Deconstructing Blagobabble
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 12:55AM Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich has taken political theatre of the absurd to a weird but fascinating level - - he has become a caricature of himself.
So Blago now promises he will appear before the Illinois Senate today and give his own closing argument. I can hardly wait. This man has become a caricature of himself; no cartoonist can capture the essence of his weirdness as well as Blago himself. This should be good.
Gov. Blagojevich, apparently caught blue-handed trying to sell Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate, has embarked on a campaign of victimhood - - he is the victim, don't you see, of an insidious, indeed nefarious plot by the Illinois Democrats to raise taxes. Being a man of the people, Blago has stood in the way of these dastardly tax-raisers, and now he is paying the price. {ROFLMAO, of course}
Earlier this week Blago delivered some truly Freudian slip-uppage when he likened himself to an Old West horse thief facing hanging. As the apocryphal story goes, a posse had caught up with the thief, nabbing him in possession of some boosted horses, and was proceeding to string him up when the horse thief invoked his right to trial by jury. "Okay," says one of the posse, "here's what we do . . . we give him a fair trial, and then we hang him." Blago's point was that he wasn't even getting the fair trial accorded to the horse thief, apparently overlooking the irony that his fellow "victim" was guilty, fair trial or no.
According to Blagojevich, the Illinois Senate is denying him certain Constitutional rights, including the Sixth Amendment right to call for witnesses in his defense. As appealing as this may sound, Blago certainly knows that he has no such right in the Illinois Senate proceeding, and is playing to what he hopes is an ignorant public.
The rights guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution in the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments apply to proceedings in courts. The right to call for witnesses applies specifically to the defendant in a criminal trial. But the proceeding before the Illinois Senate is not a criminal trial, by any stretch of the imagination. Blago is confusing the process of impeachment with the process of indictment.
A bill of indictment is a formal charge of criminal misconduct. It is presented to a grand jury, which considers the supporting information and returns the document marked either "true bill" or "no true bill." If the indictment is found to be a true bill, then the defendant is arraigned and bound over for trial in criminal court, where he is subject to loss of life, liberty, and/or property, and thus entitled to due process and other Constitutional guarantees.
An article of impeachment is a formal charge of unfitness to hold public office. It may be based on criminal misconduct, but need not be; impeachments of Federal judges have been founded on such charges as intoxication on the bench, abuse of contempt of court powers, and favoritism in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers. The impeachment process is inherently political and is beyond the purview of the judiciary. In England, impeachments were brought in the House of Commons and tried in the House of Lords; by analogy, the drafters of the Constitution provided for impeachments to originate in the House of Representatives and to be tried in the Senate, and the Illinois process is similar. If an impeached public official is convicted, the sanction imposed is removal from office. No jail time, no fine; it is not a criminal proceeding.
To put it mildly, Blago is blowing smoke when he casts himself as the victim of a conspiracy to deprive him of his right to call witnesses. Of course, the trial before the Illinois Senate surely would have been more interesting if he had been permitted to subpoena witnesses and grill them. But the Blagobabble argument will be interesting by itself. I wonder - - will he come right out and say that the was, in the grand tradition of Chicago politics, simply trying to deliver to the people of Illinois the best government that money can buy?
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Blagojevich, impeachment, indictment, politics in Blago, Blagojevich, politics, theatre of the absurd 
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Reader Comments (4)
I wonder who he would have subpoenaed if he was allowed ? It certainly would have been a great show. In the Beck interview he painted himself as a victim in every one of his answers. They were out to get him because he "wanted to lower taxes" What BS !!!
Once again we have a liberal playing the game of "what the definition of "is" is. This guy is a weasel and he'll be dead by dawn. (Figuratively speaking)
I listened to Blago's closing argument via live news feed; I'll give him credit, if I were totally ignorant of the circumstances, I would be sympathetic to his pitch.
I still don't see the difference between what Blago did (no matter how reprehensible) and the deal Michelle Obama got in her job after Barack became a US senator and gave pork to Michelle's employer. Can someone explain?
Well, that's so easy! Obviously, Michelle Obama . . . um, I mean . . . Barack Obama and . . . but . . . okay, how about, Michelle Obama wasn't governor at the time and, uh, uh, uh . . . you know . . . isn't it, hm, undeniable that . . . er . . .hmmmm.