Live from downtown Chicago, corruptastic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich gave a statement and answered no questions. We were going to cover it live, but it was over in four minutes!

3:07 p.m.: So, did Blagojevich try to sell his right to appoint someone to Barack Obama's vacant seat in the Senate? He's not saying! "I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.... I will fight, I will fight, I will fight!" says Blagojevich, who protests his innocence. "I am not going to quite a job I was elected to do because ... of a political lynch mob. I am not going to do what my political opponents have been doing. I am not going to talk about this in 30-second soundbites.... I intend to answer every allegation that comes my way. However, I intend to answer them in the appropriate forum, in a court of law."

3:09 p.m.: He quotes Rudyard Kipling's "If." It's poetic and used the word "hating," decades before it became part of the lingo. Here's the part he quoted:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating ...

Next line: "And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise." Ooops! The hair was a mistake.

3:10 p.m.: He thanks the people of Illinois and wishes everyone a merry Christmas, and walks off stage.

Blagojevich experts on CNN are saying this is all part of the governor's schtick — the combativeness, the defiance, even the recitation of Rudyard Kipling's "If." "He didn't say anything substantive," says one of the talking heads. The very definition of a politician. Anyway, there's some kind of news break in the Caylee Anthony case, so nobody cares about Blagojevich anymore.