Rod Blagojevich

“We are hoping and praying that they will not be able to deny what the Lord has ordained,” Roland Burris said before his fateful trip to Washington. Now that Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear ready to join God in backing Burris’s appointment by Illinois Gov. Rod “Nothing but Blue Sky” Blagojevich to join their ranks, [...]

What fate might Al Franken have faced today had he tried to take his seat in the U.S. Senate today? Although unlikely, he could’ve ended up where Roland Burris did: shut out and in the rain. The senator appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill the seat vacated by the election of President-elect Barack [...]

In the first week of the 111th Congress, Democrats already have themselves in a pickle. Party leaders hoping to block the appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate are pointing to the same legal technicality that Republicans hope to use to keep Al Franken from taking a seat of his own.

Roland Burris, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, should follow the example of former U.S. Sen. Dean Barkley of Minnesota by agreeing to serve only an abbreviated tenure. That’s the suggestion of The Nation magazine’s State of Change blog, which cites nascent impeachment efforts against the governor in [...]

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is a guy it’s better not to have known — even if for only one flash-lit moment. Blago-smears have stained President-elect Barack Obama, U.S. Reps. Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Rahm Emanuel, and even our own U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, in a case (so far) of guilt by free-association. Now a 1980 photo of [...]

Minnesota Independent reporter Chris Steller discussed two of his recent stories on two radio programs yesterday. On Air America’s “Doing Time with Ron Kuby,” he discussed what he calls the “funnel of love” — schemes to fund elected officials via their wives’ jobs. He cited the Rod Blagojevich scandal as well as similar alleged plans involving Sen. Norm Coleman and Tom DeLay. On WORT, Madison, Wisconsin’s community radio station, he offered an on-the-ground perspective on the final days of the Minnesota Senate recount.

Listen to the WORT segment here and download the Ron Kuby show here.

The Republican Party is looking to spoil Barack Obama’s transition honeymoon by tying him to disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his comically brazen attempt to sell off the president-elect’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. This weekend the Republican National Committee released a web video raising questions about Obama’s connections to the disgraced [...]

Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn is calling for the resignation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a man with whom he shared a ticket but apparently little else except antipathy. According to Quinn, the two men haven’t spoken since Aug. 2, 2007. That was the day after the I-35W bridge fell in Minneapolis, an event that did not trigger estrangement between Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, who was then also Transportation Commissioner. But the distant relationship between Blagojevich and his second-in-command does have at least one parallel in Minnesota, from the time of the last great statewide election recount in 1962.

Despite the Blagojevich feeding frenzy, Illinois is NOT the most corrupt state in the union, at least according to a USA Today story that puts our neighbor to the west at the top of the crookedest states list. “On a per-capita basis,” the paper writes, “Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions [...]

Forget Gov. Rod Blagovejich’s “supercilious attitude towards government ethics, we’re more concerned with his super silly cilium (he was trying to line his coffers when he shoulda been lining up a new coiffure!).” That’s how pop culture site Complex.com kicks off its (hopefully annual) list of “worst haircuts in politics.“ Blago’s ‘do has been widely [...]