Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


BLAGO UPDATE….Thanks partly to this being a slow news day and partly to the sheer juiciness of the whole thing, the blogosphere is ablaze with chatter about the arrest of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges. Main theme: the guy has been under investigation for three years by the same prosecutor who convicted both Scooter Libby and the previous governor of Illinois, but he was merrily blathering away to friends anyway about selling off Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder? What kind of fucking moron is this guy?

Other, slightly more substantive comments from around the ‘sphere:

  • Who are the six possible candidates for Obama’s senate seat mentioned in the idictment? Adam Serwer tries to track them down.

  • It wasn’t just senate seats in play! Blago also told the Tribune Company that he wouldn’t approve any state financial assistance for their effort to sell the Chicago Cubs unless they fired some editorial board members who had been critical of him. Apparently Blagojevich told the Tribune Company’s representative, “our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get ’em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support.”

  • Is Barack Obama implicated in any of this? At a press conference today, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said no: “I should be clear that the complaint makes no allegations whatsoever about the president-elect or his conduct.” What’s more, the indictment quotes Blagojevich telling a friend that he wasn’t willing to appoint Obama’s favored candidate to the Senate because “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.”

    Still, Time’s Michael Scherer thinks this is going to be a problem for Obama anyway: “The President of the United States has a higher burden than just about any elected official anywhere. His staff will be called on by the press to account for all their conversations with Blagojevich and his aides. Obama will have to explain what he knew about these discussions.” Etc. My guess is different: I think Obama will be so open about this, and so obviously uninvolved, that it won’t cause him any pain whatsoever. It’s an Illinois story, not an Obama story.

  • My colleage Jonathan Stein runs down the corruption record of Illinois governors since 1973. It’s not pretty.

  • Bizarrely enough, despite his 4% approval rating and ongoing corruption investigation, Blago seriously considered appointing himself to Obama’s open senate seat because he thought it would a good launching pad for a 2016 presidential run. The mind reels.

Anyway, that’s your Blago roundup for the morning. More, much much more, to come later, I’m sure.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate