It happened minutes ago.

The Illinois Senate voted unanimously to convict former Governor Rod Blagojevich and will now vote on the proposition of whether he should be banned from seeking public office in the state of Illinois.

OK, this was not unexpected, but I thought there might be a minority vote against just to give it the veneer that there was an actual debate about it. Commentators took special pains to say this was a political rather than a legal process, but hey--the legal process IS a political process.

Had Blagojevich been more popular in the state, say as popular as Bill Clinton was in 1999, he'd still have his job. As it turned out, he was so unpopular, and his crimes so egregious, that it was politically impossible to vote against impeachment.

Democrats of course hope to heap the sins of Chicago politics on his head and send him into the wilderness, cursed by God and man, but at this point its wishful thinking.

Rod is going to be around for a while.

Rod hit the airwaves, and by any reasonable standard, he did well. He does not come off as Tony Soprano, and that undoubtedly did him some good. We can expect to see a lot more of him, largely because the media sees his controversy as a great investment.

Blagojevich's motivations to cooperate are both practical and personal. He must be seething with anger, and feeling the need to lash out, but more importantly, he needs to do what he can to ameliorate his legal situation.

That means leaking stuff he knows.

Now it gets interesting.