* I’m not sure that the out-of-state (and even some of the in-state) media really understands (or wants to understand) what’s going on with all these Rod Blagojevich subpoenas of powerful people to testify at his trial.

Some are reacting as if the subpoenas of Harry Reid, Jesse Jackson Jr., Dick Durbin, etc. mean that those guys did something wrong.

Actually, it’s just the opposite. Blagojevich wants them to testify on his behalf, meaning he wants them to swear under oath that he didn’t do, say or even imply anything illegal during their conversations about the US Senate seat vacancy or anything else. The idea is to undermine the federal case against him by having some high-level government types (including the President, before the judge squelched that attempt) say that the conversations always sounded legal to them.

The added bonus, of course, is that the subpoenas naturally taint these targets before the trial. But he’s not bringing them in because they did something wrong or know of something wrong. He’s doing it to show that Blagojevich did nothing wrong.

* Blagojevich’s former chief of staff, meanwhile, has taken up a more honorable trade. According to his attorney, John Harris, 48, is now “working as an apprentice electrician.”

Honest work. Good for him.

* And speaking of honesty, or the lack thereof, WLS Radio’s report yesterday on Scott Lee Cohen stirred up quite a hornet’s nest here and elsewhere…

Candidate for Governor Scott Lee Cohen is telling Bill Cameron he quit the Democratic party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor after being threatened with prison by a high-level party official. […]

“It was, if you don’t drop out today, then all your tax records better be in impeccable order, because someone’s going to jail. And then I was told, if they couldn’t find anything to put me in jail over, they’d still put me in jail. They would make something up to put me in jail. They did not want me on that ticket.”

Lots of commenters here immediately jumped to the conclusion that Cohen was talking about Speaker Madigan. The Sun-Times has a more complete story than WLS, which is no surprise…

No, it was not party Chairman Michael Madigan or Gov. Quinn, [Cohen] said.

I still don’t believe a word of what Cohen said unless he’s willing to put names behind it. And probably not even then. Remember, this is the same guy who claimed anti Semitism played a role in his ouster from the ticket without naming any names…

The elected officials would never say that they don’t want me because I’m Jewish. But it did come up in chatter and in backroom meetings.

Yeah. The alleged hooker knifing had nothing to do with it, I’m sure.

Like Blagojevich, this person is not to be believed.

* And now back to Blagojevich for our finale. Chicago Magazine has put its article about the suicide of Chris Kelly online. It’s definitely worth a read…

Such loyalty would be in keeping with Kelly’s personality, says a former senior aide in the Blagojevich administration who clashed often with Kelly. “We didn’t always see eye to eye,” he told me. “But if he was your friend, he was your friend to the end. And if you were on his team, he was on your team, and he’d fight anybody for you. I think it showed that everybody else flipped on Rod except Kelly. He’d rather take his own life than rat out a friend.”