The Chicago Tribune excoriated Gov. Rod Blagojevich over the weekend:

Blagojevich is an intentionally divisive governor and a profoundly unhelpful influence. He is unwilling or unable to see the chaos all around him. This year, lawmakers failed to make progress on schools, on state pension reform, on any number of critical matters. Mass transit in the Chicago region is about to implode, largely because of the state government’s failure.

While their gripes about Blago are familiar and I agree with several of them…

This is coming from the same paper that endorsed George W. Bush twice???

And they had to cite the conservative National Conference of State Legislatures for “research” about recalling a Guv?

Hypocrites.

The only reason the Tribune doesn’t have a similar “bill of particulars” against Pres. Bush is because the Republican Congresses refused to actually investigate the guy and, now that Dems are back in charge, the president’s staff (past and present) refuses to honor the growing number of Congressional summonses and the Bush-led Justice Dept. has indicated they’ll refuse to enforce them. Not that a newspaper which would endorse a Rubber Chicken as long as it had an R after its name would ever bother publishing such a list damning their president (gone are the days of “nobody of sound mind can read [the transcripts] and continue to think that Mr. Nixon has upheld the standards and dignity of the Presidency.”)

Illinois, like the United States itself, does have a “recall” option: impeachment. It is up to the State Legislature and the Congress, respectively, to determine what is or is not an impeachable offense. With self-serving, hypocritical editorial bents such as that seen over the weekend, the Tribune does not help further that option at either the State or Federal level.