A collective sigh of relief is undoubtedly resonating from the White House now that testimony in Rod Blagojevich’s trial has concluded, sparing two top Obama Administration officials from traveling to Chicago to testify in the ousted governor’s defense.

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, and Valerie Jarrett, the president’s longtime friend and adviser, were subpoenaed to testify in the corruption trial and were expected to take the stand sometime next month. Blagojevich also vowed to testify in his defense and was scheduled to do so this week before reneging at the last minute. Today, after six entertaining weeks of profanity-laced Blagojevich wiretaps, the defense rested and closing arguments have been scheduled for Monday.

The famously corrupt politician, for years under federal investigation for selling the influence of his office, lucrative state jobs and contracts, was tried on 24 felony counts of bribery, extortion and conspiracy for attempting to sell Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. Among the considered candidates were talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and Jarrett, Obama’s longtime confidante.

Obama and Emanuel, a former Illinois congressman, were embroiled in the scheme from the start and both were repeatedly mentioned throughout the trial. Blagojevich’s chief of staff, John Harris, testified that Obama supplied his boss with a list of “acceptable” candidates and the testimony was collaborated with FBI recordings played for the jury.

Union leader Tom Balanoff, a longtime Obama ally, testified that the president called him personally to push for Jarrett to fill his Senate seat before she opted for a White House job. Harris also testified that Blagojevich asked him to call Emanuel to confirm that Obama was “still in agreement” with Jackson Jr. getting the Senate appointment after Jarrett had pulled out of the running. This clearly indicates that negotiating was taking place between Obama and Blagojevich.

The White House has scrambled to put distance between the president and the monstrous political scandal. Without offering any details, the president has steadfastly denied any involvement in selecting his successor. In fact, when the scandal broke just weeks after Obama won the presidential election, he responded by initiating an “investigation” that he assured would clear his good name.

The president assigned his first White House Counsel, Greg Craig, to conduct the laughable probe that, not surprisingly, fully exonerated him. Craig concluded that Obama, then president-elect had “no contact or communication with Governor Blagojevich or members of his staff about the Senate seat.” Court testimony in Blagojevich’s trial contradicted that assessment repeatedly.

Judicial Watch has been investigating the massive corruption in the Blagojevich Administration for years. In 2006 Blagojevich refused a Judicial Watch public records request for subpoenas relating to the federal investigation of his crooked administration and in 2007 Judicial Watch filed an open records lawsuit in Cook County Court to obtain them. Last year Judicial Watch obtained public records that prove Obama and Blagojevich had repeated contact after Obama became president even though the White House has vehemently denied it.

In an insane case of political correctness, a federal government agency has classified an illegal immigrant arrested for cultivating marijuana in a national forest as a “displaced traveler from Michoacán Mexico.”

The illegal alien (Gauldry Almonte-Hernandez) was recently busted during a U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Operation raid of illegally grown marijuana plants in northern California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest. So far this month, the feds have eradicated more than 92,000 marijuana plants throughout the 2.1 million acre national forest that encompasses five wilderness areas and hundreds of mountain lakes.

In the first few days of July alone, about 50,000 plants were eradicated from six sites throughout the forest, which is California’s largest. More than two dozen suspects have been arrested for operating the illegal pot farms on federal land, most of them illegal immigrants from Mexico, according to a task force of local and federal authorities.

The U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has classified the Mexican marijuana farmers as displaced travelers. The government agency actually put it in a press release, which was reprinted in a local newspaper after the Forest Service pulled it from its web site.

Addressing the case of Almonte-Hernandez, who tried to flee when officers entered his marijuana garden, a columnist for the Redding paper writes: “Displaced foreign traveler? Makes it sound like he meant to go to Disneyland, got lost, and ended up at a pot plantation in the woods south of Hayfork.”

In a story that the U.S. government has worked hard to keep quiet, a major news organization reveals that numerous Afghan soldiers attending English classes at a Texas Air Force base have disappeared with the help of their Mexican girlfriends.

The young men, all members of the Afghan military, were participating in a special exchange program at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio when they went AWOL (absent without leave), according to a diplomatic official quoted in the news story. Most were attending the Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center, a precursor to receiving specialized military training at sites throughout the U.S.

Some of the deserters are believed to be in Canada and others have vanished to unknown locations, according to authorities quoted in the piece. Most of the Afghans disappeared with the help of Mexican girlfriends they met at local bars, many of them illegal immigrants. The ring of abettors is affectionately referred to as “Big Mexican Women” by their Afghan boyfriends.

Because many of them are illegal aliens, the women have offered the Afghan soldiers great tips on traveling throughout the U.S. without documentation. Authorities estimate that at least 46 members of the Afghan military have gone AWOL from the language institute in the last few years.

Embarrassed U.S. officials clearly prefer to keep this from going public. The Department of Defense has deferred all inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is supposedly the lead agency responsible for the AWOL Afghans. ICE, in turn, claims that all inquiries should go the Defense Department. For its part, the FBI says that is has “an interest in locating these individuals.”

The Utah state employees suspected of outing more than 1,000 illegal immigrants living in the state have been placed on administrative leave and will likely be criminally charged.

Last week a list of 1,300 suspected illegal aliens was circulated anonymously to various state and federal agencies as well as media outlets. Accompanied by a letter from "Concerned Citizens of the United States," the 29-page list includes the illegal aliens’ phone numbers, addresses and birth dates. The letter claims that the group "observes these individuals in our neighborhoods, driving on our streets, working in our stores, attending our schools and entering our public welfare buildings."

Calling it the “deplorable” work of a “small rogue group,” Utah Governor Gary Herbert quickly launched an investigation and vowed to punish any public employees responsible for participating in the outing. So far two employees with the Utah Department of Workforce Services have been suspended and at least eight others are under investigation. All face criminal charges for violating state and federal privacy laws, according to the governor.

Utah has long protected illegal immigrants and provided them with endless public benefits, including discounted tuition at public colleges and universities as well as other perks not afforded under federal law. Two of the state’s largest cities—Salt Lake City and Provo—have official sanctuary policies that forbid public employees or law enforcement officers from inquiring about a resident’s immigration status.

Earlier this year Utah proudly became the nation’s first state to offer a special class of driver’s licenses for illegal aliens who won’t be ineligible to obtain the cards when new federal security standards kick in. For years, Utah was one of only a handful of states to offer illegal immigrants driver’s license.

Proving that the illegal immigration crisis is not limited to border states, an undocumented alien in a Midwest prison for a felony conviction fleeced U.S. taxpayers for tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical care, including surgery for an inflatable penis pump.

The unbelievable story was recently made public by officials in a tiny Minnesota town—Shakopee—that has been enormously impacted by illegal immigrants. In the last few years, the cost of incarcerating illegal aliens has grown nearly tenfold in the small county (Scott) that encompasses the town of about 25,000 residents.

Last year alone Scott County, with a population of about 114,000, spent $307,000 to jail illegal aliens and nearly $1 million in the last four years combined. The figure doesn’t even include medical coverage, education or welfare for illegal aliens, which local officials say state and federal laws require them to provide.

Incredibly, the mandatory coverage includes penis pumps, which in this particular case, was billed as an “emergency” medical procedure that cost taxpayers $50,000. Jailed for identity theft, the illegal immigrant has also incurred tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills in addition to that emergency penis pump surgery.

After serving 98 days for that felony in the Scott County Jail — at a $12,000 cost to local taxpayers — the man was supposed to be held for deportation. Instead, he was released and assigned a deportation court date even though he has a history of jumping bail. The same illegal immigrant had an arrest warrant for skipping bail involving a separate crime when he got booked in Scott County for identity theft.

The information regarding this and other similar cases came to light because county prosecutors launched a probe of the financial toll created by illegal immigrants after a gang-related stabbing earlier this month. The gang bangers who murdered the Coon Rapids man during a turf fight lived in Shakopee and belonged to the notoriously violent Latin Kings.

This illustrates that rural America has indeed been hit by an illegal immigration crisis once thought to affect only border states. Minnesota officials point out that, although Scott County is thousands of miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, illegal immigrants are devastating their community. That’s why one Scott County lawmaker, Commissioner Barbara Marschall, applauds Arizona officials for saying “we’ve had enough.”

Although it’s illegal to fund abortions with federal dollars two states will pay for the life-ending procedure with federal funds under President Obama’s new healthcare reform law.

This week Maryland health officials announced that the state will be the second so far to use federal tax dollars to provide abortions under the commander-in-chief’s health care overhaul, according to the conservative news publication that exposed a similar plan in Pennsylvania a few days ago.

Both states will use their existing high-risk insurance pools—which cover abortion—to administer the newly created federal high-risk plan mandated by the Democrat reform measure. Under the law each of the nation’s 50 states must offer people with pre-existing conditions health insurance until federally subsidized exchanges are fully established in 2014.

States like Pennsylvania and Maryland that already have local programs will get tens of millions of dollars from the federal government to offer the new perk. Pennsylvania will receive $160 million for its high-risk insurance pool and Maryland will get $85 million. Both plans will continue to cover abortion, even though Obama has repeatedly promised that no federal dollars will be used to fund the procedures.

In fact, in a last-minute deal to pass the contentious healthcare bill, the president signed an executive order affirming that the new law would not fund abortions. The order was guaranteed to ensure enforcement and implementation of abortion restrictions under the new law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Since 1996 the U.S. government has banned (Hyde Amendment) the use of federal dollars to pay for abortions, though some states use local resources to fund the procedure. The federal ban applies to government health programs for the disabled and elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid). A separate provision, known as the Smith Amendment, prohibits federal funding of abortion under the federal employees’ health benefits plan.

In the latest of many scandals involving President Obama’s fraud-infested stimulus, tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on road signs declaring that the disastrous program is “putting Americans back to work.”

It gets better. The signs, erected on highways throughout the nation, feature Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign logo mildly tweaked to look like a special logo for the $787 billion Recovery Act, which has failed miserably to jump start the economy as per the commander-in-chief’s promise. Just look at the picture, of a road project in Colorado, featured in the news report that broke the story this week.

Obama’s campaign logo is included as a symbol of the president’s commitment to the American people to invest their tax dollars wisely and put Americans back to work, according to the administration guidelines on stimulus signs. The so-called commitment symbol has cost taxpayers at least $20 million amid a financial crisis that seems to have no end in sight.

On a road leading to Dulles Airport outside Washington D.C., a $10,000 sign touts a $15 million project that supposedly created 17 jobs. Illinois spent around $650,000 on about 950 stimulus signs and Pennsylvania dropped $157,000 on 70 signs. Officials in Tennessee brag that their sign budget is small—about $12,931—because they only post small ones the size of speed-limit warnings.

One federal agency distributing stimulus funds (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) was ordered by the administration to issue “signage requirements” forcing recipients to post sign templates that read: "Funded By: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Barack Obama, President."

Perhaps the administration should start posting examples of the rampant fraud and waste in the stimulus program. Just a few weeks ago a wealthy and politically-connected Indian tribe casino got $54 million meant to help struggling communities. As one of the nation’s highest grossing casinos it didn’t qualify for the stimulus infusion but a former aide of the U.S. Senator who helped steer the funds works for the tribe.

In addition, tens of billions of dollars have been spent on wasteful projects, including $5 billion on a “weatherization” program to make low-income houses energy efficient, $3 million for turtle crossing in northern Florida and $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station that’s been shut for three decades. The list goes on.

Days after suing Arizona for “intruding” on the government’s authority by passing a state version of its immigration laws, the Obama Administration has revealed that it will also ignore violations of the federal statute.

A Justice Department official confirmed in a news report this week that the agency will not take any action against cities that defy a 14-year-old federal law by offering illegal immigrants sanctuary. The measure (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996) specifically requires states and municipalities to cooperate with federal authorities when it comes to immigration enforcement.

For decades, dozens of local governments have provided illegal aliens with sanctuary by shielding them from the feds after arrests or criminal convictions and banning police from inquiring about suspects’ immigration status. Judicial Watch has sued several major police departments—including Los Angeles and Chicago—for their illegal don’t-ask-don’t tell immigration policies, which have enabled violent criminals to continue victimizing innocent Americans.

Numerous illegal immigrants with extensive criminal records have committed atrocious crimes because they were never deported, despite repeated encounters with local law enforcement agencies in sanctuary cities. Recent examples include a violent gang member who murdered a high school football star in Los Angeles, another gangbanger who gunned down a teenage honor student on a Maryland bus and a drunken driver who killed two women and a toddler in Colorado.

The victims would all be alive had local authorities cooperated with the 1996 federal law passed by Congress to control the nation’s borders and remove criminal aliens. The Obama Administration has a different interpretation; sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with the federal government are not as bad as a state—like Arizona—that “actively interferes.” Modeled after the federal statute, the Arizona measure makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. without proper documentation, bans sanctuary cities and allows local police to inquire about immigration status.

The Texas congressman who authored the ’96 federal immigration law says that not taking action against those who “passively violate” the measure is absurd, comparing it to ignoring individuals who fail to pay taxes or ignoring banking laws that require disclosure of transactions over $10,000.