With the excitement across the World in the run up to Obama’s inauguration, it would have been tricky to have missed the ‘attempt to sell his Senate seat’ episode that unravelled. As we await the results of an investigation into possible corruption in the House of Lords over here, another high profile corruption investigation starts to draw conclusions in the US.

In somewhat comical style, Illinois Governonr Rod Blagojevich launched a media blitz prior to his impeachment trial. Likening himself to movie characters played by Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper who fought against a crooked establishment, he said, “This is a 21st century Frank Capra movie.”

However, it doesn’t seem that anyone was prepared to support him in this particular line of thinking. After a four-day trial, the Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to convict him of abuse of power and in a second vote (also 59-0) they barred him from ever holding public office in the state again.

A quote taken from a taped conversation of the Illinois Governor was displayed during the prosecution’s closing arguments in his impeachment trial on Thursday at the state Capitol in Springfield (see pic above ((Scott Olson / Getty Images)).

According to MSNBC the governor claimed that when he was arrested, “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King, Gandhi and trying to put some perspective in all of this,” according to an interview transcript released by NBC’s “Today Show.” Some perspective.