Stu Levine has flipped. Things are gonna get crazy real soon.

Levine was a big Republican insider with very close ties to Jim Ryan, Governor Rod Blagojevich's 2002 opponent. Some saw fair-minded bipartisanship when Governor Blagojevich reappointed Levine to both the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) board of directors and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. As we soon discovered, the appointments may have been made for entirely different reasons. And now Levine is in a position to create some truly serious trouble for the governor.

Every day for four years I got down on my knees and thanked God for sending me Governor George Ryan. I knew that no matter how slow the news day was, I could always count on Ryan's various scandals and antics to provide enough interesting fodder to fill up sufficient white space.

Reporter: "Governor Ryan, are you ‘Official A'?"

Ryan: "I don't believe I am. I sure as hell don't think I am."

Like I said, the man consistently provided solid-gold material.

Rod Blagojevich and Judy Baar Topinka don’t agree on much, but their campaigns concurred last week that Governor Blagojevich is leading in the polls.

The Blagojevich campaign says its latest poll shows the Democratic governor leading the Republican treasurer 47-31 – a seriously large advantage. Topinka’s campaign has Blagojevich ahead 44-37 – a far narrower margin.

Meanwhile, the latest poll from an independent source, The Rasmussen Report, had Blagojevich leading 45-34, which is about right in the middle of the two candidates’ poll results. Still, Topinka’s polling during the spring primary matched up almost exactly with the Chicago Tribune polls, which turned out to be pretty accurate come primary day.

"There is so much more coming it is breathtaking," an almost always reliable source said recently when asked about the recent flood of news stories about alleged corruption within Governor Rod Blagojevich's administration.

That source wasn't the only one making this prediction. Plenty of others are saying that the Chicago Tribune is sitting on a large pile of explosives. Unlike 1998, when the Tribune mostly sat by while other media outlets ran stories about George Ryan's alleged corruption, the paper is clearly trying to stay out front on this Blagojevich thing. As you may have seen, the Trib published several more stories over the long Independence Day holiday weekend and then published follow-ups for days.