Maybe he really is innocent.

bla-GYOY!-ovich is fun to say, a la John Stewart.

1: I hesitated to post for that very reason. I will cop to blagging, if that turns out to be true.

2: Especially if you cartoonishly widen your eyes on the second syllable.

The combination of that boyish haircut and the crazily close-set eyes is totally irresistible. We should impeach Obama and install Blago as emperor for life.

3: really? I was just pretending to be pursuaded by the evidence of him comparing himself ad nauseum to Gandhi and MLK.

6: I really do believe firmly in notion of innocence till proven guilty. But this guy's pouring gasoline on himself and running headlong into the house fire claiming to be water. It's fucking weird.

As a resident of Illinois, I just keep my eyes shut tight and repeat "Only one more year until the 2010 campaign. Only one more year...". I just really hope we get decent candidates for both the Senate seat and the Governorship.

Impeachment isn't a criminal trial, so teh same standards to not apply. Even if none of the allegations about his criminal misconduct are true, I really think that his ravings and his calls to have Tribune editors fired make him unfit for office.

so teh same standards to not apply.

I love it when people really do mistype "the" as "teh", since now it reads like an affectation.

He does seem to transcend easy categorization. My question to the Illinois/Chicagoans among us: To what degree did the Blagster keep the crazy bottled up prior to his chance to shine on the national stage? Should we suspect steroids or some other chemical aid (he's a bit like Nixon on unimaginably effective happy pills).

I think Blagos only hope is that people understand that politics is all about trading favors. Outright bribery is illegal, but back scratching is not. His problem is that the impeachment is from fellow pols, who will deny that such favor swapping happens at all.

There's something vaguely rodent like about his upper lip.

Also, what TLL said. None of the recordings released so far have unambiguous evidence of anything more than playing political hardball.

7
I really do believe firmly in the importance of the notion of innocence till proven guilty while in a court of law. As for actually believing it as a matter of what has or hasn't happened, though, sometimes it's simply stupid.

14: Formatting screwed up, but I was trying to edit and add to that sentence from 7. Oh well.

The tapes NPR was playing yesterday weren't unambiguously criminal. One of them was between Blago and his brother, talking about whether they should call and pressure a campaign donor to give---purportedly in direct exchange for legislation, but boy, it was actually kind of muzzy. I love the megalomania he's exhibiting these days, though; as BG says, arguably impeachable in itself.

In general, I'm in favor of lowering the bar for impeachment, so I'd say go for it.

He is totally Gaius Baltar.

Question: would his hair not have been ridiculous in the 80's? I was just watching Remington Steele and saw some cranial resemblance in Pierce Brosnan.

That which we are, we are.

I really hate it when people apply the standards of a criminal trial to everyday life. I remember the day when the FBI filed their criminal complaint, and there was some guy who thought that we shouldn't have an opinion about the issue until the trial was done or something. Really? I'm not allowed to come to a conclusion based on what seems to me to be good evidence?

Similarly, no matter what his criminal activities, the guy has been a rolling disaster as a governor, especially in his second term. Nothing he does makes any sense! His approval ratings were long worse than Bush's -- by that I mean Bush's Illinois approval ratings. What answer is there other than impeachment for that situation?

20: You make an interesting case, but I don't think you proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

21: You make an interesting case, but I don't think you proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Well is that against the law? Huh?

Well is that against the law? Huh?

Objection! Leading the witness!

Nice Stanley, apart from the fact that blagging already has a meaning.

How about "goying," then?

Wouldn't that be the act of really unsuccessful haggling?

He is totally Gaius Baltar.

Oh dear lord.

Wouldn't that be the act of really unsuccessful haggling?

Isn't that more or less what Blago's been doing?

Dicklusional?

blagging -- in the uk -- means spinning a line of bullshit to obtain that to which you are not entitled... but it does also pretty much imply that you succeed in obtaining it

HOWEVER the related phrase "on the blag" -- as in "ignore him, he's just on the blag" -- means trying it on without success so far

30: So I was right by accident. Um, sort of.