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December 2008

Legal Insurrection Blog started on October 12, 2008, with what is still my favorite post, Obama is Door No. 2.In those first days, readership consisted of me, a few relatives, a couple of neighbors, and some friends of relatives. Then a handful of other followers...

Barack Obama loves to invoke the "rule of law" when it suits his political purposes, but not in the case of Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's empty Senate seat. In the Burris case, politics apparently trumps the law.There is no substantial legal...

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris has put the Democratic party in a box. By appointing an African-American to the empty Senate seat, Blagojevich has forced his political opponents to risk being called racists. In supporting the appointment, Congressman Bobby Rush called opposition...

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has reversed course, and now wants to release to the Illinois House impeachment committee some wiretap evidence relating to the federal criminal case against Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Previously, Fitzgerald went so far as to ask the House committee not even to...

The mainstream media loves Ted Kennedy despite the fact that Ted left a woman to die in a ditch and then lied about it.But Caroline Kennedy, for some reason, doesn't pass the test, even though she didn't lie, and people didn't die. Caroline's liberal creds...

What a difference a decade makes. In the fall of 1998, President Bill Clinton faced impeachment for obstruction of justice and perjury in giving false and misleading testimony under oath regarding his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Congressional impeachment proceedings, while focused on the issue of...

On Christmas Day, British television Channel 4 provided Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a platform to broadcast "an alternative Christmas message on British television to rival Queen Elizabeth II's annual address." In the message, Ahmadinejad said that "if Christ were on Earth today, undoubtedly he would...

Welcome to Legal Insurrection's Official Guide to Blagojevich Blogs. What makes this "official"? The same thing that makes people think the Franklin Mint is related to the U.S. Mint, even though the commercial says it's not. These blogs have frequent posts or links specifically about...

I recently placed "tags" on my prior posts, to make it easier for readers to find posts by topic. Among the tags were "NY Times" and "media bias." As I began tagging the stories, however, I realized that every story I tagged "NY Times" also...

Thanks to Illinois Review for cross-posting this piece.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the highlights of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal complaint against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, played out dramatically at Fitzgerald's news conference, was that Blagojevich used extreme profanity to describe Barack Obama's refusal to make a deal...

Thanks to Open Line Blog and Capitol Fax for cross-posting this piece.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Friday, December 12, 2008, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion in the Illinois Supreme Court seeking emergency injunctive relief removing Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office, or alternatively, stripping Blagojevich of his...

Thanks to Illinois Review for cross-posting this piece.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On December 19, 2008, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich went in front of the television cameras and boldly proclaimed that he had done nothing wrong, much less criminal. Blagojevich pledged to "fight" to his "last breadth," invoking words similar...

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went on television yesterday and gave a speech to remember. What people will remember about the speech are the catchy phrases: "I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath" has received perhaps the most...

Thanks to Illinois Review for cross-posting this piece.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------During impeachment hearings before the Illinois legislature on Thursday, December 18, 2008, Gov. Rod Blagojevich's attorney, Ed Genson, repeatedly objected to legislators using "illegal" wiretap information as part of the impeachment proceeding. Illinois legislators seemed dismissive, at times...

As previously reported, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) came under intense pressure to move its annual convention, scheduled to start January 6, 2009, away from the San Diego Grand Hyatt because the hotel is owned by a contributor to the pro-Proposition 8 campaign...