Jim Lindgren has a timeline. Lots of interesting discussion in comments, including this:

What’s missing from most of this analysis is the timing vis-a-vis the context.

The charges of selling the Senate seat, while spectacular, are just a small element of the overall corruption involved here. Going past the headlines, the other charges include some actually more serious corruption, in the usual pay-to-play manner that is so ordinary here in northeastern Illinois that locals hardly raise an eyebrow.

In fact, I am starting to think that Fitzgerald did indeed pull the trigger much earlier than planned or desired. The huge Federal cloud hanging over Blagojevich isn’t new, and it didn’t start on Election Day 2008.

Blagojevich is but one of the Machine’s operatives abroad working for the benefit of the Machine. The fact that he went wrong isn’t even exceptional; recall failed US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who also was “sent”, in the Chicago Outfit sense, to Washington.

Blagojevich failed as a Machine person and has been an outcast among his peers for a considerable time now. The fact that the Tribune has been very loudly working against him, leading the way for a Constitutional amendment to permit recall, shows how far off the reservation he’s gone.
But the Trib’s opposition, worthy of the description “all-out attack”, is a clue all by itself.

The Tribune is the organization that made it possible for the Machine to install Obama in the Senate and so on, by taking out his opponent back in 2000 with an Axelrod-style oppo campaign.
The tie here is the protection of Obama. Blagojevich was dangerously close to damaging Obama, and taking him out was high on several people’s lists.

This is not to suggest that Fitzgerald would have helped in that regard, but the help he got from within the Machine certainly must have weighed in the decision to go forward with still so much investigating to be done, and so many more Machine people to indict. Arresting Blagojevich so soon must have pained Fitzgerald, but he did it anyway.

A year ago, Chicagoans widely believed that Fitzgerald would be sent packing in January, 2009 if any Democrat won the White House. This does not seem so obvious, now. Still, it is possible to argue that there was exigency in moving against Blagojevich with the possiblity that the Fitzgerald era in Chicago was drawing to a close.

Keep in mind, especially those who don’t follow the Machine so closely, that Fitzgerald has put some seriously heavy Machine people behind bars, and is getting close to even bigger targets. The desperation on the Fifth Floor (at City Hall) is palpable. Even Richard Daley himself has been interviewed.

But Blagojevich was doing far worse things than the charges presented here, and the Feds wanted a lot more than just this one guy and his chief of staff.

There is local speculation that Rezko suddenly decided not to talk to reduce his sentence, an event that coincided with the election of Obama, and that with Rezko going silent on the possiblity of either a pardon or to take one for the President. Some also believe that without the help of Rezko, Fitzgerald found a number of other avenues becoming less inviting and so, went with what he had.

Finally, it’s clear from the tapes that Blagojevich has gotten unstable, saying such things (which are not extraordinary around Chicago in the least) knowing full well the prosecutor’s office was draped all over him like a blanket. I believe Fitzgerald acted early in order to prevent even more eccentric behavior.

I urge anyone looking for background on this to look up columnist John Kass at chicagotribune.com, who not only accurately foresaw the events of yesterday, but many others as well.

You will learn that this is all a large picture of a large organization, and separating the three Daleys, Blagojevich, Obama, and the others just isn’t possible.

The thought that Blagojevich was too corrupt for the Chicago machine beggars the imagination, but anything is possible, I guess. Or perhaps he was just too erratic and unreliable.