Bedtime for Blago

Scott Hardie | June 28, 2011
So is this the part where Rod Blagojevich brags about how many jobs he has created in the criminal justice system? Today's conviction is long overdue, and would be reason for Illinois to breathe easier if there weren't countless other opportunists lying in wait. The Sun-Times, and more thoughtfully, the Tribune comment on what this means for Illinois.

Scott Hardie | June 28, 2011
Also -- and this is obscure, but Denise might like it -- when the teenagers do their homework in The Sims 2 and have a sudden "eureka" moment, their exclamation sounds like "Rod B. Manure!" That's my own personal nickname for Blagojevich in my head, that I don't say out loud because I don't want to have to explain it.

Steve West | June 29, 2011
"Your Honor, we find the defendant...incredibly guilty." The line from The Producers is eerily appropriate for Rod "Guilty x 17" Blago. One can only assume he'll request a guest shot on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.

Denise Sawicki | June 29, 2011
I've got to listen for that comment from my sims. Haven't been playing that recently - I temporarily switched to SimCity Societies, a game which is apparently terrible and way too easy before you download the patch but pretty good and difficult afterward. I think they speak the same language in that game but they don't do any homework...

Scott Hardie | February 19, 2020
Undoing the good accomplished by the conviction a decade ago, President Trump just commuted Rod Blagojevich's sentence. For me, this editorial hits the nail on the head about why it's so wrong and dangerous. The pardon has always been an undemocratic power granted to our leader for no reason beyond historical tradition (as far as I know), and we've tolerated it this long because we haven't seen it truly abused by someone corrupt. But in Trump's worldview, everyone is "corrupt," so there's no such thing as genuine corruption, and so there's no harm in letting people go unpunished for it, which is precisely how institutions fail and corruption spreads. I also found Trump's pardon of Joe Arpaio frightening, even more so because Arpaio's crime was contempt of court; he violated prisoners' Constitutional rights, and the court tried to force him to obey the law, and he refused, and Trump saw nothing wrong with that. This line of thinking is such a corrosive, damaging thing for democracy.