President-elect Obama & Baltimore’s Dem Mayor Dixon

The Baltimore Sun headlines:

Dixon present at Obama's address, but not mentioned

The BS’s story begins -

At the start of Barack Obama's whistle stop tour to Washington today, the president-elect hailed the "outstanding" mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter. In Wilmington, he acknowledged Mayor James M. Baker by name.

Not so in Baltimore.

Mayor Sheila Dixon was one of thousands of Obama supporters braving hours of sub-freezing temperatures to greet him at War Memorial Plaza.

"It's an extremely huge deal for me," she said in an interview before Obama's address. "Words can't describe how ecstatic we are."

But even as he gazed at City Hall, the man who will be the nation's first black president did not acknowledge that Baltimore's first black female mayor was in attendance. …

Officially, the line from both the Obama and Dixon camps was that the 12-count indictment levied by a state prosecutor against the mayor last week had no impact on the ceremony. …

The entire BS story’s here.

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My comments:

The BS story said nothing about whether President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue a pardon to Mayor Dixon once he becomes President Obama.

But the possibility of a pardon for Dixon in the next few weeks had to be on many people’s minds.

After all, Obama’s attorney general-designate Eric Holder, as deputy attorney general in the final days of the Clinton administration, worked deviously to help secure a pardon for fugitive Mark Rich, whose wife was a stalwart supporter of President Bill Clinton just as Mayor Dixon has been a stalwart Obama supporter.

So when he becomes President, will Obama pardon Dixon as Clinton pardoned Rich?

I don’t know.

If Dixon flees the country before trial, that may be a sign of what’s to follow.

And if Charlie Rangel, Chris “Dodge” Dodd, and Barney Frank all flee with her, well, you know the rest.