News to Obama

Is this news to you Barack Obama, hmm? Sun Times:

President-elect Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was pushing for Obama's successor just days after the Nov. 4 election, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Emanuel privately urged Gov. Blagojevich's administration to appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett, and the Sun-Times learned Tuesday that he also pressed that it be done by a certain deadline.

But Obama campaign guru, longtime Chicago Dem operative David Axelrod was over at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government about a week ago and said, no, no, no, The One always wanted Valerie Jarrett with him in the White House:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In what I can only describe as a political fantasy, Gov. Blagojevich somehow thought he could extract a Cabinet post from President-elect Barack Obama if he appointed Valerie Jarrett to replace Obama in the Senate.

But the reality is Obama always wanted Jarrett, a confidante who is friends with the president-elect and his wife, Michelle, to work with him in the White House, David Axelrod said Thursday night.

For the first time, Axelrod, Obama's senior campaign strategist who will be a top Obama White House adviser, commented about the scandal.

Is Davy baby out of the Loop?

Rahmbo's supposedly on the tape 21 times. These guys are all liars. Barack Obama is lying through his teeth and he isn't even president yet. (Doesn't he know what his people are doing?) Does he know what he's doing? (Is David Axelrod "misspeaking" again?) Maybe Barack is as clueless as the MSM.

UPDATE: The Sun Times is combing through their files, complete with pix. Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, under fire for his role in granting pardons for dollars in the waning days of the Clinton administration, somehow neglected to note his client relationship with good old Governor Blago on his disclosure forms. And this guy wants to be the chief law enforcement for the Obama administration? How appropriate. He didn't recall, he says:

The March 2004 Chicago news conference where Holder and Blagojevich spoke was widely covered because of a controversial 4-1 Gaming Board vote earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont. That vote defied the recommendation of the board's staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino's developer.

Besides that, the Gaming Board's staff had been concerned that the governor had named his close friend and fund-raiser, Christopher G. Kelly, as a "special government agent" to be involved in official state negotiations about the casino. Kelly, the Sun-Times later learned, was a business partner of Tony Rezko, another Blagojevich fund-raiser who had held an option to lease a hotel site next to the proposed casino site in Rosemont.

Another board Blago and Rezko apparently controlled. There's that, you know, health board.

P.S. Blago impeachment hearings live at ilga.gov. In other news, alleged serial killer Drew Peterson of suburban Chicago has announced he is engaged. He's 54, she's 23. This would be his 5th. They haven't found Stacy's body yet. And uh, he's still married. Tribune. The wheels of justice move slowly in Illinois.

In still other news, Chicago's Crook County once again named one of the worst judicial hellholes in the nation.