Corruption...

Governor soliciting bribes- A very sad day indeed for the American political system. The case does raise some interesting questions:

1) Why pull the plug on the investigation now?

2) Who are the people that offered $$ for the seat, or for other things?

3) Who stepped forward to bring allegations that began the investigation?

4) Given the absolutely wide scope of his corruption, who DIDN'T STEP forward with knowledge of the solicitation.

I guess we won't know the full details for a while, but it is clear that quite a few people had to be aware of the activities going on. You can't get bribes unless you let people know you'll take a bribe and at least some of his staff was complicit in the solicitation.

Regarding (1), it seems to me that they could have let the case go longer. When you have all the wiretaps and monitoring equipment in place, why not let the governor continue to hang himself? I don't think any appointment of a replacement for Obama was imminent. Additionally, it would allow more gathering of information about who was willing to pay for the seat and what was being offered. Given the amount of corruption in Illinois, implicating more people and finding out who was willing to play ball has to be a good thing. The obvious (and cynical) answer is that they ran with the case now to save the democrats (the people in 2) from further embarassment. The governor wasn't about to appoint a Republican to the seat, it had to be prominent democrats in the bidding. Letting the case go further would have lead to more names, and dare I say names of people who are involved with our president-elect, who has so far escaped the taint of any involvement. I do find it unbelievable that he never spoke with the governor about his replacement as he now claims, but so far nothing has linked him directly to this corruption (yeah!). The people (4) willing to pay bribes are just as culpable, and deserve to be embarassed at the minimum.

edit: After taking a peak at the affidavit, it appears that a tribune article stating that the governor was under close investigation and being recorded forced the investigators to act sooner rather than later. One wonders if it's really in the public interest to publish such an article and to tip off the person being investigated. One also wonders who leaked such information to the press. Freedom of the press has immeasurable benefits...but it has costs as well.

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I'm still not convinced that the arrest was timed so as to avoid embarrassing prominent Democrats in the bidding for the spot. I mean, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. But again, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was a Republican appointee.

Another rather cynical point I would make is... even if someone had pulled the plug early to save Democrats' face, would that be such a terrible thing? I mean, you have to balance (a) leaving wealthy, overly ambitious, unscrupulous characters lurking in the shadows (which they may have done anyway, in spite of any flushing out of Candidate 5s and whatnots); and (b) completely undermining public confidence in Illinois legislators - I mean, more than Blagojevich's blatant corruption has already.

And it's not clear to me that (b) is not an important enough interest to at least counterbalance the desire to flush out unsavory characters.