The answer is “Yes.”

· From the Sun-Times:

An administrative law judge hearing the case of Dawn DeFraties and Michael Casey for the state Civil Service Commission ruled that the main accusations against the two — including manipulating the grading system for job applicants known to have political sponsors — be dismissed because they lacked detail. Lawyers for the governor have until July 19 to provide more specific information about whose job applications were affected.

Ottenhoff said the administration will do exactly that and did not want to divulge too many details about DeFraties and Casey because of the U.S. attorney’s probe. “We are prepared to provide that,” she said.

Springfield attorney Carl Draper, who is representing DeFraties and Casey, said the ruling helps show that his clients are being scapegoated.

“They couldn’t come up with a single fact to support the charge,” Draper said of the Blagojevich administration’s lawyers. “The bottom line is if this governor cared about stopping corruption in his employment practices, he needed to stop it in his own office.”

· The Daily Herald on Abby Ottenhof’s claim that the administration had hired a few “bad apples.”

Coincidentally, Ryan’s initial defense during his administration’s corruption probe was that “a few bad apples were responsible.”

The Daily Herald also caught up with Topinka yesterday.

“We all thought this governor was going to do something about cleaning up government. I think it’s disappointing. It’s a sad day for Illinois, another sad day,” Topinka said during a parade in South suburban Evergreen Park Friday night.

· And another lawsuit has been filed:

Eighteen former employees of the Illinois Department of Transportation filed suit Friday alleging they had been illegally replaced with workers loyal to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. […]

The fired workers, who include some prominent local Republicans, also contend their private personnel records were improperly examined by representatives of the Democratic governor and that they are entitled to monetary damages as a result.

The former employees also want several state agency directors fired because they authorized payments to an outside attorney hired by Blagojevich, even though the attorney did no work for the agencies. […]

However, the lawsuit alleges there was no reorganization going on at the time of the firings. Some of the positions eliminated were required by law and thus could not legally be eliminated, the suit says, and the ousted employees were not given the opportunity to transfer to other jobs within the agency.

According to the lawsuit, IDOT “hired new employees, a significant number of whom had made financial contributions to political committees supporting Governor Blagojevich, the Democratic Party of Illinois or other political committees for candidates affiliated with the Democratic Party of Illinois.”

· The governor refused to answer questions at a press conference in Pekin and most of the local media let him get away with it. Molly Parker of the Peoria Journal Star caught up with him later, though.

In Peoria on Friday, the governor said his office has been cooperating with investigators for the past year. He even took credit for the investigations, saying it was the inspector general hired under a law he pushed for in 2003 who was initially responsible for netting the wrongdoers.

“We’re part and parcel of trying to ferret out the wrongdoing. This is an example of how we’re making good changes to clean up what has been an old, tired, corrupt system. Every so often, even your own hires, you’ll hire people who violate the rules”…

OK, but what about that Fitzgerald phrase “very serious allegations of endemic hiring fraud”?

· The governor also had this to say:

“I think what they (the U.S. attorney’s office) basically said to the attorney general was, ‘Get out of our way. We’re working on this, have been working on this for the last year, and we are eager to help them ferret out wrongdoers in state government.’

“This, again, is a fundamental change and difference from what happened under (the) previous administration,” Blagojevich said.

Yeah. Under the previous administration, the Republican attorney general wasn’t investigating corruption, so he didn’t have to get out of the way.