Because the charges against Blagojevich are criminal and made by the U.S. Department of Justice, they are (so far) on a wholly different order from allegations about the Colemans that were made by private plaintiffs in a pair of Texas civil suits from October.
The dissimilarity, however, ends approximately there. In both cases, the charges are that illegal payoffs to the elected official would be masked as payment of work performed by the wife. The monetary amounts are in the same ballpark: Laurie Coleman’s company received $75,000 and was to be paid $25,000, while the salary proposed for Patricia Blagojevich ran as high as $150,000.
One difference: In the Colemans’ case, payments — which haven’t been shown to be illegal, and whose propriety Sen. Coleman has insisted on — were actually made, not just talked about during wiretapped conversations.
Gee, at this rate, we might need a special "Republicans Only" federal prison.
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