While sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting to return to Chicago, I saw the big news of today live on CNN: Rod Blagojevich wins round 1 as he is convicted on only 1 of 24 counts brought against him by the federal government.

Amazing.

The jurors started speaking tonight. According to the foreman:

But in the end, he said, the “lack of a smoking gun” was too much of a hurdle for jurors to reach more than the one unanimous decision.

And the charge of trying to selling the Senate seat might have been held up by one juror:

[A young juror] said a female juror who was the lone holdout on convicting Blagojevich of attempting to sell the Senate seat “wanted clear-cut evidence, and not everything was clear-cut.”

The court proceedings will continue.

And what does this mean for the State of Illinois, politics, and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald?