* If this video snippet of the governor’s kids leaving their home this morning doesn’t tear at your heart a bit, you’ve got no heart…

The governor has nobody to blame but himself, of course. But I know those kids and I’m just devastated for them.

* Meanwhile, after years of discord and bitter division, the Mell family is finally closing ranks…

Ald. Mell teared up when he talked about a conversation he had with his daughter Wednesday — the first time he’d spoken to her in “quite a while.”

“She said she’s going through a rough time,” he said. “But she said, as rough as it is, what happened two years ago when her mother died was harder.”

* More…

The family of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife said her profanity-laced comments recorded by federal prosecutors don’t reflect who Patti Blagojevich really is.

“That is absolutely not my sister,” Deborah Mell told the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “Patti is a mother, a sister and a devoted wife. She is particularly protective of her family

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Political spouses should never read newspaper editorials. I can’t condone her reaction, and her desire for retribution against the Tribune, but I can empathize.

* Here’s Carol Marin’s full interview…

* You’re not gonna see this statement from me very often, but I couldn’t agree more with Tom Roeser…

Well, com’on, guys. Everybody, including a little lady whose husband is running into trouble and who herself might do a little time, is entitled to express a few vulgarisms…even obscenities…without the august, sanctimonious mainstream media raising their eyes to heaven. After all, we know that journalists don’t swear, don’t take the name of the Lord in vain and never-ever make un-fastidious allusions to the male-female reproductive process.

I think the “Sun-Times” headline yesterday that gasps at the surreptitiously tape-recorded exclamations of Patti Blagojevich…gasps!…presses its fingers to its eyes so as to ward off a cerebral hemorrhage in astonishment…is really overdone.