* Laura Washington had a good column this week about Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. My favorite part…

Now the headlines are getting ugly. Now the mouths at the Dirksen Federal Building are spilling salacious, off-the-record but damning details. Political “friends” of the Jackson family are allegedly chatting up investigators, about pay-to-play and quid pro quo.

All true.

* Let’s move away from that former Senate contender to a current Senate contender. As we’ve already discussed, an investment fund in the state’s Bright Start college savings plan lost $85 million last year. Normally, that probably wouldn’t be any big deal since just about everybody lost money in the markets last year. But this one may be different…

Mr. Giannoulias knew about problems in Bright Start’s Core Plus investment fund a full half-year before he finally stopped throwing money into it.

According to Mr. Giannoulias’ office, he e-mailed Oppenheimer on May 6, saying he wanted to discuss Core Plus’ underperformance and how to “turn the ship around.” But it wasn’t until Dec. 4 — after the credit markets and Core Plus’ investments in mortgage-related securities had tanked — that the office diverted all new contributions from Core Plus to U.S. Treasuries.

By that time, the fund had about completed a year in which the value of what was supposed to be a nest-egg dropped a nifty 38%.

Mr. Giannoulias office says it was urged to “stay the course” by an independent advisory panel. But the treasurer made the final decision to wait.

Go read the whole thing.

* And then there’s this…

[A no-show grant] is one of 54 state grants frozen by the federal government as part of an on-going investigation into former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.

54 grants have been frozen?