Blago­je­vich, you rotten scoundrel. Not one day–not ten hours!–after we say some­thing nice about you for the first time ever, in our entire lives, you go and get your­self arrested for sell­ing Barack Obama’s Senate seat? Sure, you made my head­line sound awfully pre­scient, but come on: if you really wanted to make a buck off Barack, couldn’t you have gone off and started a com­mem­o­ra­tive coin com­pany or something?

And on the day before your birth­day, no less? For shame.

From the (bank­rupt, but that’s a post for another day) Tribune:

Blago­je­vich and Harris were accused of a wide-​ranging crim­i­nal con­spir­acy that included Blago­je­vich con­spir­ing to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by President-​elect Barack Obama in exchange for finan­cial ben­e­fits for the gov­er­nor and his wife. The gov­er­nor was also accused of obtain­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions in exchange for other offi­cial actions.

Blago­je­vich was taken into fed­eral cus­tody at his North Side home this morning.

…

On the issue of the U.S. Senate selec­tion, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors alleged Blago­je­vich sought appoint­ment as Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices in the new Obama admin­is­tra­tion, or a lucra­tive job with a union in exchange for appoint­ing a union-​preferred candidate.

(Tri­bune photo by Nancy Stone.)

+++

UPDATE (10:44am): How cor­rupt was this SOB? Check this out, from the indict­ment (Senate Can­di­date 1 is almost cer­tainly Obama advi­sor Valerie Jar­rett, who, as Ben Smith wisely guesses, prob­a­bly took her­self out of the run­ning for the seat because she knew about the investigation):

Later on Novem­ber 3, 2008, ROD BLAGO­JE­VICH spoke with Advi­sor A. By this time, media reports indi­cated that Senate Can­di­date 1, an advi­sor to the President-​elect, was inter­ested in the Senate seat if it became vacant, and was likely to be sup­ported by the President-​elect. During the call, ROD BLAGO­JE­VICH stated, “unless I get some­thing real good for [Senate Can­di­date 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying.” ROD BLAGO­JE­VICH later stated, “I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real
pos­si­bil­ity, you know, and there­fore I can drive a hard bar­gain. You hear what I’m saying. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not sat­is­fied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.” Later, ROD BLAGO­JE­VICH stated that the Senate seat “is a fuck­ing valu­able thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”