Jeralyn: "Next up in Patrick Fitzgerald's sight is probably Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But, Fitz doesn't always get his man. He didn't get Karl Rove."

No, but Fitzgerald came pretty darn close. Rove had to go before the grand jury several times to amend his initial statements to prosecutors.

"I wouldn't trust [Tony] Rezko's testimony any more than I trust [Stuart] Levine's."

And in all honesty and likelihood, neither will a grand jury or trial jury trust Mr. Rezko, without substantive documentation and / or corraborative witnesses also inroduced to support his testimony.

further, the defense has every right and obligation to impeach his credibility as a government witness, and in such instances of coerced testimony should always be granted considerable leeway and latitude by the trial judge to do so. I have no problem with that.

However, that said, I don't necessarily have the same aversion to so-called "snitches" as you do as a criminal defense attorney, Jeralyn - particularly when it comes to investigating or prosecuting white collar crime and / or political corruption.

I've worked far too long in the bowels of government as legislative and congressional staff to note any other effective means by which you can successfully prosecute people for willfully subverting government processes in such a perverse and destructive fashion.

Occasionally, there is that rare exception of the direct participant or third-party witness to a conspiracy to defraud, who suffers from inconsolable pangs of conscience and decides to come forward. But let's get real here. How often does that happen?

I am a staunch advocate and defender of due process in all areas and levels of government, and as such I really have zero tolerance for public corruption.  Such unethical extra-legal enterprising is a potentially lethal social cancer that has in fact and historically destroyed more states and societies than I can possibly document here, without also using up the bulk of your bandwidth.

If Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is indeed guilty of public corruption, he deserves to go down by whatever legal and ethical means U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald can leverage against him. And if it takes the testimony of Tony Rezko to do it, so be it. I'll trust the jury to not accept the word of a convicted felon at face value without substantial corraboration.

Let us never forget that there is all too often a very real and palpable human cost attached to public corruption. Blagojevich's predecessor, former Gov. George Ryan, went to federal prison because he had actively solicited and accepted bribes while serving previously as Illinois Secretary of State, in exchange for the issuance of commercial driver's and trucker's licenses to persons who should never have received them in the first place.

Sadly, Ryan's scheme unravelled ex post facto, and only after six young children lost their lives in a rather grisly traffic accident on a Chicago tollway, which was caused by the reckless negligence of one of those illegally-licensed truckers.

Several years later, Ryan himself was finally taken down by the same Patrick Fitzgerald, who patiently and persistently solicited the testimony of a number of persons involved in that conspiracy (and / or related unethical enterprises), who in each and every turn gave up the ghosts standing on higher wrung of Ryan's ladder of corruption to mitigate their own sentences or culbability.

Hamstring the capacity of prosecutors to do that, and we might as well shut down all present and future government initiatives to remove or mitigate public corruption. Such programs would be no more effective than a quarterback in football who's restricted by rule to calling only the "Hail Mary" pass.

Nuf ced. I've got to get back to work.