Paging PT Barnum

Unless you are building heating units with the Amish, you might have noticed that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested yesterday, for attempting to sell the senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. It's that simple. Corruption at its most reprobate within the public spectrum.

Now, I have to admit that I battle with simultaneously being repulsed at the sheer reptilian coldness Chicago politics ushers in while also looking forward to the next four years giving us the most colorful, arrhythmic circus national politics has ever seen. And unless the world's most tenacious prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, comes down with a sudden case of "Fatwa Syndrome," then the next president is already going to be laying his hand on the Bible on a politically overcast day with no sign of clearing.

Public spotlight on some episodes Obama thought he had put behind him, including his ties to Antoin Rezko, a convicted Chicago real-estate developer who was accused in a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit Tuesday of scheming with Blagojevich. Rezko raised campaign funds for both men, and was one of Obama's earliest supporters as he was climbing the political ladder in Illinois.

Man. Talk about baggage so overloaded that it's begun spilling out on the tarmac as you're boarding Air Force One for the first time.

I've got my popcorn. Too bad the circus is four years long. But at least the clowns are entertaining.

-R