Vote For Kodos: Sweet Home Chicago
The former Republican Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, is currently in the pokey for corruption (and according to the scuttlebutt I overheard on 60 Minutes while washing the dishes on Sunday - which I mention to reinforce that I was not voluntarily watching that insult to the First Amendment - may be petitioning President Bush for a pardon). The current Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, has just been arrested for secular simony: Land o' Lincolnlink. (And here I should remind one and all that arrest, indictment, and conviction are all separate phenomena, not by any means one and the same.) Corruption and influence-peddling appear endemic to the I-55 corridor between Chicago and Springfield, but certainly that can't have any bearing beyond the Indiana line. Surely it is pure coincidence that Mr. Obama, the President-elect, and Mr. Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff-designate, both emerged out of the hurly-burly of Illinois politics, and that before she was a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, before she was from Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton, the Secretary of State-designate, was born and raised in Chicagoland. I for one feel immensely reassured.

Oh, and in more good news, Governor Blagojevich was an erstwhile pal of the always colorful Tony Rezko, Mr. Obama's next door neighbor in Chicago, the principal fundraiser behind Mr. Obama's fledging political career in the '90s, and currently both a jailbird and a stool pigeon. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the promised "new kind of politics" may well prove to be the Chicago machine writ large.

Note to self: the Teapot Dome Scandal would make for an excellent episode of "The Explorers Club."

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
John Linnell, "Illinois" from State Songs (T.L.A.M.)