Some very good news from Fifth-Illinois, where the slaters could not agree on a new Rahm Emanuel.

That mea[n]s the March 3 primary will be an open one with no party endorsed candidate. State Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago) came closest, but could not quite reach the 50 percent (plus one) benchmark.

What, no Fritchey?  Will his zoning business suffer, he “who handles City Hall zoning cases for private clients [and] has been a state legislator since 1996”?

The insiders, convened by State Sen. James DeLeo (D-Chicago) — “D-Howya doin’?” says John Kass — did not go along, they being city-suburban, including citizens from

much of the North Side of City of Chicago from Lake Michigan into the western suburbs [including] Schiller Park, Franklin Park, River Grove, Elmwood Park, Northlake, and Melrose Park.^[3] Wrigley Field is located in this district, along with the Chicago neighborhoods of Lakeview, Uptown, and Lincoln Park.

It’s always nice to see disagreement among people whose nearest thing to a standard-bearer is a guy who does govt.-related business on the side while representing us in elective office.

“We dilute the strength of the party,” urged Ald. Patrick O’Connor, of the 40th ward, when “we” fail to slate someone. 

Is that so bad in these scandalous times?

 

Trouble ahead, predicts Dick Morris:

Obama has given power to men and women who really don’t believe terrorism is much of a problem. They implicitly share the European view that an attack here or there is not worth turning what they regard as constitutional guarantees on their heads. The result is that we will be vastly more vulnerable and have a good chance of being hit again soon.

If nothing else, this indirectly highlights Bushies’ success in protecting us, which isn’t much discussed in these days of joy and happiness at the coming of The One.

Will we learn from or repeat history?

The hero of Waterloo was the Duke of Wellington, but the hero of the peace that followed was a Whig member of Parliament, Henry Brougham, who led the charge in 1815 for abolition of the income tax. Don’t do it, said the conventionally wise; we have a 915-million-pound debt to pay off.

But Brougham (say “Broom”) and his allies did it anyway. Business got its stimulus, and the tax revenues poured in, reducing the debt considerably and starting a 60-year bull market for the empire. It’s “the way the world works,” as in the title of Jude Wanniski’s 1978 book. (Berwyn library has it, FYI.)

You don’t always generate more tax revenues with higher tax rates. If you think you do, Wanniski has an extended economic and historical argument to help you get over it, including chapter and verse on this British case.

There’s more on the low-tax-high-prosperity theme at my column for the month at Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest

Taking our mind off Blago:

A federal grand jury is investigating how a company that advised Jefferson County, Alabama, on bond deals that threaten to cause the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, did similar work in New Mexico after making contributions to Governor Bill Richardson’s political action committees.

How about Bill R. for Commerce?

Former Justice Dept. official Victoria Toensing lays into Prosecutor Fitzgerald for editorializing about his and the FBI’s findings in l’affair Blagojevich.

In the Dec. 9 press conference regarding the federal corruption charges against Gov. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, Mr. Fitzgerald violated the ethical requirement of the Justice Department guidelines that prior to trial a “prosecutor shall refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a serious and imminent threat of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

His “political corruption crime spree” and other vivid depictions of Blago’s behavior took him over the line in violation of his duty  to “inform the public of the nature and extent” of charges without “ to “inform the public of the nature and extent” without “making extrajudicial comments that pose a serious and imminent threat of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

She recalls similar Fitzgerald violations in the Scotter Libby announcement in October, 2005, when he likened himself to an umpire who “gets sand thrown in his eyes” by obstruction of justice — acting as if he did not already know who had leaked the Valerie Plame name.  (He did, from the start of his investigation.)

Blago engaged in “base, sordid conduct,” she said.  “But those thoughts and words are for the rest of us to express before the trial. It is unethical for those who are government prosecutors to do so.”

In other words, he was a reporter in this case, not a columnist or editorial writer.

U Wis-Madison law prof Ann Althouse takes Illinois Atty. Genl Lisa’s argument to remove Blagojevich from office apart piece by piece, in the process dismantling Madigan as someone to be taken seriously in this latest Illinois tragi-comedy of errors.

Madigan is relying on Article V, Section 6 of the Illinois constitution: “If the Governor is unable to serve because of death, conviction on impeachment, failure to qualify, resignation or other disability, the office of Governor shall be filled by the officer next in line of succession for the remainder of the term or until the disability is removed.” So she needs to argue that Blagojevich is disabled within the meaning of that text.

Asked by an Illinois Supreme Court justice if this article “was meant for a political or legal crisis like this or simply for some kind of, you know, medical or emotional issue,” she says “we,” she and her office, presumably,

would look to the fact that the term disability legally is very broad, that it is not simply isolated to a physical or mental disability. And you can read all about that in our pleadings.

“Yes,” said the questioner, letting it go at that.

Would removing the governor for this reason “set a dangerous precedent,” she was asked, but did not understand the question.

Q. Are there enough protections in place to stop someone from doing what you’re doing in the future?

Q For political ends.

Q From abusing the —

. . . Q (Off mike) — abusing the AG authority.

“One of the protections,” she answered, finally getting it, is that the state supreme court “has total discretion” in the matter and “serves as a check on the executive branch in the circumstance.”

To which Althouse:

So the safeguard against the AG’s abuse of power is that the court will have the role of deciding? How can it be the court‘s role to make the final call about things that belong in the realm of impeachment? Why do constitutions put impeachment trials in legislatures? Because courts are ill-suited to such decision-making.

Althouse was just getting warmed up.  The rest is here.  Vanderbilt U. law prof Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) calls it “embarrassing,” says, “Illinois state government is looking like one big clown show.”

And Ms. Madigan is looking like a hack  She’s been the strong, silent type in Chi newspapers, etc., with nothing to say, apparently.

 Later:

The court is on to her, to judge from this exchange:

At the end of the oral argument, the court flat-out confronts Madigan about her own political ambitions and conflict of interest:

Q I know you say that you haven’t been thinking about politics at all, but there have obviously been a lot of questions about politics, and there wouldn’t be questions about politics unless your political future was considered very bright and in play here. Given the fact of your possible interest in being governor, given the fact that you’ve been mentioned as a possible Senate replacement for Barack Obama, was any consideration given to your removing yourself from this issue because of a possible perception, if not reality, of conflict of interest?

MS. MADIGAN: No. And let me make two further statements. One is I never expressed any interest in even being considered for the U.S. Senate vacancy. I never contacted or talked to any — the governor or anybody in the governor’s office about that.

In addition, I am supporting putting the lieutenant governor in to serve as at governor of the state of Illinois. I think that is in the best interests of the people of this state. And I am happy to serve as the attorney general of this state. And I will continue in that role to do what is best for the people of this state.

Well, the answer is meaningless. The question says it all [comments Althouse].

I’d say so.

Jesse J Jr. denies making a $500G or more offer to Blago.  He’s innocent until he’s guilty, same as Blago, as Prosecutor Fitz said of the latter several times in his news conference yesterday. 

Also on the tape are the two or more conversations with an SEIU official about Blago’s getting the $300G/year SEIU-related Change to Win job.  Note that neither of these called 9-1-1 to report these calls, reeking of illegality as they were.  Twice or more the SEIU naif conversed.  Blago may be dumb and brazen, but what of those who did not hang up on him or his guy who did the calling?  They are so used to these things, it’s no big deal, apparently.

Chi SEIU local 1 president Tom Balanoff also got a

6 a.m. Tuesday visit from his local FBI, but was out of town for a union meeting.  The focus of SEIU discussions was Candidate #1, says the Fitzgerald Complaint (not yet an indictment).  That would be thisclose Obama advisor and confidante Valerie Jarrett, per WSJ, “Graft Case Touches Jackson Jr.: Democrat Denies Seeking Senate Seat From Blagojevich; Service Union Is Scrutinized”.

The Obama team used SEIU to keep Blago “at arm’s length,” Republican National Committee alleges. Which puts SEIU in a surrogate role here, seeing what it could see about getting Valerie the senate seat.  Who has a half million for this, or a million, more readily available than O. and his team?  

Tom Balanoff is brother of the far lesser known James Balanoff, his brother, a (losing) 2007 Oak Park village board candidate.

Meanwhile, Chi Trib’s Sam Zell told a CNBC interviewer he is not “personally familiar” with Blago pressuring the Trib about staffers whom Blago wanted fired. (“Personally”? In what way was he familiar?) Z. couldn’t say if staffers were pressured. He was not asked about his role in the sordid episode.

Both Triple-J, as WLS-AM’s Roe Conn calls Jesse Jr, and SEIU are very close to Obama, by the way. SEIU outgave all other non-party givers to his campaign this year, coughing up $29.2 million in checked-off dues money. Balanoff and Obama go back 15 years, says Balanoff.

We have learned by now to take what Big O. says with our ever-handy grain of salt.  Here’s an item about his supposed small-donor explosion:

The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study says that 26 percent of donors to Obama’s presidential campaign gave $200 or less, the definition of a small donation. That’s compared to 25 percent for President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.

I blame the tingle-in-leg mediums for their habits of ballyhoo.

It looks like the Big O. fooled us with his claim of being an infrequent attender at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads vs. U.S. and all things middle class:

President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 – while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat – that he attended services at Trinity United Church of Christ every week.
 
This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright’s comments.

Sun-Times religion writer, now columnist posted the full interview at Belief.net, where she explains:

At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter (I am now its religion columnist) at the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee joint at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to interview him exclusively about his spirituality. Our conversation took place a few days after he’d clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. He answered everything I asked without notes or hesitation. The profile of Obama that grew from the interview at Cafe Baci became the first in a series in the Sun-Times called “The God Factor,” that eventually became my first book, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (FSG, March 2006.) Because of the staggering interest in now President-Elect Obama’s faith and spiritual predilections, I thought it might be helpful to share that interivew, uncut and in its entirety, here.
–Cathleen Falsani

In the course of the interview, Falsani asked if he still attended Trinity Church.

OBAMA:
Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service.

Ever been there? Good service.

I actually wrote a book called Dreams from My Father, it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.

Which church he had to abandon, as we know.

Emanuel is a bad choice for White House chief of staff, being “neither idealist nor dreamer,” which would disqualify him, but carrying

inside him all the qualifications to be a real screw-up-because he is known for applying an iron fist…flying into rages…throwing around the “f” word four times in every sentence…in being vindictive and argumentative and not to suffer fools gladly.

So argues Tom Roeser.

Furthermore, as White House political director, “he offended enough people — in particular Hillary Clinton — that he was demoted and almost fired,” says Time Mag.

This latter is hardly a damning criticism, but from Obama’s point of view it could be.