*** UPDATE *** Ryan is getting out early…

The attorney for George Ryan says the former governor has qualified for work release five months before his July 2013 parole.

Former Gov. Jim Thompson says Ryan’s new home will be a halfway house in the West Loop. The 78-year-old Ryan is serving a 6 1/2-year sentence at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., for a 2006 conviction on corruption charges.

[ *** End of Update ***]

* This happened during my day off and I wanted to gauge your reaction…

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan lost a bid on Monday to cut short his 6-1/2 year prison sentence for corruption, with an appeals court rejecting arguments that prosecutors failed to prove he took bribes.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed the conviction and sentence, finding that Ryan failed to provide honest services to the people of Illinois who elected him, and that he violated this duty by giving state benefits to his friends. […]

On appeal, Ryan argued that the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in a case against former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling unsettled his conviction by changing the law that governs honest-services fraud. In that case, the high court found that honest-services fraud was limited to bribery and kickback schemes.

* This same appellate court upheld Ryan’s conviction a year ago, but the US Supreme Court wanted them to reconsider Ryan’s arguments…

“George Ryan, as a public official, had a duty to provide honest services to the people of the state of Illinois who elected him,” reads the opinoin by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook. ” And the evidence in this case has shown that he repeatedly violated that duty.

“The benefits included free vacations, loans, gifts, campaign contributions, as well as lobbying money that Ryan assigned or directed to his buddies. In short, Ryan sold his office. He might as well have put up a ‘for sale’ sign on the office.”

* More…

Defense attorneys had argued that gifts and vacations Ryan received from people who later got state business were based on friendship, weren’t an exchange for financial benefits and, therefore, weren’t bribes.

One of several examples cited in Monday’s ruling was a $3,185 check written by a lobbyist to pay for a band to play at the wedding of Ryan’s daughter.

“Ryan’s lawyers vigorously argued that these benefits were tokens of friendship, and that he did nothing in return for them,” the opinion said. But, it continues, prosecutors had fundamentally argued at trial that they were bribes and, “The verdict shows that the jury found in the prosecution’s favor.”

* And Gov. Pat Quinn rubbed salt in the wound…

At an unrelated event, Quinn said that the court has spoken and Ryan had his day in court.

He says Ryan has to “do the time.”

* Meanwhile, Patti Blagojevich is upset that the transcripts still aren’t available from her husband’s trial. Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys can’t file an appeal until those transcripts are finished, but the court reporter has been on a personal leave of absence for over five months and now she’s facing a mountain of unfinished work and has asked for an extension…

In an exclusive interview, she told FOX Chicago News that the situation is “incredibly frustrating.”

“I mean, my girls miss their dad, he’s missing their birthday, my daughter had her sixteenth birthday just the other day,” Patti said.

Mrs. Blagojevich said it’s been bugging her for months. […]

“There sure was a rush to get my husband in jail,” Blagojevich wrote to friends on Facebook, “where he now sits waiting for the long overdue transcripts.”

It’s not like he has a chance on appeal, but I get the frustration.