The Congressional Black Caucus has voted unanimously to seat Roland Burris. At this point I think it’s a done deal; there’s no way the leadership of the Senate will ignore this.
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The scuttlebutt in Washington is that Obama has already told Reid that he better cave on this.
I’m no fan of Blago, and know nothing about Burris, but from a pure constitutional and principle perspective you have to seat the man.
I do think it is legitimate to speculate if this is a serious enough political defeat for Reid that he’ll lose his Majority Leader status over it. I mean he promised that there was “no way” Burris would be seated.
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A leadership challenge? That seems a bit much.
First, the State of Illinois needs to jump through some hoops as well as the Illinois legislature.
It’s not clear to me that Illinois has to do anything else.
Dean, the claim that Reid made that he needed a signed certificate from the Illinois Sec. Of. State was a bluff, a thing you can prove by the fact that Reid initially was more than happy to seat Franken without a similar certificate.
If a Republican were doing ANY of the things Reid has been doing, they would be vilified as racist by every talking head on the Left by now.
We’ll see if this is the last straw in Reid’s hope to maintain his Majority Leadership. I think he’s closer to being kicked out than most people realize. I also think he’s closer to replicating the Tom Daeschle debacle than most people realize.
The man is a public embarrassment of the first order, as is his counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi. They have brought Congressional Approval ratings to their lowest point in the history of ratings, threatening to hit SINGLE DIGITS on occasion. I’m pretty sure this and other current Congressional scandals aren’t helping those ratings.
“Culture of Corruption” hah. I said at the time that Democrats would pay for their arrogance, and that payday is coming.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..What good is a high school education?
The best I can tell there is no legal reason why the Senator Burris should not be seated. All other reasons are for pure political purpose. And, there are many political reasons why Burris should be or not be seated by the Senate. Opinion: Burris will be the next Senator from Illinois.
I agree with everyone, but still I think it’s noteworthy that there’s nothing post-identity-politics about the nascent Obama Era. The Black Caucus did exactly what you expect the Black Caucus to do, and exactly for the reason you’d expect it to.
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Actually, from what they’ve been saying on the news, Burris’ seating is not certain, despite today’s ruling from this state’s Supreme Court. One interesting possibility is that if/when our Governor is removed by the State Senate, and Lt. Governor Pat Quinn assumes his position, he may appoint someone else – and then the U.S. Senate, and the courts, may have to deal with the issue of two separate nominees!! I guess this really is "popcorn" time – especially for those of us here in the state capital!!
I would encourage my fellow bloggers (esp. those not from Illinois), to check out, for reference purposes, the Roland Burris file, a unique collection of mainstream media coverage of the controversies that Mr. Burris has been engaged in, within just the past couple of decades:
The Roland Burris media dossier (sanitized)
The Roland Burris media dossier (original version)
Thanks for your coverage of this issue… It’s interesting to see the whole national media (and much of the Blogosphere) focused on what’s happening right here, in Springfield, Illinois!
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