In his March 12, 2010, interview with FOX News’ Greta van Susteren, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich described a conversation he said he had with Rahm Emanuel concerning a replacement for Obama’s Senate seat.  His comments on that subject are within 1:09-3.29 of this video.

Blago’s words came in the context of discussing former Congressman Eric Massa’s allegation that Emanuel lobbied him in a shower while both men were naked. Suggesting this episode displayed Emanuel’s tactics, Blagojevich said,

I chose Rahm Emanuel. He was my first choice to help us pick a United States Senator. I wanted him to make a deal with the Democratic House Speaker here in Illinois. In exchange for me appointing his daughter he would stop blocking a public works bill that would create jobs. He would stop blocking healthcare expansion for fifty to three-hundred thousand people. And a written promise not to raise taxes on people.  Rahm was the guy I chose to make that deal happen. And was about to do it and then everything changed when they came and arrested me.

The Illinois House Speaker in Illinois is Michael J. Madigan. He’s been Speaker since 1982, and chair of the Illinois Democratic Party since 1998. Here’s some of what the Chicago Tribune knows about him: (more…)

The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner remarks that President Obama’s efforts to force his health-care bill on a very skittish Congress are beginning to look like an arm-twisting scene from “The Sopranos.”

Those who back his proposal receive special favors whereas, as Tanner says, “those who oppose the president can expect the political equivalent of a horse head between their sheets.” Members of Congress are being threatened with ostracism, primary challenges, and the loss of union support. Then, among other examples, there is the orchestrated assault on the ethics of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who has been opposing the bill’s endorsement of abortion funding.

The progressive media are ganging up with the president against the bill’s opponents. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow recently cast suspicion on the low rent that a conservative Christian organization charges Stupak for his D. C. apartment. She even mentioned suggestively that scandal-marked South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford stayed at the same building. The Daily Kos has also been hammering away at Stupak, for instance, urging pro-abortion women to “roar back” by sending him a “money bomb” (that is, by donating money to the campaign of Connie Saltonstall, who is challenging him in a primary).

Plus ça change. Media lefties have from the get-go shilled for ObamaCare. For example, as Pamela Geller has noted, last summer ABC gave the president free prime-time to promote his health-care reforms without the nuisance of any opposing views. In addition to staging this “glorified infomercial,” as Geller called it, the network rejected advertisements that offered a free market alternative to Obama’s statist health-care vision. (more…)