For all of you hungering for All-Things-Blagojevich, next summer you will have your fill.   For those on the 24-hour news cycle, working hard to serve us up mush all day, all the time, there will be more than enough for them to throw on screen.

The Rod Blagojevich Reality Show will be in its final season when the former governor’s trial commences June 3, 2010.

From our friends at the Southtown Star:

A federal judge on Thursday set a June 3, 2010, start date for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s trial on charges of scheming to sell or trade President Obama’s U.S. Senate seat and pressure potential campaign contributors.

Defense attorneys said that despite millions of pages of documents still to be read and hours of FBI wiretap tapes still to be heard, they would be ready when the curtain goes up almost a year from now on the second spectacular corruption trial in five years of a former Illinois governor.

“We have the best judge in the entire system – everyone has always told me that – and if he says to be ready by June 3 we’ll be ready by June 3,” Blagojevich’s most outspoken defense counsel, Samuel E. Adam, told reporters about U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel.

Blagojevich is charged with racketeering conspiracy and other offenses. Prosecutors say he schemed to exchange Obama’s former Senate seat for campaign money, a seat in the Obama Cabinet or a lucrative job for himself or his wife.

They say he also illegally plotted to pressure various people – a racetrack owner, a hospital administrator and even White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – for contributions to the Friends of Rod Blagojevich campaign fund.

Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty.

Gotta love defense attorneys, already trying to make nice-nice with the judge.

So, if you had some doubt that Illinois might drop out of the news except for reports in the national media on Chicago weather, no such luck.  As Cypher said in The Matrix, “…buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ’cause Kansas is going bye-bye.”