Rich Miller says
This has to be one of most hilarious things I’ve read in a very long time.Well, Rich Miller is right. Here's the Amazon product description:
THE GOVERNOR provides the most comprehensive look to date at the life of a twice-elected public official in the notoriously complicated world of Illinois politics. We take a tour through the segregated neighborhoods of Chicago, a city of great ethnic diversity, and see firsthand how those divides can evolve into cabals that rival anything found on the national political scene.We don't know if Blago will want to talk about the 1990's when the Tribune reported this about his father in law Alderman Dick Mell:
We follow the governor as he is awakened early one morning –his young daughter sleeping peacefully beside him – and unceremoniously arrested by FBI agents without knowing the charges being brought against him. We see the harsh glare of the spotlight, the media whirlwind already staking out his home and family, rushing to judgment before even the governor himself knew what crimes he’d been accused of committing. We follow him through the maze of political conspiracies that threaten to unseat and impeach the governor of the fifth largest state in the U.S. –forces brought to light by the ambition of an attorney general and the greed of her Democratic State Party Chairman father –as well as the zeal of a federal prosecutor and the manipulations of a disloyal lieutenant governor.
The behind-the-scenes workings to fill the Senate seat vacated by the most popular President-elect in decades becomes something much more incendiary when wiretapped conversations are used by authorities to commit the arrest. But, as the governor soon learns, those tapes are not allowed to be played at his impeachment hearings in the House or Senate. What is on those tapes? And why will the prosecution not let them be heard if they were the primary factor in initiating the arrest that started this political scandal in the first place?
Quoting from sources as diverse as Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics to Aeschylus , Shakespeare to The Purpose Driven Life, THE GOVERNOR provides not just an inside look at politics on a state and national level but a treatise on the proper place of government in the everyday lives of its people.
It is a mandate for healthcare reform, which the governor feels is the civil rights issue of our lifetime. It is a clarion cry, remarkably, against cynicism in modern governing and a return to a more thoughtful and informed sense of government that views its state budgets as “moral documents.” It is a lament against the current state of the political landscape, one that too often is wracked by scandal and interwoven with a media-driven culture obsessed with scandal and snap judgments.
And it is a proclamation that one man will not be silenced, that his side of the story must be heard and that the fight for American liberties and freedom must sometimes occur within its own borders.
About the Author
Democrat Rod Blagojevich served as the 40th governor of Illinois. Son of a Serbian immigrant, he attended Northwestern and earned a law degree from Pepperdine University. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois’ 5th District in 1996, he was elected governor in 2002, re-elected in 2006, and forced from office in 2009.
Product Details
* Hardcover: 352 pages
* Publisher: Phoenix (September 8, 2009)
federal investigators have questioned a handful of Mell's office workers--all of whom have denied wrongdoing--as part of a sweeping probe into alleged City Council ghost payrolling, the time-worn practice of collecting a public paycheck but doing little or no work.Will Blago want to talk about the Chicago Mob bookmaking allegations of the 1980's?
Blagojevich said he hasn't been questioned, but Mell still has collected affidavits attesting to Blagojevich's hard work.
