President Elect Obama's Transition Team Releases Statement on Blagojevich Contacts, Pundits Salivate

Word has just come down that President Elect Barack Obama's transition team has released a statement regarding the their report on any contacts between their office and disgraced Illinois Rod Blagojevich's office. It seems that the report is ready to go but after a revue US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has asked them to hold off on releasing report until next week so as to not impede his investigation. Now let me quote from a portion of the press release.

"At the direction of the President-elect, a review of Transition staff contacts with Governor Blagojevich and his office has been conducted and completed and is ready for release. That review affirmed the public statements of the President-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that the President-elect's staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as US Senator.

Now Karen Tumulty at TIME'S Swampland blogs characterized the report like so.

(I'm told it turned out to be "pretty milquetoast stuff.")

So now the report is ready, it has been reviewed by USA Fitzgerald, and supposedly its "milque toast stuff". Do you think any of that will stop the talking heads from continuing to frame this story as harmful to President Elect Obama? Of course not.

There is a reason why I highlighted the quote from the press release. No sooner than I had read the post on Swampland, I hear Rick Sanchez on CNN parsing the word "inappropriate" in the statement to frame it as mysterious. Mind you on most days I enjoy Sanchez, especially when he was in rare form during the election season. But the media are in straight group think mode right now and Blago Gate and its supposed negative effects on PEOTUS Obama is the ruling meme of the day. I can only imagine how that statement, that to any reasonable person reads as a confirmation of the absence any wrong doing, will be twisted by this time tomorrow into being an indictment on Obama and his whole transition team.

Clinton Rules are in full effect baby. But somehow I believe that Obama is strong enough to weather the storm.