So he got a little careless.

I think he is guilty and is appropriately punished.

As far as the headline, “Blagojevich's Senate Selection Process Investigated” is a classic! I love it… it's so understated. Perhaps those Tribune people learned to be careful when writing unkind truths about the good Governor Blagojevich.

Hee, hee — the governor said it himself, that he needed to help himself and his family financially.

[Readers, note that the entire document below is worth reading, but to go to the most explicit seat-selling material, go to the bottom and go back up a few pages.]

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/acrobat/200…

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“Does Governor Blagojevich just come from a background of Chicago politics so steeped in corruption that he’s actually arrogant enough to think he could casually get away with that?”

Yes. You're in New York, Jazz, that has as bad or a worse reputation (for dysfunctionality more than for corruption), when it comes to misuse of office by the politically ambitious (Spitzer and now Cuomo who is aping Spitzer). It's another notorious Blue Nation situation. And there's a Senate seat becoming available there, too!

“… close ties between Obama and the Governor … Does Rod think he’s got some leverage there in some fashion?”

There are ties, and they're disturbingly close*, but readers can see for themselves in the statements Blagojevich is reputed to have made that the governor exhibits a psychological and a political distance between him and his people and Obama and Obama's people, at the same time, and expresses concern about conflicts between him and “them” when it comes to selecting who will get the Senate seat.

Note also that the governor is involved in other things besides the Senate-seat-sale activity, though they are related. (His shakedown of the Tribune is related to helping him avoid impeachment, while at the same time, the Senate seat is seen by the governor as a legal sanctuary to which to flee in order to escape impeachment.)

Finally, it was probably best for this to have happened now rather than later, meaning now, before the seat was about to be awarded, or taken by the governor, so the new President Obama would not have been tainted by this. Obama remains clean at this time. In fact, because Obama no doubt knew of at least some things, it wouldn't surprise me if Obama or his people tipped off the feds, and if in fact this wasn't among the things Obama discussed in his initial private meeting with President Bush. Not only the details but the timing of when action should be taken, to forestall any taint of the Senate seat and leaving it in Obama's hands or at least out of the governor's, in the worst case (come to pass), as we now are observing.

* Which is another reason why I advocated elsewhere that dinosaur UAW head Gettelfinger be chosen as someone relevent by Obama to be the next person to fill the dinosaur Secretary of Labor position at the dinosaur Department of Labor, rather than have someone from ACORN, someone else with a similarly repellent activist background at Change to Win, or someone else at SEIU, and even to some extent anyone who's activist as AFSCME, to run the Department of Labor, because Change to Win is one grimy union-related activist group associated with the governor's corruption.