We won't meet you in the middle, you won't meet us in the air, we don't love you just a little, not enough to show we care.
The Illinois Senate voted to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office Thursday, marking the first time in the state's long history of political corruption that a chief executive has been impeached and convicted.
The 59-0 vote followed several hours of public deliberation in which senator after senator stood up to blast Blagojevich, whose tenure lasted six years. And it came after a four-day impeachment trial on allegations that Blagojevich abused his power and sold his office for personal and political benefit.
The conviction on a sweeping article of impeachment means the governor was immediately removed from office. The Senate also unanimously voted to impose the "political death penalty" on Blagojevich, banning him from ever again holding office in Illinois.
Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn, Blagojevich's two-time running mate, has become the state's 41st governor....
[...] Alternately praising and upbraiding those who will decide his political fate, Blagojevich urged the senators not to remove him from office, saying he has "done absolutely nothing wrong" and "never, ever intended to violate the law."
"There hasn't been a single piece of information that proves any wrongdoing," Blagojevich said to senators who were mostly stoic. "How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?" [...]
Well, yes, that would be the $5 billion question, now wouldn't it? The answer, of course, would be that impeachment only requires the procedure and the verdict; it does not in fact require actual evidence of guilt.
I confess, I am rather baffled as to how his plan to import low cost drugs from Canada could possibly have been used against him in this trial. It was a plan, and it got shot down by the federal government. I'm also rather confused as to what the bird flu vaccine had to do with anything. Money gets misspent in government all the time; if we impeached everyone responsible, there'd be nobody left. (Say, there's an idea...) The federal allegations were used against him, despite the fact that the federal government refused to allow the Assembly access to most of the evidence and witnesses in that case, so that there was no proof, only more allegations. I do think it was overall a rather shameful misuse of the process ... but also probably a necessary misuse.
The plain fact is that the state could no longer function with him in office. The federal allegations were such that nobody could trust that he was doing things for the right reasons, or that he wasn't somehow benefiting in unseemly ways. And I daresay that it's true that Mr. Quinn will mind his conduct very closely -- I don't imagine that the feds will be removing all their wiretap equipment any time soon, for one thing. (Yes, they're supposed to -- in fact, they were supposed to have done it after the arrest, if they follow normal procedure. To which I say: HA. And even if they did follow procedure, which I rather doubt, they might decide that it was in everyone's best interest to let them think that they hadn't.) (Hey, the original subtitle of this joint was "your daily dose of corrosive cynicism" for a reason, you know!)
It's going to be interesting to see how this all turns out for him. I still think that ultimately, he's going to be forced to make a deal to keep them from going after his wife. It does sound like they've at least got enough to make the attempt, if not get a conviction, and the possibility that his children will be left with both of their parents facing prosecution and possible jail may be enough to make him finally submit.
Posted by iain at January 29, 2009 06:30 PM
