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Drip, drip, drip comes out the thick, nauseating syrup of corruption that is Chicago politics…from Legal Insurrection:

The media is all atwitter over the decision of the Illinois House committee considering articles of impeachment against Gov. Rod Blagojevich to deny the request by Blagojevich’s attorneys to subpoena Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett. The House decision comes at the request of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is concerned that the subpoenas may interfere in the criminal case against Blagojevich.

The media has it both right and wrong. Right, the House apparently made the decision not to issue subpoenas. Wrong, that Emanuel and Jarrett won’t have to testify at some point. The media is failing to draw the distinction between the House proceedings drafting articles of impeachment, and the actual trial.

The legislative process to draft articles of impeachment is under the complete control of the House Democratic majority, which among other things, has denied both Blagojevich and House Republicans the right to issue subpoenas. The legislative process is purely political, and the politics of the Democratic majority and Fitzgerald are perfectly aligned for now. Once the articles of impeachment are passed, however, the political process and Fitzgerald lose some measure of control.

Article IV, Section 14 of the Illinois Constitution provides that once the House has impeached the Governor, “[i]mpeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. If the Governor is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected.”

The key provisions are the requirement that the Senators do justice “according to law,” and that the Chief Justice “shall preside.” While there will be plenty of legal arguments over what this means, it is clear that these provisions impose a higher level of due process than the purely legislative House proceedings, which are not limited by such provisions.

At trial, we can expect Blagojevich to renew his request to call any and all witnesses necessary for his defense, and to invoke standards of relevance similar to what prevails in court. Unless the articles of impeachment are so narrowly drawn as to exclude any use of any information in the Criminal Complaint (or anticipated Indictment), it is likely that the testimony of Emanuel and Jarrett will be relevant to the issue, among others, of Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to sell Obama’s open U.S. Senate seat.

One does begin to wonder if Fitzgerald has blown his case – at this point, Blago is just entirely indifferent to what people think about him, or he’s seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. The trouble for Obama is that the light might be rather far down the tunnel and so this problem might continue on for months. Obama has a lot on his plate and he needs to have his senior aides called to testify in a seedy political corruption case like he needs a hole in his head. Trouble is, how does Obama get out of this and bury the whole problem?

He will become Fitzgerald’s boss on January 20th – and he can order Fitz to call off the dogs, fire Fitz or (worst case scenario) confirm to Fitz that his job is secure due to his mishandling of the Blago case which resulted in Blago not actually being sent to jail where he might be induced to spill all the beans about Chicago corruption. Doing the first would be fatal to Obama’s image as an agent of change. Ditto with the second alternative. If its the third, then its just a matter of time before it all comes out with the result that Blago becomes Obama’s Whitewater. There is a fourth alternative – Obama can come completely clean in this, but that is only possible if Obama and his senior aides really did nothing wrong (if Obama and aides are clean, is there still a chance that they’d refuse to clear the air – yes, because even a clean Democrat worries that a full airing of a case will just open up a can of worms).

We’ve got an economy on the fritz, a campaign to win in Afghanistan, a Russia getting out of control, a Venezuela which needs to be curbed, a China on the verge of an economic collapse, a new flare up in the Israeli-Arab War…in to this toxic mix we don’t need to add a corruption scandal. Too bad, then, that we elected a product of the hopelessly corrupt Chicago Democratic machine – Obama might be clean, but all those around him are deep in the Chicago muck.