After impeachment, Blagojevich vows to fight on

Vowing to "fight every step of the way," a defiant Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Friday predicted he would be exonerated of all charges against him, even as the Illinois House of Representatives voted 114 to 1 to impeach him.

At a press conference on Friday, Blagojevich said the impeachment was "not a surprise" and "a foregone conclusion." The governor characterized the House action as the latest installment in a political vendetta against him for trying to do his job and protect the people of the state ever since he was re-elected in November 2006.

"What the House did today, they have been talking about doing for the last couple of years." Blagojevich said. "In fact," he said, "the first discussion of doing what they did today, they started talking about back in the summer of 2007, when they failed to pass a budget and we were facing a government shutdown and I was calling the House into special session to try to work to get a budget so we can keep government operating."

Speaking with a group of elderly and disabled people behind him, the governor positioned himself as a defender of hte people while the legislators in Springfield had been distracted from the business they were elected to do. "From the very moment of my reelection, I have been engaged in a struggle with the House to try to get things done for people," Blagojevich said. "I have worked very hard, and continue to keep pushing and prodding the House to pass a capital construction program, a public works program, a jobs program, one that would create anywhere from 500,000 to 750,000 jobs. The House has stood in the way of letting that happen," he said.

The governor also pitched his plan to expand access to health care for children and the poor by invoking the values he said he learned from the Bible as a child. "In my view, those of us who make the rules ought to be able to follow a simple lesson that I was taught to believe in Sunday school called the Golden Rule: that you should do unto others as you would have others do unto you," he said.

Blagojevich then discussed his proposals for property tax relief for Cook County homeowners and expansion of breast and cervical cancer programs for the uninsured, both of which he said had been blocked by the House.

"So the House's action today and the causes of the impeachment are because I have done things to fight for families who are with me here today," he said, referrring to the people behind him as he spoke.

"We're joined here by several families who've benefited by some of the programs and some of the initiatives, because I wouldn't take no for an answer from a House that was designed to block everything that could help people for whatever their motivations."

Listing his accomplishments, the governor repeatedly questioned whether his actions to protect the citizens of his state constituted impeachable offenses. "Let me reassert to all of you once more that I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing. That issue will be dealt with on a separate course and in an appropriate forum -- a federal court. And I'm confident that, at the end of the day, I will be properly exonerated," he said.

"And by the way," the governor added, "there's a bill that passed the Senate that the House has yet to act on. And I would suggest that while they're busy trying to throw me out of office, they may actually want to stop families from being thrown out of their homes."

The governor was referring to a bill which the state Senate passed in November but the House hasn't acted on yet, he said.

There was one silver lining in the news for the governor, from Rep. Milton Patterson, the only member of the House to vote against impeaching Blagojevich. Patterson, a 62-year-old Chicago Democrat, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he read the report against the governor but was unconvinced. "If the government is going to indict them, let them go ahead and do that," he said.