MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Fitzgerald

Like I said . . .

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Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a public menace.

He makes it hard for people to exist and behave as they normally would in their natural habitat. Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko and others were doing only what came natural when Fitzgerald decided to stick his nose in their business. I mean, who ever heard of a person being arrested for a shakedown, especially when done properly, like Rezko and Blago do it?

If it were left up to me, it would be Fitzgerald who will be led off to the hoosegow, not our beloved governor. Listen to this description of Clean Fitz:

Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, said Fitzgerald used indictments to pressure the governor’s confidants to turn on one another.
“It’s a message: You are in my sights, and I’d like to get you to come in and talk to me,” Redfield said. “It puts pressure on the person you indicted and puts on notice the next person up the chain.”
In seven years as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald generally has won strong reviews from government and defense lawyers alike. Obama is said to be considering keeping Fitzgerald in his job even though the coveted spots typically turn over with a new administration. But defense lawyers who have faced Fitzgerald say he can be hard-nosed when it comes to even small fish trapped in the government’s net.
One former prosecutor who knew Fitzgerald 20 years ago, when the U.S. attorney was a junior defense lawyer, said he was zealous in pursuit of his goals and offended by violations of the public trust.
“His line between right and wrong is very bright, and it’s very easy for him to see that line,” the former prosecutor said. “If there’s a brick wall, he’ll take it down brick by brick.”

That’s just not right.

Rich's indictment

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Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich By FRANK RICH

ROD BLAGOJEVICH is the perfect holiday treat for a country fighting off depression. He gift-wraps the ugliness of corruption in the mirthful garb of farce. From a safe distance outside Illinois, it’s hard not to laugh at the “culture of Chicago,” where even the president-elect’s Senate seat is just another commodity to be bought and sold.

But the entertainment is escapist only up to a point. What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Republican partisans cheering Fitzgerald’s prosecution of a Democrat have forgotten his other red-letter case in this decade, his conviction of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby was far bigger prey. He was part of the White House Iraq Group, the task force of propagandists that sold an entire war to America on false pretenses. Because Libby was caught lying to a grand jury and federal prosecutors as well as to the public, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. But President Bush commutedthe sentence before he served a day.

Fitzgerald was not pleased. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals,” he said at the time.

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Illinois Gov. arrested in corruption crime spree

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Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested Tuesday by FBI agents for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a “staggering” level of corruption involving pay-to-play politics in Illinois’ top office.

The predawn rousting of Gov. Rod Blagojevich from his Ravenswood Manor home Tuesday marked a stunning climax to a tale of alleged public corruption unmatched in Illinois’ storied history of elected scoundrels and thrust the state into an unprecedented political crisis.

* Editorial: Gov. Blagojevich, resign

* Blagojevich: Obama Senate seat “a [effing] valuable thing”

FULL COVERAGE IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE Illinoisans awoke to news that their governor had been arrested, handcuffed and hauled before a federal magistrate on sweeping charges he conspired to sell his office many times over–including putting a price on the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

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