Blago: Oppression and Agency

As we all know, Governor Rod Blagojevich has recently been impeached and effectively removed from office. His impeachment process was both very bothersome and seen as unfair by many Americans. There was definitely a lot of agency and oppression that occurred during his impeachment in my opinion.

OPPRESSION
1. The people were oppressed. Blago was found guilty of trying to sell the senate seat or at least discussing this. This is oppressing the people of Illinois because it is unfair. The people deserve a fair governor and a good senator.
2. In my opinion, Blago was oppressed. The hearing was unjust because the jury was biased. I don't believe anyone truly knew if he was actually going to sell the seat or if he was just talking about it. This is a crime, but in my opinion he doesn’t deserve to lose his job as governor necessarily or possibly lose his pension and go to prison. Also, the government recorded his phone conversations, which in my opinion violates our first amendment.

AGENCY
1. In some people’s opinion, Blago has oppressed the people of Illinois by even discussing the sale of the vacant senate seat. He is taking away the people’s right to a just senator. This power has been given to him through his previous job, as the governor.

2. Personally, I believe that Blago was oppressed by our judiciary system, who obviously obtains power from our government. How can we leave the future of a man in the hands of biased, everyday people? Also, it wasn’t right record his phone calls and listening to his conversations.

MY VERDICT
I believe in order to limit oppression we should both watch our state and national representatives closely and improve our judiciary system. Corruption would be limited if we simply observed representatives a bit closer. Does this mean we should tap phones? Not necessarily because that could be seen as oppression. Also, I believe that a new system might be necessary. Countless innocents have been jailed or sent to their deaths and countless criminals have gotten off. We need technology such as lie detection software to make better decisions. But that’s just my opinion; what do you think? Do you think there could have been a better way to deal with the Blago situation?