It's about freaking time!

For the record, I know everybody and his brother will be posting on the topic of G-Rod, today.

I'm unoriginal.

So sue me.

Anyway.

I love my home state of Illinois, but for years I've been embarrassed and frustrated by its politics. We who live downstate have little or no power to counter the massive forces of corruption from Chicago.

That's why it's nice to hear that the feds have taken Blagojevich into custody. He's the most frustrating and embarrassing element of IL politics, currently -- frustrating because his actions are quite obviously corrupt, and embarrassing because they're so obviously corrupt. It's bad enough to have a crook in office, as long as, for the most part, he's done little real harm to the people (hearken back to the days of Da Mare, Richard J. Daley). But this guy and his cronies have been both criminal and harmful... and the Blowdried One has been stupid and clumsy, to boot.

Of course, I should be grateful that Blago is such an idiot. He has probably made it very easy to remove him from office, and possibly opened the door to a thorough house-cleaning. But we have to live with the aftermath. Part of the aftermath is that there is no Republican party to pick up the pieces. The last batch of candidates for gov. from the right side of the aisle were mostly a bunch of wooden lumps, none of whom seemed able to demonstrate a lick of leadership in simple times... so we're supposed to expect them to handle a mess like this? We haven't had a real leader in the Illinois Republican party since Big Jim Thompson left office. Edgar was okay, but he just held the office, no great shakes. And then, of course, there was Ryan. [cue theme from "Jaws"]

So, we'll just get more Dems. Same old same old. Except we'll be getting more of the less-experienced Dems, and it's likely that, in the long run, they'll grow up to be more like Blowdriedovich than like Big Jim.

But wouldn't it be nice to think we really were heading for a happy future?