(Melchizedek Communique, MC0125b09) Friends, Illinoisans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bid farewell to Blagojevich, not to praise him.

The evil the Illinois senate does lives after them. The good of Blagojevich is interred with his bones. So let it be with Blagojevich.

The noble Patrick Fitzgerald hath told you Blagojevich was ambitious; if it were so, it was a grievous fault; and grievously hath Blagojevich answered it.

Here, under leave of Fitzgerald, and Daley, and Madigan and the rest -- for Fitzgerald is an honorable man, and so are they all, all honorable men -- come I to speak in farewell to Blagojevich. He was our friend, faithful and just to us. (But Fitzgerald says Blagojevich was ambitious, and Fitzgerald is an honorable man.)

Blagojevich hath brought many dollars into his campaign coffers. Did this in Blagojevich seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Blagojevich hath wept. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Yet Patrick Fitzgerald says Blagojevich was ambitious, and Patrick Fitzgerald is an honorable man.

You all did see that on the Bank of America hounding the glass workers, Blagojevich did refuse to do business with Bank of America. Was this ambition?

Yet Patrick Fitzgerald says Blagojevich was ambitious. And, sure, Fitzgerald is an honorable man.

I speak not to disprove what Fitzgerald spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love Blagojevich once -- not without cause. What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?

Oh judgement, thou art fled to a brutish senate, and men have lost their reason! (Bear with me, my heart is in the wilderness there with Blagojevich, and I must pause till it comes back to me.)

But yesterday the word of witnesses might have stood against the world. Now has the senate blocked off some witnesses, and only left some poor to do Blagojevich reverence.

Oh civil libertarians, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds so troubled by Guantanamo to rage against denial of due process for an Illinois Governor, then I should do Patrick Fitzgerald wrong and Mayor Daley wrong, who, you all know, are honorable men.

I will not do Michael Madigan, Richard Daley, and Patrick Fitzgerald, all good Catholics, wrong. I rather choose to wrong the banished Blagojevich, to wrong myself, and you, than I will wrong such honorable men as Madigan, Daley, and Fitzgerald.

(Apologies to "William Shakespeare", i.e. Francis Bacon)