Saturday, August 07, 2010

US Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald & Blago- Ahab Harpooning a Smelt


... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald . . .I mean Captain Ahab.

Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune and Natasha Korecki of the Chicago Sun Times are two of my favorite reporters. Each young lady is a skilled craftsman and dedicated reporter of facts.

Today, Stacy St. Clair offers an opinion piece. Rather, it is a thought piece, as it lays out the Blagojevich Trial and role played by Chicago's Gregory Peck -Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzy is not masking as Atticus Finch; rather, he is Ahab armed with a harpoon tipped and steeled with tantic metal, forged in the blood of his crew and hunting the The Great White Smelt* - Blago! "... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has kept a remarkably low profile during the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, largely avoiding the courtroom and the media throughout the summer and appearing only occasionally to catch a key moment or two from an overflow room where just audio can be heard.

But any attempt to distance himself from the Blagojevich carnival is probably futile.

The case is undoubtedly the apex of Fitzgerald's Chicago tenure, which is, of course, saying something, given he has made a career of toppling high-ranking politicians, mobsters and terrorists. Fitzgerald, though, put his personal stamp on the Blagojevich case early by declaring that the extraordinary pre-dawn arrest of a sitting governor was necessary to stop a "political corruption crime spree."


However, the Great White Whale of Corruption involves an endless network of financial self-interest formed by Progressives and leagued with machine politics - Rezko is not the mythical barnacle goose that spawned from fungus - rather he is a Golden Mushoom upon which tons of self-interest born from banking, labor, organized crime, Hyde Park Goo-goos and also the daffy old Machine Bosses were heaped. This network includes our President, Shorebank, Real Estate Dealers like Allison Davis, labor spawned political Iagos Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and SEIU's Andy Stern. However Ahab Fitzgerald sees not the WHALE. . . only the White Smelt Blago.. . ."to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"

He has tossed his harpoon! Let's see if Blago breaches with Fitz entwined in the ropes on the fish.

Well done Stacy St. Clair!

* Lake Michigan is loaded with smelt -any of various small, silvery food fishes of the family Osmeridae, of cold northern waters, as the North American rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax.

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