ABC News is reporting that an attorney that did undercover work for the FBI in the 1980's told federal authorities decades ago that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich ran an illegal gambling operation and payed the mob a street tax in order to operate. (see update below)

Former mob lawyer and Chicago cop Robert Cooley was so credible as an FBI informant that his work netted 24 corrupt judges, lawyers and cops in operation Gambat. Yet ABC news elected not to report the story during Blagojevich's 2006 re-election campaign because Cooley wanted to remain anonymous and the Governor denied the allegation.

"When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the mob out there," said Robert Cooley, federal informant.

On a web-based interview show last week, Cooley said he reported to federal authorities nearly two decades ago that Rod Blagojevich had been operating an illegal sports gambling business.

Robert Cooley is a former Chicago police officer-turned mob lawyer-turned federal informant. During Operation Gambat in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Cooley's undercover work and testimony put away 24 crooked politicians, judges, lawyers and cops. Several years ago, when Mr. Blagojevich was running for re-election, Cooley provided the same information to the ABC7 I-Team. Because Cooley did not want to be identified at the time and the governor denied it, ABC7 did not report the story.

A small county in rural Alabama is making national news for passing a motion declaring that the second Monday in November will be forever recognized as "Barack Obama Day".

Normally small county resolutions that affect a mere 40 of this nation's 301 million residents would not capture a national audience. In this case however the AP has discovered one of those pivotal occasions where they can pursue what should be an obvious national event while at the same time implying the obvious racism of the rest of the state that supported John McCain "largely on strong support from White voters."

MARION, Ala. - In central Alabama's Perry County, government workers already get a day off for President's Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Veteran's Day. In 2009, they'll get one more: "Barack Obama Day."

The rural county, which overwhelmingly supported Obama in last month's presidential election, has approved the second Monday in November as "The Barack Obama Day." Commissioners passed a measure that would close county offices for the new annual holiday and its roughly 40 workers will get a paid day off.

[...]

Perry County has 12,000 residents, most of them Black. Voters there backed Obama by over 70 percent in a state that gave 60 percent of the overall vote to Republican John McCain based largely on strong support from White voters. - Save the date: Ala. county passes Obama holiday

An independent investigator hired by the Alaska Personnel Board has determined that state prosecutor Steve Branchflower miscontrued evidence and applied the wrong state laws to determine that Sarah Palin abused her office by firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

The report provides vindication for Sarah Palin who had claimed that Branchflower's investigation had been motivated by partisan politics.

The board decided to release the normally secret findings after Palin waived her privacy rights. According to Fox News the board released the findings as a matter of public interest due to Palin's status as John McCain's running mate in tomorrows election.

Chicago Tribune staff writer Rex Huppke has solicited the expertise of communist party leaders to defend Barack Obama from the fallout of the now famous answer he supplied to a man referred to as Joe the Plumber.

In an article with the misleading headline "Socialists: Obama No Socialist" Huppke applied some painstaking logic to reach his conclusion that Barack Obama can not be a socialist if avowed communists will not state that he is.

Local communists, rarely tapped as campaign pundits, say Sen. Barack Obama and his policies stand far afield from any form of socialism they know.

John Bachtell, the Illinois organizer for Communist Party USA, sees attempts by Sen. John McCain's campaign to label Obama a socialist as both offensive to socialists and a desperate ploy to tap into fears of voters who haven't forgotten their Cold War rhetoric.

Time Magazine editor at large Mark Halperin appeared on WLS AM radio in Chicago this morning with Don Wade and Roma to discuss politics as he does every Monday. In one of the better moments in radio Don Wade quipped that Halperin was doing stand up comedy after Halperin stated that Rahm Emanuel, Charles Schumer and Dick Durbin would actually prevent Barack Obama from going crazy liberal. (audio here, jump to 5:55)

Don Wade: New Gingrich called it the repo administration, he says if Obama wins, and if he has a moderate House and Senate he would probably be more like a Richie Daley in his administration. But he doesn't have a moderate House and Senate, he has Reed and Pelosi who are far lefties so we are in for a lot of trouble.

What do you think of that idea, that if the House and Senate were moderate that Obama would be more like Rich Daley?

Halperin: Well, I think the House and Senate are going to have a lot of moderates and a lot of liberals. And a lot of liberals in positions of authority. I am currently thinking, although there is speculation on both sides of this, that people like Congressman Emanuel, a friend of your program, and people like Charles Schumer, an others, maybe even Dick Durbin, who is relatively liberal, are going to be looking to work with Congress on behalf of the administration if there is an Obama administration to try to keep him from going crazy liberal. And I think that what will happen.

Justin Rood of ABC news came out with a tortured defense of ACORN today with the help of "experts" that claim there is no connection between invalid voter registrations and voter fraud. In order for Rood to make this claim he relies on the testimony of two "experts", namely Civil Rights attorney David Becker and Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Barnard College in New York.

A further examination of these two experts however shows that Rood is downright deceitful in presenting this argument. Lorraine Minnite actually donated $250 to the Obama campaign in March of this year while David Becker is anything but the Republican that he is portrayed as in the article. In fact Mr. Becker is a former director at People for the American Way, a liberal activist group that monitors "right wing organizations" and is currently launching a campaign aimed at Fighting Back Against Right-Wing Smears of ACORN.

Just in case you were unconvinced of the objectivity of Becker's former group note that they will be launching a full page ad in the New York Times in defense of ACORN.

The Colony South Hotel & Conference Center in Clinton, Md., has hosted fundraisers for Barack Obama, held a prayer breakfast for a local Democrat, hosted a meeting for the African-American Democratic club and hosted a home foreclosure program for Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer. But now that they had the audacity to put up a McCain-Palin campaign sign on their front lawn they are being threatened with an angry response from Obama supporters. (h/t Big Dog)

The act has enraged so many Obama supporters that even the NAACP has weighed in on the issue. Other Democrat activists are stirring talk of a boycott with explicit reference to shutting the hotel out of consideration as host for future political conferences; a strong arm tactic that has severe financial repercussions so close to Washington DC.

One-Time NPR Commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Chicago Tribune caught up with William Ayers at his university office yesterday. While Ayers refused to comment for the reporters he told them from his door, "What could I possibly add? Life happens."

The Tribune notes that the door or William Ayers is decorated with pictures of celebrated cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and murderous Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. These pictures alone contradict the narrative that William Ayers is somehow a repentant former radical:

Mehdi Kalhor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's media consultant and Iran's Vice President of media affairs announced on Saturday that Iran is setting two preconditions before it will engage in any talks with the United States. (h/t Wizbang).

The announcement was made in an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency and has been reported independently by both the Fars News Agency and Al Jezeera. Strangely though there does not appear to be any mention in the US media according to a Google search. (all emphasis mine throughout)

Vice President for Media Affairs Mehdi Kalhor said on Saturday that Iran has set two preconditions for holding talks with the United States of America.

In an exclusive interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, he said as long as U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and continues its support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. is off the agenda.

The New York Times took the unusual step of quickly editing and replacing a hysterical post by hockey blogger Lynn Zinser that covered Sarah Palin's appearance at the Philadelphia Flyers home opener where she was invited to drop a ceremonial puck. In her original post Zinser exaggerated the boos by the crowd, attacked Flyers owner Ed Snider for inviting Palin to the event and appears to have fabricated the discomfort felt by NHL players Scott Gomez and Mike Richards.

That account has since been changed. Somewhere along the line Zinser gutted the original article and replaced  it with a new one that came a bit closer to reality. However the repost didn't occur before the original article shot across the internet where it was eventually picked up by Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher and flogged as a "political scoop". (update below: Rangers Scott Gomez voting for McCain-Palin)

The mainstream media is going through another one of their meltdown moments as they rush to defend Barack Obama from his relationship with American terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. (plural)

John Stephenson of Newsbusters detailed CNN's supposed fact check that came in response to a speech that Sarah Palin gave. In that speech Palin did the job the mainstream media refuses to do by mentioning the words terrorists, relationships and Barack Obama in a single sentence while referring to the former Weather Underground leaders.

In rushing to Barack Obama's defense CNN slipped the following into the end of their fact check: 

The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists."

Well excuse me, but why should they? If CNN doesn't know that Bernardine Dohrn was a leader of the Weather Underground while they were bombing federal buildings and police stations why should the McCain campaign give CNN the legitimacy of a real news organization by providing a response?

With all the mainstream media emphasis on poll numbers that supposedly show strong leads for Barack Obama I was wondering if there should be any analysis of an AOL straw poll that shows John McCain solidly beating Barack Obama in a random sample of hundreds of thousands of readers. A major difference between the AOL straw poll and that of other polls is that the AOL poll does not consist of people that are chosen by the pollsters.The poll runs over a number of days and is repeated on a weekly basis.

I wrote about this poll on September 14th. It asks one question, vote for your candidate of choice. Two weeks ago the three day poll had amassed 321,168 samples, with 60% of the votes going to John McCain. The poll continues this week. As of September 25th the poll had counted 154,732 votes and McCain picked up 3 percentage points from the week before, leading Barack Obama by a 27 point margin, 63% to 37%.

You don't see this in the media every day. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed offers a counter argument to those that use the mainstream media pulpit to attack Sarah Palin from the feminist mantle. While peers like Mary Mitchell display their disdain for Sarah Palin with emotional editorial outbursts Michael Sneed is lending Palin some support in her column headlined "Revoke my feminist card -- I like Palin".

Hmmm. Maybe . . . I am not a feminist after all.

Maybe . . . working in a man's world for 42 years and busting my butt to beat them up the ladder deletes me from the feminist category.

Perhaps . . . struggling to be a good single mom in a very married world -- yet meeting my five-day-a-week column deadline -- doesn't earn me a feminist handle either.

Certainly . . . because I'm not appalled or sickened or shocked by Sarah Palin's stealing the thunder from Obama the orator, I am not a feminist.

Give me a break.

Here at Newsbusters we are not surprised to see liberal bias in the media. In fact it is to be expected. But there are degrees of bias; typically falling somewhere in between the subtle undertones of contextually stretched reporting to the overtly blatant thrill up the leg sort.

But there is another type of bias that is so mean spirited and over the top that you have to wonder if we aren’t observing a nervous breakdown on a mass scale. It seems that many in the media are becoming unglued over the concept of a McCain-Palin ticket.

Case in point is Mary Mitchell's latest column that appeared in yesterday's Chicago Sun Times.

Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama's mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt.

I hate that she makes Joe Biden look like John McCain and John McCain look like the maverick he is not.

A new whisper campaign is forming in the blogosphere and creeping into web search engines across the internet as a self proclaimed e-zine called "LA Progressive" is spreading a false rumor that Sarah Palin called Barack Obama 'Sambo' while dining in an Alaska restaurant. Charley James, the author of the article that is unlikely to have his blogspot site shut down for Obama bias, also claims through 'anonymous sources' that Palin called Hillary Clinton a "b#^@h" in the same breath. It is getting pretty desperate out there.

Here are the opening paragraphs from Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean” (emphasis mine, src. Michelle Malkin):

Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun-Times appears to be having a hard time accepting the nomination of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate for the United States. On Tuesday she called Republican acceptance of the "bombshell" news that Bristol Palin was pregnant "malarkey" before ranting about the failure of abstinence only messages. 

This morning Mitchell is heaping a new sort of praise onto Sarah Palin, implying that her speech was a mean spirited attack, labeling her as backwoods and stating that discussing her record of experience is a "Republican ploy", i.e. - a trick to highlight Barack Obama's lack of experience.

Sarah Palin may come from the backwoods of Alaska, but she has the heart of a street fighter.

So Democrats shouldn't get entangled in the Republicans' "experience" ploy.

Palin isn't on the Republican ticket because she has been the governor of Alaska for two years.

The people who cooked up this scheme don't care whether Palin will be a heartbeat away from the presidency if something happens to the 72-year-old McCain.

Palin's on the ticket because she's a woman and she isn't afraid to engage in the Republicans' mean-spirited personal attacks.

Feminism took a step backwards this week. After being told for decades that women are being held back by the proverbial glass ceiling the left is looking to repair its most recent cracks with duct tape.

Apparently a mom, the once dispensable facet of the nuclear family according to many a card carrying liberal, is now so indispensable that she should actually feel guilty for seeking the job as Vice President of the United States. And you should be guilty too for recommending her for the post. This is the new theme as demonstrated by Liz Hunt of the Daily Telegraph and repeated by others that seem to have a new found problem with successful conservative mothers.

Hunt actually appears more desperate than most when attacking Sarah Palin by implying that Palin's daughter Bristol is getting married instead of getting an abortion for reasons of her mother's "political expediency".

Love and support are all very well. But what about choice. I just hope poor Bristol had a say in it too and that she isn't becoming a wife and parent at such a young age for reasons of political expediency and her mother's soaring ambition.

I suppose that Hunt could be implying that Bristol put the child up for adoption. But when left to poinder the phrasing, "what about choice", the left usually means "what about choice (for abortion)?"