First Wright, Now Rezko By Stephen Spruiell
The Bear on Apr 11 2008 at 8:28 am | Filed under: Election 08’
This time, a speech may not be enough for Obama.
Chicago, Illinois — After the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s now-notorious sermons gained a significant amount of national media attention, Illinois Senator Barack Obama felt compelled to explain his relationship with Wright in a major speech on race relations in America. Now that the governor of Illinois has been implicated in the schemes of Obama’s friend Tony Rezko, it might be time for Obama to explain his relationship with Rezko in a major speech on the endemic political corruption that afflicts his home state of Illinois.
Rezko’s trial has lifted the veil on Illinois’s infernally corrupt political establishment, and a government witness named Stuart Levine has taken the part of a meth-snorting, double-dealing Virgil, guiding the public through it. Levine is a broken man, testifying for the government in order to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison. Over seven days of direct examination, he has described an astonishingly broad network of fraud, extortion, and bribery, culminating in Wednesday’s revelation that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly knew about at least one such scheme.
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If Levine’s testimony regarding Blagojevich is true, then such nakedly corrupt behavior at such a high level is bound to attract greater scrutiny from the national media to the problem of corruption in the state of Illinois. To illustrate the gravity of the issue, three of the last seven governors elected in the state of Illinois have ended up in jail. If Blagojevich is indicted, tried and convicted, that will make four out of seven.
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This corruption, should it become an issue in the campaign, could cause problems for Obama when people start to wonder how he could have made it through “the combine” without getting involved in the overlapping networks of patronage and influence.
More from NRO Online
SideBear: I suggest to all to read through this article very carefully about the schemes and corruption involving Tony Rezko and denote Obama’s endorsement of them all.
Call it guilt by association or just maybe he will have to explain his involvement because “The Chickens are coming home to roost.”
But America will have a harder time swallowing excuses for corruption as being a run-of-the-mill aspect of the Illinois political experience — particularly not from a candidate that has promised a new kind of politics.
Related
Rezko Trial: A Week in Review…And a very interesting week it was.
After a brief session Friday morning, the judge presiding over the trial of Illinois businessman Tony Rezko dismissed the jury for the weekend. I’ve been here covering the trial since Monday, and what follows is a digest of what turned out to be a very interesting week.
More from NRO Online
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, political corruption, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich
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