McIlheran scours for Obamojevich

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran is predictably bound and determined to find Barack Obama's fingerprints all over Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich.

Relying on a Slate.com column by John Dickerson, McIlheran can now reveal that one of those "being mulled" for Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat was the president-elect's longtime friend Valerie Bowman Jarrett, named in the FBI's affidavit as "Senate Candidate 1."

Dickerson says the indictment [sic] "suggests" that Obama was "pushing for [Jarrett] to get it." Not really. Blagojevich doesn't seem to have known any more than what he and his aides heard on CNN.

Much like McIlheran doesn't know any more than what he reads on the internets. And besides, Dickerson also refers to Blagojevich as "delusional." How exactly that squares the governor's profane ravings with the forced Obama connection is anybody's guess.

McIlheran certainly isn't telling. Nevertheless, he's facetiously skeptical of Obama's statement today. He doesn't explain that either.

One thing that's undeniably clear from the affidavit, however, is that Blagojevich had no intention of appointing Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate without receiving something in return for himself.

As Blagojevich puts it, "They're not willing to give me anything but appreciation. Fuck them." "They" and "them" being the Obama camp.

(Wherein McIlheran's own "story" completely eludes him: How did Blagojevich know that Obama didn't want to deal on Jarrett?)

So desperate for validation is McIlheran, in fact, that he even cites to James T. "Hip Beggings" Harris, who prophesies Barack Obama will pardon Blagojevich ... on Inauguration Day, no less. Uh huh.

Harris has long been employed by local journalists as a credibility-bolstering device. His résumé also includes striking oil on Uranus and the belief that humans cavorted with dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark.