If nothing else, Governor Blagojevich makes a great case for the media to keep an eye on politicians.
Here are a couple of sites worth watching:
Richard Caro keep his site up to date with the latest details in his constitutional case pitting Caro, Gidwtiz and Madigan against Blagojevich. Attention Chicago Reader, SunTimes and Tribune employees, this site employs hypertext links. Clicking here will take you to a site with first hand observations and documentation about a major case involving our elected leaders.And on Reverse Spin, Dan Curry has been keeping us up to date on our Governor for some time, and has had the audacity to notice that Governor Blagojevich shares a lot of funding sources and politican machinations with Senator Barack Obama. Dan is relentless on organizing facts, and does not flinch from scrutinizing issues.
Richard Caro says:
Defendants have filed a motion to adjust the preliminary injunction schedule due to the problems thay have reaching an agreed upon statement of facts. Plaintiffs filed a response opposing any adjournment to the hearing date set for Jan. 25. Attached to the Response is a copy of the Fact Stipulation which represents our revision to Defendants' revision to our initially proposed facts.
I see no reason justifying Defendants failure to meet with us on Thursday, Jan. 10, Friday, Jan. 11, or today, Saturday Jan. 12, to finalize the Fact Stipulation.
I won't comment on the facts as proposed by each side at this time, but it is worth reading.
Richard Caro says:
For those CDO readers who have been following the case, we have been working to formulate a Stipulation of Facts that would obviate the need for witnesses to testify at the Preliminary Injunction hearing presently scheduled to be heard on January 25, 2008. This will help the Court to determine and decide the important legal and constitutional issues in the case. Since there are not crucial factual issues, even with respect to whether an emergency existed that justified the Department of Healthcare and Family Services expanding the availability of health insurance through the State's subsidized Family Care Program to parents or caretakers of children earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, having the facts stipulated allows the Court to decided whether the agency had the statutory authority to do this without prior act of the General Assembly providing this subsidized health insurance to most middle class families, and if it has that authority under existing the statute, whether that authority is constitutional.
Similarly, does the Department of Public Health have the statutory authority to exempt a class of women from the established financial limitations to free breast and cervical cancer screening with the General Assembly specifically authorizing it to do so, and if it does have that authority, whether it is constitutional?
We hope to have the facts stipulated to early next week and when we do, I will post them once they are filed with the Court and become, as a result, matters of public record.
After that, the Defendants will submit their Memorandum in Opposition to the Preliminary Injunction Motion, which will be followed by my and the Intervenor-Plaintiffs' reply.
The State will also submit its defense of the constitutionality of the JCAR statute. While the Press and Media have given this issue most of their attention, I doubt that that issue will be reached since it isn't necessary for the Court to reach it to decide whether to issue the preliminary injunction or even to decide the case in a final manner.
The real issues, and the important ones, are those that I have described above. They are also difficult issues and so, all counsel, are making a good faith effort to agree upon certain facts and, hopefilly, the end result will allow the Court to focus solely on and decide the statutory and constitutional issues that it needs to decide and only those.
I thank CDO for the coverage its given to this case, recognizing before any other news media entity the historic importance of the case.