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All along I've felt sorry for the daughters of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but never sorrier than I felt Thursday while reading Amy Blagojevich's letter to former President Barack Obama.

The 1,516-word letter, posted to her mother's Facebook page, is bitter, recriminatory and, most of all, sad.

Amid her lashing of Obama for not commuting her father's 14-year federal prison sentence she called him "selfish and spineless," wrote "you are either a horrible parent or a horrible person" and added "I can see the blood on your hands" Amy, now 20, paints a picture of an innocent young woman wrecked by circumstance.

She was 12 when her father was arrested on public corruption charges at the family's Ravenswood Manor home and her world began to fall apart. She was 15 when he reported to prison in Colorado.

"I am shocked at how bitter and full of hate I have become," she wrote to Obama "I've dealt with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and aspects of PTSD. I've had days where I couldn't pry myself from bed, days where I can't stop crying or feeling the pain that has been inflicted continuously, and days where the fear of another eight years (with my father in prison) consumes me completely."

Neither she nor her younger sister, Annie, ever deserved any of it. They are innocent victims.

Victims not of a callous former president or a justice system gone wrong, but of their father's criminal venality and stubbornness. As governor, he was caught on tape repeatedly trying to use his official power for personal gain.

Among the reasons not to commit such crimes or any crimes, for that matter is that, if you're caught, your loved ones will also have to pay the price. The fact that Blagojevich, 60, put the happiness of his daughters at risk every time he abused his office aggravates his offenses in my mind.

And the fact that he refused to accept and acknowledge that he committed numerous felonies and refuses to this day! is almost certainly the reason he's still in prison.

He made things far worse for himself and for Amy and Annie by choosing to fight the charges in court and mounting a nationwide public relations campaign in which he chirped about his innocence and impugned the motives and integrity of the U.S. attorney's office.

As he was headed to prison, he told reporters that he has a "clear conscience," and his more recent appellate briefs have attempted to explain away his illegal scheming as merely the acts of "an overly zealous politician seeking to advance his political goals."

No.

A guilty plea along with a genuine confession not the dodgy "The jury decided I was guilty" statement he offered at his original sentencing or the vague apology for "mistakes" he offered at a hearing last summer would likely have resulted in a plea bargain for a far shorter sentence.

Amy Blagojevich's letter to Obama indicates that her father is still inflaming his family's sense of grievance. She wrote of the "horrific lies" told about the case. "You've betrayed the concept of justice like many other heartless individuals have done before you," she wrote. "You know as well as anyone, that my father is guilty of nothing. He made mistakes he's human, after all but nothing was illegal. ... you failed to release an innocent man."

She concluded, "You were a bystander to a completely un-American act of injustice. You're just as guilty as those who created it in the first place."

Such grievance can only enhance the pain of her father's absence

Yes, his sentence is unusually long. But his devious, selfish, remorseless violations of the public trust from the highest seat of power in Illinois were unusually flagrant, and his lack of repentance has been unusually galling.

I don't imagine that Amy's letter will cause Obama to regret his decision not to act in his final days in office on the former governor's commutation request.

But I'm not sure it was really intended for Obama, who no longer has any power in the matter. The family's hopes now lie in President Donald Trump, and by posting the letter to her Facebook page, Amy's mother, Patti, may be hoping to pique our impulsive, vindictive new chief executive with an opportunity to appear more merciful and kind than his predecessor.

After all, Trump knows Blagojevich from Blagojevich's 2010 pre-trial appearance as a contestant on Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" reality show.

Trump referred to Blago as "a guy with great courage," and praised him for not "fold(ing) like a tent" after getting into trouble.

Whether Trump lunges at this bait or not, I'm sure I join everyone, even the "selfish spineless heartless" Obama, in wishing the Blagojevich girls nothing but the best. After what they've gone through, they deserve nothing less.

Re:Tweets

Before I reveal the winner of the most recent Tweet of the Week poll at chicagotribune.com/zorn, a word about the renewed importance of the Twitter micro-blogging platform.

It's not, as you know, simply a medium for 140-character quips, career suicide and self-promotion. It's a major, unfiltered megaphone for our new president, who rode it to the White House and continues to use it to communicate directly if intemperately with the public.

But both sides can play at the direct-access game. And in response to the Trump administration's crackdown on the official Twitter accounts of many federal agencies and departments, numerous unofficial insider accounts have sprung up.

The most prominent so far is @AltNatParkSer, billed as "the unofficial resistance team of U.S. National Park Service," which acquired nearly 1.3 million followers a week after Team Trump brought the hammer down on the park service's official account for displaying photos that revealed the comparatively small crowds at Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

Others include @viralCDC, an unofficial information feed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("Actual facts, not alternative facts"); @RogueNOAA from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; @AltUSEPA and @UngaggedEPA from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and, along the same lines, @Alt_FDA, @ResistanceNASA and others.

I suggest following them if only to show solidarity with their determination not to be muzzled.

Now, admittedly, it's hard to be sure which of these feeds are run by genuine insiders, because the account operators are, naturally, anonymous.

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Amy Blagojevich's letter to Obama is sad, sensational and a plea to Trump? - Chicago Tribune