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No, better to file daily reports on the martyrdom of Patti Blagojevich in Costa Rica (she’s spunky, she’s doing Chicago proud, and if she wins I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here it’ll be a victory for midwestern values we should all be proud of), and pretend that Rod Blagojevich’s 15 minutes aren’t over. But they are. The next 15 belong to Pedro Espada.

Here’s the story we’re not reading. Last November the state of New York elected its first Democratic state senate in more than 40 years. Inevitably, the shift brought talk of reform. What happened instead was a conspiracy between the senate’s Republicans and two rogue Democrats, Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, who just announced they’re going to caucus with (but not join) the Republicans. According to the New York Times, the instigator of this coup was a local billionaire, Tom Golisano, who was all for reform except that it looked like he’d wind up paying more taxes.

On Thursday Monserrate was wavering, the Democrats were in court, and the New York Post was focusing its coverage on a clown it had hired to cavort in the state capitol.