Blagojevich Charged With Corruption

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) has been charged with criminal corruption.

With Barack Obama (D-IL) leaving his Senate seat vacant, Gov. Blagojevich had the responsibility of filling it with the best public servant he could find. However, Blagojevich recognized that this Senate seat was "a fucking valuable thing," and decided that "you don't just give it away for nothing." Instead, he would "drive a real hard bargain" and try to "get something real good." If that didn't work out, then "shit, I'll just send myself, you know what I'm saying."

He apparently tried to get campaign contributions, a job for his wife, a personal appointment, a new editorial board at the Chicago Tribune, etc. He also threatened to cut $8 million in funding for a children's hospital (apparently because he wanted $50,000 in campaign contributions from the hospital's executive, and he wasn't paying up).

This is the second Illinois Governor in a row to be accused of corruption. The last Illinois Governor, George Ryan (R-IL), is currently living in a federal prison, serving his sentence on a corruption conviction.

You can read the criminal complaint here (it's 78 pages long). The shorter description is on the blue shirt, pictured above.

UPDATE: The "analysis" from journalists like Liz Sidoti was way too predictable:

AP reporter Liz Sidoti, fresh off a stint delivering donuts to John McCain, pens an "analysis" of the Blagojevich indictment that begins: "President-elect Barack Obama hasn't even stepped into office and already a scandal is threatening to dog him."

Then, in the very next sentence, Sidoti admits "Obama isn't accused of anything." And that pretty much sets the tone for the "analysis" -- ominous warnings that Obama could be implicated in the scandal, followed by concessions that he, you know ... isn't.

...

So there's a great big ball of nothing here, yet Sidoti continues to pretend that Obama is caught up in the scandal, writing "There were signs the continuing investigation could still involve Obama."

Well, no. The "signs" Sidoti pointed to were the fact that someone who works for Obama once worked for Blagojevich (ah-ha!) and that court papers appear to refer to "Obama friend Valerie Jarrett, an incoming senior White House adviser," who removed herself from consideration for the Senate seat Obama is vacating. Blagojevich is charged with trying to sell an appointment to that seat. Jarrett removed herself from consideration for it. How that constitutes a sign that the investigation "could still involve Obama" is clear only in Sidoti's imagination.

Still, Sidoti is technically correct: the investigation could still involve Obama. But it is grossly unfair to suggest that possibility absent any evidence. That's something Liz Sidoti apparently doesn't understand -- though one suspects she would understand the unfairness of suggesting, absent any evidence, that she could be taking payments from the GOP to write garbage like this.

Sidoti concludes: "More details on the case could be forthcoming." Hard to argue with that.

So what do we have? According to Liz Sidoti:

1) "Obama isn't accused of anything"
2) "prosecutors were making no allegations that Obama was aware of any scheming"
3) "Blagojevich himself, in taped conversations cited by prosecutors, suggested that Obama wouldn't be helpful to him"
4) There is no evidence, indication, or hint that Obama was aware of scheming, or did help Blagojevich.
5) Nevertheless, "more details on the case could be forthcoming"
6) Therefore, a "scandal" is "threatening to dog" Obama.

This is nothing short of sleazy. With no evidence whatsoever, Sidoti is suggesting ties between Obama and the scandal that simply do not exist. Whatever this is, it isn't "analysis" and it isn't "journalism."

UPDATE II: The often crazy Michelle Malkin's coverage was also way too predictable. In a column titled "The Democrat Culture of Corruption," Malkin skips over the fact that the previous Republican governor is currently serving a jail term for corruption, uses words like "corruptocrats," and tries her best to suggest that there is something ominous or underhanded going on with Barack Obama ("declaring Team Obama’s hands clean — especially with Blago crony and indicted Obama donor Tony Rezko in the middle of it all — is premature. . . . this raises more questions than it answers about who on the transition team may have talked to Blago and his shakedown artists about what and when"). It also contains her generic claims of "liberal media bias" and speculation about how they would have behaved if it were a Republican (which it was with the previous Illinois Governor).

As an aside, I'd just like to point out again that Michelle Malkin is a crazy person, who writes books in defense of ethnic internment camps and publicly berates consenting adults for creating pornographic films for other consenting adults.

UPDATE III: In another column, titled "This is what patriotism looks like," Malkin offers a childish vision of patriotism that apparently involves not much more than reflexively assuming that the government and military can do no wrong:

A naturalized American from Korea loses his entire family in the military jet crash that wrecked his house and killed his infant daughter, toddler daughter, wife, and mother-in-law. But he refuses to blame the pilot or bash the military. Reader Mitch in San Diego e-mails: “I’m not even religious and I’ll say a prayer for this man. He has my utmost admiration. Truly an amazing gesture of forgiveness and patriotism on his part. There would be no discussion about immigration, illegal or otherwise, if this was the caliber of most coming here. Amazing.”

Keep Dong Yun Yoon in your prayers.

If I were Dong Yun Yoon, I might want to at least ask some questions. It doesn't involve "bashing the military" to want to know what went wrong, and how it came to be that a military jet crash could happen on top of your house. I know that this man went through a lot, but I don't see how this makes him a hero and a patriot, and I don't respect how Malkin uses his story to prop up her own vision of patriotism (which apparently also involves internment camps).

UPDATE IV: Rush Limbaugh is still an intellectually dishonest partisan.


UPDATE V: All 50 Democratic Senators Call on Blagojevich To Step Down

UPDATE VI: Tony Soprano vs. Rod Blagojevich: Can you tell which is which?

UPDATE VII: Glenn Greenwald is always right about everything. You should all read his column every day.

Michelle Malkin: Wrong

FOX News contributor Michelle Malkin has this to say on her website:

"when I first read this article Politico talked about Obama’s background as a law professor. He used to do that, and then he stopped when he got called out for the fact that he was never technically a professor."

Wrong. The University of Chicago released this statement to clarify the issue:

The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.

Malkin also gets her basic facts wrong on global warming (see here and here), and calls Obama "The Obamessiah."

UPDATE: Here is a video of Michelle filling in for Bill O'Reilly.

UPDATE II: She's also apparently outraged by an Absolut Vodka advertisement that redraws Mexico's borders.

The company advocates overturning borders that get in the way of imagining new maps of North America that help Mexico create a larger share of the continent.

So what we've got here is a person who gets her facts wrong, gets outraged over basic Internet pornography and Vodka advertisements, calls people names, and has a high-profile platform on a major news network.

UPDATE III: She also wrote a book titled In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror.

Malkin and Inhofe on Global Warming

Michelle Malkin recently sat down with Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to discuss global warming. It was really exactly what you would expect.



Step 1: Portray global warming as a religion.

This religion called global warming.

There are a lot of monied interests, um, that have a huge stake in silencing your voice, in silencing the voices of heretical, um, scientists and economists.

Unfortunately, there are some Republicans who are members of the global warming cult.

[Despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific organizations and peer-reviewed literature support it.]

Step 2: Turn it into an issue about Al Gore.

Al Gore put his whole career on the line, thinkin' this is his ticket to the White House.. to be able to say that, you know, that he's the leader of this thing, and so he came out with this science fiction movie and, y'know, the rest of the story..

I had kinda a three-hour confrontation with Al Gore...

the largest tax increase in the recent history, which was the 1993 Clinton-Gore tax increase

[I don't know if Malkin and Inhofe have ever been able to discuss this issue without mentioning Al Gore personally.]

Step 3: Mention an anecdote about the few vocal and active contrarians, then claim that not only are there are plenty of scientists on your side, but that you're winning the debate.

"I showed the scientists, and what they really said about this... and it wasn't until I started naming names of scientists that were his [Al Gore's] leaders - for example, I talked about Claude Allegre in France, well all of a sudden he th- well he was on my side, now he's on Inhofe's side on this thing, and uh, David Bellamy from U.K., and uh, Nir Shaviv from Israel, and that's when I saw little beads of sweat coming down, because he realized that those people who had been on the other side of the issue ten years ago, and even more recent than that, are now are realizing the science just flat isn't there"

"You know, the best thing was the 60 scientists that advised the Prime Minister of Canada. They're the ones that advised the Prime Minister of Canada to get on Kyoto, sign on, ratify it way back in, '97, late '90s sometime. Those same 60 now say, if we had known then what we know now about the science, they would not have ratified it, it wouldn't be necessary. And they're admonishing now, Prime Minister Harper not to get on the new, um, Kyoto treaty. So, we're, um, winning that thing clearly."

[Inhofe's statements do nothing to show that he is "winning that thing clearly." It's just a handful of anecdotes about people's opinions (as opposed to their published scientific findings). On the other hand, pretty much all of the scientific organizations and peer-reviewed journals say the exact opposite. That has certainly not changed over the years, and has only gotten stronger.]

Step 4: If the scientists on your side aren't publishing in the peer-reviewed journals, claim persecution by the Weather Channel.

"You remember when Heidi Cullen, who has that weekly show on the Weather Channel? She came out and she said that - that - and this is a statement that she made - any meteorologist who doesn't agree with, essentially, Heidi Cullen in global warming should, uh, be de-certified by the American Society of Meteorology- uh, Meteorologists"

[First off, that's not what Heidi Cullen said. What she said was this: "If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming... If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval." This is nothing near persecution. It's simply a suggestion that meteorologists be knowledgeable about climate science as part of the certification process. Nowhere does Cullen suggest retroactively stripping a person of their certification due to their beliefs. Yet this meme continues to pop up. Particularly from Senator Inhofe, who has continued to characterize this as some sort of organized persecution:

• "The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming." (source)
  
• "The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe." (source)
• "This latest call to silence skeptics" (source)
• "Cullen’s call for decertification of TV weathermen who do not agree with her global warming assessment" (source)
• "Cullen’s call for suppressing scientific dissent" (source)
• "Cullen’s call for decertification by the AMS can only serve to intimidate skeptics and further chill free speech in the scientific community. Stripping the "Seal of Approval" from broadcast meteorologists could affect their livelihoods, impact their salaries and prestige. TV weathermen are truly the last of the independent scientists and past surveys have shown many of them to be skeptical of manmade global warming claims. Their independence is being threatened now." (source)]
  

Step 5: Ignore the many scientific organizations and peer-reviewed journals that explain anthropogenic global warming, and instead act as if it's just coming from the United Nations and Hollywood.

"like most bad things that come to America, it all came from the United Nations"

"the IPCC - they're the ones that came out with the idea that man-made gases were causing climate change"

"it started with the United Nations, but then it was picked up by the Hollywood elitists"

[Neither Malkin nor Inhofe acknowledge the overwhelming scientific agreement on this issue throughout their entire interview. They just replace that part with mentions of the U.N. and Hollywood. I don't see how you could call that anything other than "misleading."]

Step 6: Take a statistically insignificant data adjustment, and act like it turns decades of research on its head:

"Most recently, there were a number of bloggers who were involved in climate change - "climate change" [Malkin actually uses verbal scare quotes here] and meteorology - and they discovered that NASA had had a glitch in some of its statistics, that there, that there was a year 2000 bug, and when they re-did, re-did the analysis with the right statistics, it- it pushed most of the highest, um, temperature years to World War II levels. So, clearly, the whole anthropomorphic rationale, or, uh, blaming, for uh, uh, global warming has been undermined - undermined every day"

[Anthropomorphic? Anyway, Malkin is misleading in how she explains this event. First of all, the data adjustment was confined to the continental United States. Not the entire world, as Malkin appears to be saying. Second, this data adjustment wasn't near as earth-shattering as Malkin implies. Here is a picture of the new data overlaid on top of the old data:
]

Step 7: Call the kettle black.

INHOFE: The guy that I run into in these debates more than anybody else is James Hansen. James Hansen was paid $250,000 in cash [was it really in cash?] by the Heinz Foundation. And I think he'd say almost anything he wanted them to, want to, uh, say anyway. So there's lots of money in this thing
MALKIN: Follow the money.
INHOFE: Yeah, follow the money.

[I followed the money, and this is what I've found. Inhofe has received $847,073 from Oil & Gas industries throughout his career. $286,063 from Electric Utilities. $188,050 from Automotive industries.]

Step 8: Claim that those who do not have the science on their side have to resort to name-calling... then resort to name-calling, yourself.

"if you don't have the truth on your side, you don't have logic on your side, you don't have the science on your side, you resort to name-calling, you resort to - to - to threats and intimidation, like Heidi Cullen did, the meteorologist, and consequently, not many people in public office in the United State Senate or House are willing to stand up against that."

[Here are a few examples of James Inhofe comparing those on the other side to Nazis:

• "It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their [the environmentalists'] strategy" (source)
• The E.P.A. is a "gestapo bureaucracy" (source)]
  

Step 9: Sweeping conclusion. Claim victory.

"Now, clearly, we are winning. People know the truth is out there."

NASA, GISS, 1934, 1998, etc.

This past week, Steve McIntyre wrote an email to NASA pointing out a jump in their U.S. GISS data from 1999 to 2000. The NASA researchers looked into it, discovered a faulty assumption in their analysis, corrected their error, and sent a letter thanking McIntyre. In the old data set, 1998 and 1934 were in a dead-heat for the title of "warmest year on record in the United States," with 1998 being 0.01ºC warmer. However, in the corrected data, it turns out that 1934 is 0.02ºC warmer. Mind you, this is only for the continental United States temperatures, not those of the entire world (1998 is still hotter on a world-wide scale).

First, let's take a look at the old NASA data:


Now let's look at the new data:


Shocking! But of course, you can always rely on the same old standbys to highlight this finding in big, bold letters in an attempt to further the idea among the misinformed that climate science as a whole is too inexact to inform any public policy decisions whatsoever.

First off, we have a FOX News alert from Steven Milloy:
Junk Science: New Science Challenges Climate Alarmists?

"climate alarmist-friendly media...manmade global warming boogeyman...alarmists...an embarrassing temperature error rained on their parade...existing climate models are so prone to error...energy price-hiking and economy-harming laws and regulations...NASA’s alarmist-in-chief James Hansen...fiction...climate alarmists...even wrong on the matter of 1998 being the warmest year on record...1934 is the new warmest year...embarrassing setback for alarmists... alarmists... clamping down on CO2 emissions from SUVs may do absolutely nothing... the climate-worry bubble... ominous weather reports"

Next, we have a report from the Wall Street Journal's college dropout James Taranto.

"it turns out that there was a Y2K bug--and it contributed to global warming hype... The one Y2K bug that happened to slip through was the one that contributed to another alarmist narrative. But when you think about it, it makes sense. NASA's faulty findings didn't look faulty to global warmists, who saw exactly what they were expecting to see."

Finally, we can always count on college dropout Rush Limbaugh:

"The thing to remember is that 1998 is not the warmest year on record. It forms one of the central theses about the current global warming hoax... " We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA. The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data... I don't know if they intend to correct it or not. I doubt you'll hear anything about this, other than this program... We're nowhere near as hot as we have been 75, 71 years ago. Nowhere near as hot..." So it is just more evidence, ladies and gentlemen, that this whole global warming thing is a scientific hoax..." In four or five years we'll have a majority of people understanding how phony and fraudulent this is... raise your taxes, control more of your life, reduce your lifestyle, all coming from the United Nations"

My favorite part of this particular response is how Limbaugh embellishes the facts and says "We're nowhere near as hot as we have been 75, 71 years ago," despite the fact that, in the continental United States, 1934 was only 0.02ºC warmer than 1998. Also, Limbaugh is possibly unaware that the present five-year average temperature is still warmer than it was back then, and that the worldwide 1998 temperatures on a whole are also warmer.

So once again, I'd like to recommend the Newsweek article The Truth About Denial.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin joins the party: "NASA quietly fixes flawed temperature data; 1998 was NOT the warmest year in the millenium"