This is the week we are promised to get a gander at the internal
investigation President-elect Barack Obama did on his own staff and their
interaction with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D-Dead Meat.
Obama said he had "no contact" with the disgraced governor who was
caught on a federal wiretap trying to sell Obama’s former Senate seat to
the highest bidder.
Of course, that is a political fib. Obama did have contact with the
governor if not personally certainly at least 21 times through his chief of
staff Rahm Emanuel who was allegedly caught on the tapes pressing for the
governor to appoint an Obama friend.
UPDATE: Democrat friendly East Coast media reports sources that say the Obama’s internal investigation will show that Rahm was taped "only once" talking with Gov. Dead Meat. But he was caught on tape a number of other times with the governor’s chief of staff. A distinction without a difference, but it will be used by some to try to obfuscate the connection with Obama and his men.
But let’s get expectations set correctly. The release of Obama’s
"investigation" is not the end of the matter. It’s the beginning. If the
national media will get off its collective arse (as I suspect they will)
and start digging into this story, I suspect they will find too many crooks
in common between Blagojevich, Emanuel and Obama.
When that happens we’ll be having a long national discussion on
whether Emanuel should be cut from the team to protect further implications
of the boss. And that’s the "lucky" scenario for Obama.
In the meanwhile, the AP story below is a nice recap of where the
"Pay-for-Play" scandal stands. You can read it here.
The last graph pretty much sums up the end game: "We’re not going to
end corruption in Illinois by arrests and indictments alone," U.S. Attorney
Patrick Fitzgerald said. "What’s going to make the difference is when
people who are approached to ‘pay to play’ first say no, and, second,
report it."
Do you think Obama and his men met that "high" standard?
