Word: elective
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What's a little Senate seat bribery between friends? Sure, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to profit from the sale of President-elect Obama's newly vacant Senate seat. And he may have allegedly tried to force the newly bankrupt Tribune Co. to fire editorial staff members who were critical of him. And it's possible he traded favors for campaign contributions. But this is Illinois; as Robert Grant, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago field office, told the press at the announcement of the indictment, "if it isn't the most corrupt...
...President-elect's political universe overlaps uncomfortably with the Illinois governor's seamy world of swagger, cussing and kickbacks. Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once boasted that he and Obama had worked closely with Blagojevich on his 2002 election, which was billed as a reformist campaign - a claim that Obama aides deny and Emanuel has since retracted as "wrong." As recently as 2006, Obama told a reporter he had concerns about allegations of corruption involving state Democrats, though he added that he would be "happy" to work to support the governor's re-election...
...exactly the best way to land a job. But according to the Orlando Sentinel, that's just what happened last week between NASA administrator Mike Griffin and Lori Garver, a member of Barack Obama's transition team who will help decide if Griffin keeps his post once the President-elect takes office. If the contretemps did occur, it could help doom not only the NASA chief's chances, but the space agency's ambitious plans to get Americans back to the moon...
NASA is right to be uneasy about just what Obama has planned for the agency since his position on space travel shifted - a lot - during the campaign. A year before the election he touted an $18 billion education program and explicitly targeted the new moon program as one he'd cut to pay for it. In January of 2008, he lined up much closer to the Bush moon plan - perhaps because Republicans were already on board and earning swing-state support as a result. Three months before the election, Obama fully endorsed the 2020 target for putting people...
Wednesday was Rod Blagojevich's 52nd birthday, but you can bet it was not a happy one. After having been charged by federal authorities with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat that President-elect Barack Obama vacated, the Illinois governor spent most of the day hidden from view inside the state office building in downtown Chicago. The few allies he had left have vanished. And anyone who might have been among the unnamed Senate candidates in the detailed charges against Blagojevich have been busy putting distance between the governor and themselves. Among those were Congressman Jesse Jackson...