BREAKING: Blagojevich Convicted
Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois, has been convicted of several counts in his corruption and bribery trial in Chicago.
UPDATE: Blagojevich was found guilty on 17 counts, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
UPDATE II: The Chicago Tribune reports:
Blogojevich showed no reaction as the jury found him guilty on 17 of 20 counts against him. . . .
Blagojevich was arrested in December 2008, after the FBI had wiretapped hundreds of his telephone calls at work and home. The Illinois Legislature impeached him a month later.
UPDATE III: Chris Bury of ABC News reports:
For seven days, Blagojevich took the stand in an attempt to counter hundreds of FBI wiretaps that, prosecutors argued, demonstrated his maneuvering to peddle the vacated Senate seat of the newly elected Barack Obama. In perhaps the most infamous recording, the then governor is heard saying, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f—— golden. And I, I’m just not giving it up for f—— nothing.”
Other wiretaps recorded Blagojevich musing aloud about possible senior jobs in the new administration he might get should he appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett. “How about Health and Human Services, can I get that?” “How about U.N. Ambassador?”
Jurors also heard recordings that, prosecutors said, showed Blagojevich scheming to sell the Senate Seat to allies of U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. in exchange for more than $1 million in campaign contributions. Jackson has insisted he had no knowledge of any “unauthorized” efforts on his behalf.
UPDATE IV: Linked at The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and there’s now a Memeorandum thread.
‘Marriage’ Is A Complete Concept
by Smitty
Prefixing ‘marriage’ in any way adds no meaning to its proper, timeless understanding. Frank J cogently argues “The Arguements For Gay Marriage Are Incoherent“.
Given that one finds the behavior of others is often incoherent, I like his point #2:
Given that marriage is a religious institution that the government participates in, there are two — and only two — logical responses.
1. Recognize it’s special place as religious institution fundamental to society and thus preserve it — perhaps even adding an amendment to the Constitution.2. Have it removed from government entirely because of the separation of church and state and simply allow the government to recognize legal contracts between two or more adults, allowing them to put whatever ceremony on it they want.
The libertarian approach is really the most economical. To paraphrase the King of Swamp Castle, “Let’s not sit here bickering and arguing over ‘oo married ‘oo.”
I know perfectly well what ‘marriage’ means. Judge the tree by the fruit. Plant the orchard of idiocy, say I; fools will rationalize away the results, and self-identify.
Florida: Adam Hasner for Senate
In next year’s GOP primary to take on vulnerable Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, conservatives are rallying behind Adam Hasner as the best hope of avoiding the RINO George Lemieux, who has described himself as a “Charlie Crist Republican“:
With several contenders for the Republican nomination, it’s important to unite conservatives behind one candidate to prevent Lemieux from winning. Hasner is a former state legislator who supported Marco Rubio against Crist in the 2010 campaign, and he has the endorsement of Erick Erickson of Red State, Ohio’s Ken Blackwell and talk-radio host Mark Levin. As a sitting senator, Rubio isn’t going to endorse a candidate in the primary, but many of his grassroots supporters are on Team Hasner, including our Florida blog-buddy Sarah Rumpf.
The Semi-Smear
“If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.”
— Jeremy W. Peters, “The Right’s Blogger Provocateur,” New York Times
No need to guess which view of Andrew Breitbart the New York Times endorses. Peters managed to work “jowly” and “husky” into his description of Breitbart, but the key to the presentation is how he depicts Breitbart as (a) a media whore, and (b) a controversial ideologue. “Part performance artist, part polemicist, Mr. Breitbart, 42, has used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat.”
Perhaps someone can do a Lexis-Nexis search and tell me if the New York Times ever described David Brock’s Media Matters, Ariana Huffington’s Huffington Post or Markos Moulitsas’s Daily Kos in similar terms.
It’s fascinating to see how these reporters feel the need to provide little cues to tell their readers what to think.
VIDEO: Greek Meltdown?
Here are a couple of video reports from EuroNews about this week’s big economic question: Can Greece deal with its debt crisis or will default trigger a global economic meltdown?
At the Hot Air Green Room:
The good news, such as it is: French banks have reportedly agreed to a plan to roll over Greek debt. However, Germany’s finance minister doesn’t sound optimistic: “We are doing everything we can to prevent a perilous escalation for Europe but must at the same time be prepared for the worst,” Wolfgang Schaeuble said, invoking the specter of 2008, when “the world was able to take coordinated action against a global and unpredictable financial market crisis.”
Recall that the 2008 meltdown led to the Dow Jones Industrial Average — which had been above 12,000 in June 2008 — falling below 7,000 by March 2009. If Europe dodges the Greek bullet this week, stocks should gain, but the threat of civil unrest in Greece is sufficiently serious that there have been rumors of a military coup.
Katie Benner of Fortune magazine says Greece won’t default:
Of course, if Greece does default, it will do so “unexpectedly.”
Cato’s Dan Mitchell points out that U.S. taxpayers are helping fund the Greek bailout through the International Monetary Fund, and offers these interesting facts:
- Greece’s GDP is roughly equal to the GDP of Maryland.
- Greece’s population is roughly equal to the population of Ohio.
- Despite that small size, in both terms of population and economic output, Greece already has received a bailout of about $150 billion
UPDATE: How bad could it be? Pretty doggone bad:
Contagion of Greece’s debt problems to the rest of Europe could be worse than the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann said on Monday. . . .
“If it is Greece alone, that’s already big. But if other countries are drawn in through contagion, it could be bigger than Lehman,” he said at a Reuters banking conference on Monday.
‘Revenue Raises’? ‘Closing Loopholes’? Democrat Want to RAISE TAXES!
“The fact of the matter is, we have on the table all kinds of revenue raises that they keep calling tax increases. How do you call closing loopholes to oil companies that are making billions of dollars in profits, closing up these loopholes that would generate $40 to $50 billion in revenue, how do you call that a tax hike? That is no tax hike. You only hike taxes when you raise rates. We are not asking anybody to raise anybody’s rates. We want us to have an effective tax collection and close these loopholes, stop giving billions of dollars in breaks to millionaires and billionaires.”
— Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat
When I heard this Sunday morning on “This Week,” I was amazed. Under no circumstance will any Democrat ever agree to any meaningful cut to any federal spending program. And so their only answer to budget issues is always: Raise taxes.
Yet they are now trying to finesse the rhetoric, so that tax increases aren’t really tax increases. No, it’s “revenue raises” and “closing loopholes” — as if Americans are too stupid to understand that, call it what you will, Democrats are still the party of tax-and-spend.
PREVIOUSLY:
‘Brady Bunch’ Mom Florence Henderson’s Wholesome Image Will Never Be the Same
Florence Henderson, the actress who played perky mom Carol Brady in the beloved family sitcom, says she once got crabs after a one-night-stand with career politician John Lindsay, who was the mayor of New York City at the time.
Henderson, now 77, recounts in her upcoming memoir that she was cheating on her husband during the 1960s . . .
“I was lonely. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, what did I do? I did it,” she writes in “Life is Not a Stage,” set for publication in September.
Henderson went home later that night, and awoke to a grisly surprise the next day as she saw “little black things” crawling over her bed and body.
An urgent call to a doctor took care of the problem, known medically as pubic lice, and Lindsay sent her flowers and a note of apology.
“Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate but cross over all socioeconomic strata,” Henderson writes. . . .
Hat-tip: Instapundit.