Keep It Moving, Nothing To See Here

The Blagojevich report from President Elect Barack Obama has finally been released. Nothing juicy has been extracted so far from the talking heads and it seems that true to Obama's word nothing improper was documented. Rahm Emanuel did talk to Governer Blagojevich once or twice but there was never any quid pro quo. One thing I did find interesting was that President Elect Obama did actually float Jesse Jackson Jr's name as one of four people who would make a good appointment to his vacated Senate seat. This was interesting because right after the Blagojevich scandal broke many people were trying to posit that Obama didn't want Triple J to get the Senate seat and had some how snubbed him.

From Karen Tumulty of TIME's Swampland Blogs post on the report.

Between the time that Mr. Emanuel decided to accept the position of Chief of Staff in the White House and December 8, 2008, Mr. Emanuel had about four telephone conversations with John Harris, Chief of Staff to the Governor, on the subject of the Senate seat. In these conversations, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Harris discussed the merits of potential candidates and the strategic benefit that each candidate would bring to the Senate seat. After Ms. Jarrett removed herself from consideration, Mr. Emanuel – with the authorization of the President-Elect – gave Mr. Harris the names of four individuals whom the President-Elect considered to be highly qualified: Dan Hynes, Tammy Duckworth, Congresswoman Schakowsky and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.

There was one caveat that Obama and some of his staff including Emanuel and Valarie Jarrett were interviewed last week by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald but it appears that there it was just an informal deal.

I am sure that there will be some "clouds" that are formulated by the FoxNews folk and Joe Scarborough over the report but it appears that after having had the report vetted by U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald it truly appears that this is much adieu about nothing.