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For the better part of the last three years, I have been howling about the incompetence of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Today, he was arrested.

He is accused of trying to sell the senate seat of presidnet-elect Barack Obama, among other things. To be honest, it’s the among other things that offended me the most.

For instance, the indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s office charges that the governor tried to sell reimbursement for children’s medical care. The charges claim he tried to force the CEO of Children’s Medical Hospital to donate $50,000 to hsi campaign fund in return for the state actually paying $8 million in bills. Since the state owes various contractors $5 billion, I can see where the CEO might have been tempted. The hospital like many others in Illinois is struggling because the state doesn’t pay its bills.

He is also charged with trying to force the Chicago Tribune to fire editors that were unfriendly or wrote editorials calling for the goernor’s impeachment. Hmmm, kick the journalists who are actually doing their jobs. The governor’s offer was to help the Tribune’s parent company in their efforts to sell Wrigley Field in Chicago. The indictment doesn’t exactly say that the Trib told the governor to go to hell, but Wrigley hasn’t sold and the Trib editors are still working.

The most heartening part of the news conference was, well, twofold. As a reporter, I was encouraged to hear that the Tribune had heard rumors of the investigation 2 months ago and when asked to hold the story until the evidence was in, they did.

The second heartening event was the report that while the governor and his chief of staff presumed that they could make a deal with the president-elect and appoint the person “he wanted” as his successor, the deal fell flat. Being prosecutors, the spokesmen for the U.S. Attorney’s office would not officially clear the president-elect from any wrongdoing, but repeated that just because the governor tried to make a deal doesn’t mean the president-elect was willing to play.

Pay to play politics in Illinois is nothing new, but this is ridiculous. Only two governors in the last 50 years have made it through their terms of office without accusations of wrongdoing. Maybe, as one local mayor suggested, it’s the office that’s corrupt.

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