter but certainly took a decent while to come to fruition. Before any real action was taken against Blago, he appointed Roland Burris to Barack Obama's Senate seat. Shortly thereafter he was finally impeached by a landslide 114-1. Currently he is still awaiting trial both in front of the Senate and the federal courts.

So I would typically say this is a rather quick open and shut case, but there are a lot of things that seem a bit fishy here. First of all, the Federal Prosecutor seemed to leave the state legislature in the dark concerning a lot of the proceedings. He didn't seem to give them much in the way of assistance in helping them to get the man out of office. I guess there was some talk about him being concerned he might hurt his own case, which is logical, but it seems like if he's really done something so wrong, that shouldn't be too big of an issue. We'll see. Also, the legislature sure took their time to get up the gumption to finally impeach the guy. I mean they let him beat them to the punch by appointing somebody before they could do anything. According to Burris' representatives, Blago and Burris really have no relationship, so this only makes Pay-Rod look innocent. Brilliant move by him to attempt to save his hide. Finally, this guy seems really confident that he will be exonerated. Most individuals that seem to get caught up in something like this resign. Maybe he's insane, I definitely have read some things stating that he is a different guy to say the least. Then again, maybe he knows something we don't all know. Maybe he has that ace up his sleeve. Maybe his lawyers have done their homework and have found some sort of loophole or maybe he never really committed a crime. You would expect the Federal Prosecutor and the FBI to be on the right track as far as their actions, but you never really know. As I stated earlier, I would expect this guy to go to prison for what he did under normal circumstances, but the oddity it seems to be playing out with is incredible. I guess we'll find out pretty soon what really is going on.

(Picture from Getty Images)