Betcha didn't know that the elected office of Senator of the United States of America was a color coded position? Apparently, Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun-Times thinks it is, anyway, because she is warning that Obama's "black Senate seat" will be lost because of this mess with Governor Rod Blagojevich getting arrested for trying to sell that "black seat" to the highest bidder.

In hers headlined "Black leaders see Senate seat being hijacked," Washington is ostensibly reporting on what black community leaders and politicos in Chicago are saying about who should be appointed to fill Obama's vacant seat. Still, Washington injected quite a lot of her own feelings into the tale of this gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth over the fate of that same seat to the effect that she endorses the idea that Obama's position in the Senate is officially a "black seat" and should stay that way.

Washington is worried most that if the seat is left to be filled by an actual vote of the people of Illinois, instead of an appointment by the governor, it will spell the end of the "black seat." At one point, Washington even claims that "white voters" are uninterested in why they might "deserve" a black senator and so cannot be counted on to vote black. That despite the fact that when Obama ran he was overwhelmingly elected by those same white voters -- not to mention that the other party also put up a black senate candidate to face him. Wouldn't it seem obvious that voting black is not much of a problem for white voters in Illinois?

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has become such a huge embarrassment to his fellow Democrats that the mainstream media is now trying to explain away his over-the-top corruption as insanity on his part. And the sign of Blagojevich's insanity according to some media sources is his incredibly well-groomed hair. It seems that the Chicago Sun-Times is at the forefront of promoting Blagojevich insanity in two separate articles. First we have the Sun-Times Mark Brown promoting the idea of Blagojevich as a complete loon:

Rod Blagojevich's defense lawyers might want to consider an insanity defense.

The federal government's secret tape recordings of the governor's scheming during the past two months confirm what a lot of people have been saying about him for a long time now.

He's utterly mad. Completely and totally off his rocker.

And here's where it might actually work as a legal defense: He's incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

If Gov. Blagojevich does not resign immediately, impeach him.

This is the inescapable conclusion that comes after reading Tuesday’s 76-page criminal complaint against the governor alleging a runaway crime spree of political corruption.

In the Chicago Sun-Times on October 29, Andrew Greeley said that Barack Obama simply cannot beat racism to become president of the United States. He's consumed by all the talk of racism during this campaign and he sees it everywhere he turns. Of course, Greeley is right. There is a lot of talk of racism. But he isn't right about where it's coming from. You see, Greeley is claiming that racism is the sole reason that anyone wouldn't support Obama and he worries that racist talk is coming in torrents from Obama's opponents. The truth is, though, that the only people talking about racism is Obama and his most earnest supporters. People like Greeley.

Greeley and Obama's other supporters claim that anyone that opposes Obama is a racist. But the reality is that Obama's opponents are not talking much of or worried about the fact that Barack Obama is a black man. Obama's supporters, however, are acting just like the worst example of a McCarthyite in the respect that they see "racists" under their bed at night, around every corner, and in every dark closet. Greeley and his ilk see racists lurking everywhere... whether they exist or not.

In fact, in his fevered imagination, Greeley thinks that racists fill both parties and that they had marked Obama for destruction at the very outset saying that, "his rivals perceived that they had to destroy him." He marks the early battleground as the "haters on the Internet" and then claims that the Democrat Party itself took up the anti-Obama bigotry.

Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet told a Chicago radio duo this morning that Sen. Joe Biden was not referring specifically to Barack Obama in his now-famous comment at a fundraiser that the Illinois senator would be "tested" by a crisis in the first six months of his administration. (h/t e-mail tipster Rose Wagner)

From the October 22 Don Wade & Roma Show on WLS 890-AM in Chicago (audio here, fast forward to about 2/3rds way through):

LYNN SWEET, Chicago Sun-Times: It turns out that the Republican National Committee spent more than 150,000 [dollars on Gov. Palin's wardrobe].

DON WADE, co-host: Wait a minute. It's hard to focus on a story like that when Joe Biden is warning that we're going to have an international crisis if Barack Obama is elected and nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody's asked Joe Biden what do you mean by that?