Barack Obama: "I only saw Rod Blagojevich one time ... and that was in the stands and from a distance at a Chicago Bears Football Game." [needs citation, I can't find verification that he said this. -ww]

Really? I guess that depends on what your definition of "one" is.

We'll just make this simple. If Roland Burris, the new Democrat Senator from Illinois, were a Republican ... he would be burnt toast. As it is you have to work to find the media even referring to this character as a Democrat.

You do know the story, don't you? After Blago appointed him to fill Obama's Senate seat Burris was called back to Illinois to testify before a state Senate committee looking into Blago's corruption. While under oath Burris said that he had not had discussed making any payments to Blago with any of Blago's staff, including his brother. Then Burris discovers that the feds have a tape of him discussing a campaign donation with Blago's brother. Don't you just hate it when that happens? So ... time for a little CYA. Burris suddenly wants to submit an affidavit to the Illinois senate expanding his testimony. Since they have him on tape he had better fess up and tell them that he talked to Blago's bro about some money.

This is called perjury. We learned while Bill Clinton was president that only Republicans like Scooter Libby are punished for perjury. Democrats get a pass. Let's see if it works this way for Burris.

This award goes to the governor's office of Rod Blagojevich. Members of Blagojevich's office, including his acting chief of staff and a deputy governor, will be the keynote speakers today at an "Ethics in the Workplace" seminar for Illinois state employees.

Come on, you have to be kidding me. Yeah ... I've heard all of this nonsense over the weekend about the Democrats blocking the door to the U.S. Senate to prevent Roland Burris from being seated. Yeah ... sure.

So what if Governor Blago appointed Burris while he was under a rather dense cloud of suspicion. Are you forgetting the most important point here? Burris, in case you haven't noticed, is black. When he is seated he will be the only black in the Senate. Now you tell me that the Democrats are going to prevent the swearing-in of the only black in the Senate. Don't hold your breath. Political correctness will rule; just as in the forthcoming appointment of Caroline "you know" Kennedy.

Fact is, since Blago hasn't stepped down, he still has the legal right to appoint Obama's replacement. And he did .. despite his own party's wishes. He appointed former state attorney general Roland Burris. As far as Burris goes.. we'll get into him another time. Like the fact that he is an advocate for a national handgun ban. But again .. I digress.

So Harry Reid decides that he isn't going to allow Burris to be seated. Reid says that he has the "legal authority" under the Constitution to bar anyone that is selected by Rod Blagojevich. He points to Article I, Section 5 which says that "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members..." Reid's interpretation of this is, "We determine who sits in the Senate. And the House (of Representatives) determines who sits in the House. So there's clearly legal authority for us to do whatever we want to do. This goes back for generations."

You'll be interested to read this piece in the Wall Street Journal about a legal precedent for cases like this, set by the Supreme Court back in 1969. Like it or not, the only way Harry can get rid of Burris legally would be to allow him to be sworn in and then get two-thirds of the Senate to vote for his expulsion.

Enter the race card. Yep, so Roland Burris is black. As we have been reminded many times .. Obama's seat was supposed to be filled by a black man. I guess that's some sort of a law. Blagojevich held up that end of the bargain. But aides for Burris are now saying that Harry Reid won't allow Burris to be seated because of his race. Who didn't see that coming? A senior consultant to Burris told Politico, "It's interesting that all those who are viable are white women and the ones who are unacceptable are black men." Oh, you didn't hear about that? Apparently Harry Reid talked to Blagojevich about who should fill the Senate seat just six days before Blagojevich was arrested. During that conversation, Reid didn't want any of Blagojevich's suggestions (which all happened to black men) and favored two women who happen to be white. So there's that ..

We operate under a rule of law here ... Seat Burris. Uphold the Constitution.

Or are you confused about the difference in the way the Democrats react to scandal-plagued Charlie Rangel and Governor Blago? Charlie, you see, is the chief congressional tax writer. He's the mighty powerful of the House Ways and Means Committee ... and this tax expert has apparently claimed homestead exemptions in two different states and somehow conveniently forgot to claim as income the proceeds of the rental of his little Caribbean hideaway. Now you or I do this stuff and we get nailed. Not so Charlie. Governor Blago, on the other hand, is standing in front of a Democrat firing squad. Now if I weren't so cynical I would wonder if they wanted to get rid of Blago because he might be an embarrassment to PEBO .. but Charlie is on the team, so let's circle the wagons!

I knew that the deeper we got into this Blagojevich story, eventually we would cross paths with unions. I didn't know exactly how or why or when .. but it was just a hunch that a corrupt governor like this Blagojevich character would be in it up to his chin with the unions. After all, when Blagojevich was re-elected, guess who was the largest single contributor to his campaign .. you guessed it: a union.

As we learn more about this investigation, it turns out that Blagojevich was getting ready to issue an executive order that would have allowed home healthcare workers to unionize. Meanwhile, Blagojevich's goal .. according to this criminal complaint .. was to get a high paying job from a powerful union from all of this Barack Obama senate seat nonsense.

Okay, fine. So the guy has issued executive orders like this before. It's no secret that not only does this guy love unions .. he wants to be in charge of them. He wants the power. Man, as if being the governor of a state wasn't good enough for him. But here's why I am bringing this story to you. Because you know how I feel about this unionization-by-intimidation bill. Otherwise known as the Card Check bill. But here is just a little taste of what the unions are currently doing, you can only imagine the tactics they would use once they get a law passed:

Don Moss, a Springfield lobbyist, represents private agencies that oversee workers who would have been affected by the latest executive order. He said he started receiving complaints from agencies that union representatives were contacting workers at their homes. Moss said the workers complained that union representatives were using heavy-handed tactics to try to get them to join the union.

Oh no! He's not serious, is he? How in the world could this guy ever expect us to believe that American's saintly unions would ever use heavy-handed tactics to get people to join? This is blasphemy!

Right ... This is just the beginning of it, folks. You wait until Obama is inaugurated and we've got Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as his co-pilots. There will be no stopping the unions who feel entitled to their special "thanks" for keeping these people in power.

If not .. you could miss some real goodies out there. The link to Jamie's blog is always right here on Nealz Nuze, but in case you have overlooked it, here's a goodie from today that might interest you:

Blagojevich questions censored on Transition site

President-elect Barack Obama's Transition today launched "Open for Questions," a Digg-style feature allowing citizens to submit questions, and to vote on one another's questions, bringing favored inquiries to the top of the list.

It was suggested when it launched that the tool would bring uncomfortable questions to the fore, but the results so far are the opposite: Obama's supporters appear to be using -- and abusing -- a tool allowing them to "flag" questions as "inappropriate" to remove all questions mentioning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich from the main pages of Obama's website.

The Blagojevich questions -- many of them polite and reasonable -- can be found only by searching words in them, like "Blagojevich," which produces 35 questions missing from the main page of the site.

"Given the current corruption charges involving Blagojevich, will serious' campaign finance reform that takes money completely out of politics through publicly funded elections be a priority in the first term?" asked Metteyya of Santa Cruz, California. "This submission was removed because people believe it is inappropriate," reads the text underneath it.

Also removed as "inappropriate":

"In light of the recent corruption scandals (Blagojevich, Rangel, Jefferson, Stevens, etc) that have dominated the political scene,is there any ethics legislation being crafted to actually curb corruption and prevent another wave of nixonian cynicism?", a question from "lupercal," of Gainesville.

And: "Is Barack Obama aware of any communications in the last six weeks between Rod Blagojevich or anyone representing Rod Blagojevich and any of Obama's top aides?", a question from Phil from Pennsylvania.

Declaring a question "inappropriate" is different from merely voting it down; it's calling foul on a question, not just disapproving of it.

Community reporting systems like this are often vulnerable to abuse from committed partisans -- YouTube has wrestled with a parallel problem -- and the only solution is conscious efforts to remedy it.

So far, Obama's team does not seem to have stepped in to allow uncomfortable questions to rise to the top, and instead is allowing his supporters to sanitize the site.

Jamie Dupree

Cox Radio, Washington DC

I mean, what can you say, folks? Yesterday we found out that Jesse Jackson Jr. is "Senate Candidate 5" in the criminal complaint of Blagojevich. Senate Candidate 5 is the one that would be considered for the senate seat, but only if he could raise $1 million in campaign contributions for Blagojevich.

So Jesse Jackson Jr. had a little press conference. He says that he hasn't done anything wrong. And maybe that is true. But will this be enough to ensure that he will NOT be the next Senator from Illinois.

I will give Jesse Jr. credit for knowing that there is no Constitutional right to vote in a presidential election in this country. He has introduced a resolution calling for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing that right. That puts him way ahead of most of the elected representatives and people in this country.

Yesterday during the program we were graced with the news that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (a Democrat) was arrested. The very short story is that the guy is a complete corrupt footstool. I mean, seriously .. the FBI says it has phone call recordings of this guy - a sitting governor - trying to sell of Barack Obama's senate seat. And that is just the first page! There are 76 pages full of different schemes this guy had going .. like telling the Chicago Tribune that he would give the paper financial help if it agreed to fire some of its editorial writers that were critical of him.

So there are a couple of issues at stake here. Let's start out slow.

First of all, what do you do about Barak Obama's senate seat? The seat still has to be filled. Clearly this creep isn't going to be appointing anyone, so now what? There are talks of the Senate taking over the process. Either way, we know the rules .. It's a black seat now ... a historical black seat ... so at least we know that whoever is appointed or selected or chosen or whatever to fill that seat is going to absolutely, positively, without question have to be black. And no ... there no discrimination here, is there now?

But on to far juicier things .. did Barack Obama's transition team know this was going on? Heck, did Barack Obama himself know this was going on? That question is already getting testy. Yesterday Obama said that he hasn't had any contact with the governor or his office. But there is a statement out there from David Axelrod that he made on November 23, 2008 saying, "I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them." Of course now the Obama transition team has come out and said that Axelrod "misspoke" back in November. Don't you just like this "misspoke" angle? I think "screwed up" is more appropriate. But that is about all we will get for now until the FBI releases more information about the recorded phone calls.

So the next step is .. let's try to figure out how close was Barack Obama to this guy. Even if they weren't close, shouldn't this say SOMETHING about the political culture that produced Barack Obama? From what I can tell, Obama endorsed Blagojevich for governor in 2002 and 2006. He also happened to serve as a top advisor to him during his 2002 run. Guess who was also in the picture? Rahm Emanuel. It can be said that Obama and Emanuel were among Blagojevich's top strategists when he won in 2002.

In 2002, on a Chicago TV show, Obama had the following exchange:

Obama: "Right now, my main focus is to make sure that we elect Rod Blagojevich as Governor, we..."
Host: "You working hard for Rod?"
Obama: "You betcha"
Host: "Hot Rod?"
Obama: "That's exactly right"

And more recently, in 2006, Obama spoke at the Illinois State Fair on behalf of Blagojevich.

Bottom line .. you need to remember that our next president came from the same political culture as did this corrupt governor. Most of Obama's myrmidons don't realize it, but Obama won his first race for office not by getting more votes than the other folks, but by arranging to have his opponents - ALL of them - kicked off the ballot. Now if that doesn't carry the stench of Chicago-style politics ...