The first served in the early 19th century and left no likenesses behind. The second. Is eliot spitzer. Every day in every state across the country, our political system is bankrolled by an army of fundraisers, pulling in millions of dollars a race. Sometimes it looks like you might imagine knocking on doors, calling every name in the phone book, and emailsso many emails. But for all those little fish throwing 100 to their local race, its the whales those Campaign Fundraisers really need powerful, rich individuals and companies. And when they donate 25,000, 100,000, a million dollars, they want a favor. Or 10. It should be obvious thats corrupt, but with a wink and a nod, political deals toe the bribery line every single day. And we may never have noticed that if a certain illinois governor hadnt flung back the curtain with an unrepentant ego, a political corruption crime spree, and a set of unprecedented Audio Recordings that shined a bright light on the inner workings of american pol
Ive got this thing, and its [bleep] golden. Yeah. [audience laughter] and im not just giving it up for [bleep] nothing. [laughter] was there a second [bleep] in there . Tapper racking up a staggering 24 criminal charges, governor blagojevichs actions essentially boiled down to four things extortion, bribery, corruption, and wire fraud. And it wasnt just about the senate seat. Blagojevich was also found guilty of extorting a Childrens Hospital. You cant write this stuff. Hes an arrogant punk who thinks that, you know, hes bulletproof. Well, hes not. He was convicted on 18 total charges and sentenced to 14 years, the longest sentence ever handed down to a governor. People loathed blagojevich for the way he politicked, but was what he did so blatantly criminal . cause the truth is that the line between whats illegal and whats allowable is much murkier than wed like to think, and this is where the Rod Blagojevich story gets interesting. Let me reassert to all of you once more that i am not
class= nosel > all russian and soviet dictators, their problem is they always think that they re the last line of defense. you are in power. you have the right to, if you decide, to destroy it so nobody else will get it. the united states doesn t even notice that the soviets are on edge. they didn t even put the soviet reaction into ronald reagan s presidential daily brief. [indistinct radio chatter] [narrator] before andropov can act, the able archer operation wraps up on schedule. [pilot] roger that. [narrator] andropov is finally persuaded that this really was just an exercise. this time. [tim] the united states didn t know to ratchet down the tension when it really mattered. that is an indicator of just the lack of understanding that the united states and the soviet union had of each other. but in a nuclear confrontation, lack of understanding can have catastrophic consequences when adversaries have nuclear weapons pointed at each other and don t understand each other. e