A man with a plan

In his recent and most-awesome-yet presser, Rod looks disturbingly like the cat who swallowed the canary. Now, I'll grant you, he might be nuts. He has been displaying a psychotic disregard in the face of his inevitable downfall.

But Rod might have a card he hasn't played yet. He certainly looks to me like someone who still has something in his back pocket. At first, I thought he would hold on to the Senate appointment and use that as bargaining chip. But with that gone, I wonder if he might be ready to take some people down with him. At this point, he must know where more than a few of the bodies are buried and what might happen were they unearthed. And given that he's showed no signs of taking the contrition route, Rod might be ready to dig a few of those bodies up.

When a thing speaks for itself

Roland Burris has a problem. And that problem is Roland Burris. Sure, he has another problem called Rod. But that problem pales in comparison. Because, apparently Roland Burris is one of a few people who would actually accept Rod's nomination, and the sort of blind ambition that reveals makes him an undesirable candidate for much more than dog catcher.

The Reader has documented Roland Burris's recent failures as a candidate for statewide office. That might explain his inexplicable eagerness here. But, from the man who built this, I guess nothing should come as a surprise.

Get used to it

Me being wrong, that is. Here are apparently the real reasons for why Rod's arrest went the way it did.

Hat tip to qwikzotik.

The Case Against the Case Against Blagojevich

Because the case for would be too much. But my usual contrarian mood forces me to say what there is to be said in the man’s favor.

First, the laughs seem more authentic than the disgust. Which is to say, does anybody think that this sort of political horse-trading is all that uncommon, especially in Chicago or Illinois today? I mean, the part about trying to get a straight-up bribe, that’s over the top. But trying to parlay current political power into future success or campaign contributions? That is the stock and trade of pay-to-play politics. And that’s not a system Rod (I won’t keep typing his last name, too fraught with peril) created, nor is he the only one perpetuating it. Nothing about rolling his high-profile head, without more, makes me believe this situation is going to improve.

Second, from the perspective of procedural justice, I’m not sure how comfortable I am with Fitzgerald’s presser yesterday. It made for great TV, but that’s the problem. I don’t know if Rod could have gotten a fair trial absent yesterday’s show, but I’m dead certain he can’t get one now.

Fitzgerald is nobody’s fool, and no stranger to high-profile prosecutions. And we are in a slow news cycle, where it doesn’t take much to rip the CNNs of the world from wall-to-wall coverage of who’s going to be named Car Czar. Fitzgerald had to know that those sound bites would play in a loop all day. They were red meat thrown into a pit of hungry, feral dogs. And the media storyline developed quickly: this guy is the craziest, most selfish, most corrupt politician the world has ever seen.

Now, maybe he is. But that should be decided in a court of law. And it never will, not fairly, not in the state of Illinois, probably not in any state in the union at this point.

I have a theory as to why Fitzgerald approached this the way he did. He seems to have believed that Rod was actually in the process of selling Barack Obama’s seat. I once heard a couple of police officers talk about how, if they received a reliable tip about some drugs in, say, the trunk of the car, they would go seize those drugs, even if they weren’t sure the search would hold up in court. Here, maybe Fitzgerald was more concerned about stopping Rod from tainting the Senate than convicting him. Perhaps he reasoned that, by going this far in announcing in the indictment, he all but ensured that Rod would not be able to choose the next senator.

Maybe that was the right choice. These are tough values to weigh. But I do think that Fitzgerald's presser seemed like a cross between a public stoning and a stand-up routine. And that’s probably not the best way to maintain the integrity of whatever legal process awaits our always well-coiffed governor.