Well, imagine the idiocy of that. Finally the Democrats in Congress get the balls needed to use powers at their disposal. Not to force Karl Rove or others to respond to subpeonas, but to keep a legally appointed Democrat out of the Senate chamber. Honest to god the Democrats in the Senate stink.

For reasons that have never been clear to me, state lawmakers in Illinois haven't been in too big a rush to impeach Rod Blagojevich.

1) Everybody here really thought he would resign after trying to figure out whether he could leverage his resignation to help him in his criminal trial.
2) No one believed he'd have the gall to appoint a senator.
3) The general assembly was hoping to get some info from Fitz that would help make a far stronger case for impeachment than the minimum standard required (although it's not like this is all they had on him). Also, valuable legislative time was wasted wrangling over a special election, which Repubs naturally wanted but which would require a change in the state constitution plus big money Illinois assuredly doesn't have. Now they all realize that no one in the state cares what they impeach him for; everyone just wants him out yesterday.

And, um, I don't think the Senate Dem caucus has really thought about the optics of barring Burris from the Senate floor.

whatever one feels about blocking Burris in general (and while I have argued against it, I certainly am inclined to defer to shortstop who is "on the ground" there and whose first-hand view I greatly respect) it should be pretty clear that this would be a PR disaster.

the majority in the US Senate using guards to physically restrain a lawfully-appointed, otherwise-qualified, 71 year old African-American Democrat will be a film clip that will be freakin' catnip to the 24-hour news cycle, You Tube, and every Republican mailing list.

never doubt the ability of Democrats (collectively - in Illinois, in DC, etc) to shoot themselves in the foot anytime things seem to be going pretty well.

I've never argued for actually blocking Burris, zeitgeist; he's been legally appointed and meets the criteria for holding a Senate seat.

What I've said is that I think the original bluff, bluster and how-dare-you-sirs coming from the Senate Dem caucus and the president-elect were necessary as a visible and vocal pushback against/distancing from Blago, and as a way of preempting the inevitable "The Dems roll over for RB because they're all corrupt!" meme. (Remember how much guff Obama has already taken for a) being from the same city as Blago and b) gasp, actually giving the governor his opinion on who should succeed him?) I still think they had no choice but to put on these theatrics--subtlety, and, worse, silence--ain't too effective at times like this.

I expected them to keep this up for a few days and then seat Burris on Tuesday with explanations of how they're deeply disappointed that Blago had the nerve to make an appointment, but they all must follow the law. Frankly, I never thought Reid and the gang would take it this far, and I'm shaking my head at them.

They might as well go ahead and take their time now. The Burris appointment is a done deal; whether he ends up being seated will depend, probably, on what the Supreme Court has to say about it. Whether Blago gets removed from office a week after the appointment or six months after will be irrelevant. The appointment doesn't automatically become null and void just because the governor leaves office after making it. If that were the case, every appointed Senator would immediately lose his seat whenever the governor who appointed him retires, or loses an election.

If Burris is going to be kept from the Senate, it's going to be because of a challenge to the act of appointing him. That's in the past.

zeit, I'll add, and then stop hogging the thread, that I do realize that having threatened to block Burris, the caucus is in the uncomfortable position of having to publicly back down (Rod ensured that there'd be nothing but uncomfortable positions to choose from, so thanks for that, Governor). But I think they would've taken a far worse beating had they immediately accepted the appointment. I don't think the "Dems are weaklings" message is going to be that widespread outside the blogosphere, but the "Dems don't fight crooks in their own ranks" line would have been.

Had the caucus not done this, the prevailing theme in the media (and in low- and medium-info voters' heads) would have been "Why did the Democrats let him do it?" No one would be discussing the fact that they had no choice legally! Because they fought back, the media discussion has been focused on "Can they stop him?" As a result, almost everyone now knows (or soon will know) what the law is and what the caucus' limits are.

Frankly, I never thought Reid and the gang would take it this far, and I'm shaking my head at them. -shortstop

Well, Burris is a Democrat. Keeping that in mind will temper your surprise.

I'm still anxious to see what grounds they are going to use to block him.

Evidence has been presented that's pretty appalling should that come out to be the case what our Governor was attempting to do. I find it just...just reprehensible. Illinois is to important to it's 13 million residents to have a chief executive who is now incapacitated and the state will have problems functioning.

That should make a top ten list or something of ironic quotes from 2008. :)

It would be against the law to refuse to seat Burris as a senator. Senate Democratic leadership seems to consist of a bunch of retards. Burris IS a senator.

I have written to my senators Sanders and Leahy telling them I expect them to speak up for Burris and the rule of law.

They don't have the right to refuse Burris. His appointment is LEGAL!

It is madness. Harry Reid is keepng a legitimately selected Senator from his seat, for what? In the demented hopes that a new governor can appoint the next Senator. The winds are shifing underneath Reids feet daily. The African American Secretary of State who refused to certify the appointment was on Fox today saying not me, this is up to Harry Reid. This is what grandstanding will do for you. Never take points off the scoreboard.

For reasons that have never been clear to me, state lawmakers in Illinois haven't been in too big a rush to impeach Rod Blagojevich.

Another reason for this is that the IL legislative sessions run in two year cycles and the last cycle (the 95th assembly) ended on Dec 31st. If they had begun a legal process during the 95th assembly, they wouldn't have been able to continue it into the 96th assembly which began Jan 1. Because of this most followers in IL knew that the getting anything done in December with essentially a lame duck legislature was impossible.

It would be against the law to refuse to seat Burris as a senator.

This simply is not clear. The law is ambiguous on this issue. Reid's legal argument may or may not win out in the end, but it is extremely misleading to act like this is a clear-cut case.

...but it is extremely misleading to act like this is a clear-cut case. -jeebus

Uh oh, be careful jeebus, lest you incur the wrath of the black and white brigade, with whom there can be no disagreement or deviation from their absolute certainty! :)

On the whole, though, I think shortstop's got it right, and our academic discussion will never be answered. Reid is grandstanding against Blagojevich for the media.

Better to come off a fighter who lost than a loser who didn't fight, I guess.

Reid's legal argument may or may not win out in the end...

Reid HAS a legal argument? What is it?

Mike Madigan wanted his daughter Lisa the AG to be the hero so he let her file her complaint with the SC to see if they'd remove Blago. That failed so he convened the committee. Fitz then asked the committee not to interfere with his investigation by calling witnesses. Not much they could do but give the floor to Blago's lawyer without any other testimony so they stopped. Fitz was supposed to indict within 30 days of the arrest but asked for a 3 month extension so the ball's in their court now.

Reid HAS a legal argument? What is it?

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/analysis-must-senate-seat-burris/

I continue to be surprised by how many people keep insisting, with absolute certainty, that the Senate does not have the right to block this appointment. It is simply an open question. Legal scholars are divided on the answer. Ultimately, it will depend on what the Supreme Court decides (unless Reid backs down first).

Fitz then asked the committee not to interfere with his investigation by calling witnesses. Not much they could do but give the floor to Blago's lawyer without any other testimony so they stopped.

Well, they could have declined Fitz's request. Or, they could have simply moved on with impeachment without bothering to call witnesses and all that. Blago deserves and will get a proper trial on the criminal charges, but there's already enough on the record to impeach him. Even if he's innocent of criminal wrongdoing, he was obviously making his decision about the Senate appointment based on considerations that had absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Illinois. That, in and of itself, is improper and warranting impeachment, regardless of whether it was criminal.

Haik Bedrosian @ 4:23 PM posted: "...Reid HAS a legal argument? What is it?"
The Constitution provides that each House shall decide on the qualifications for seating their respective members. That's one argument.
The Supreme Court ruled in the Powell case that the House of Representatives couldn't refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell Jr. simply because he was, as we might now say, "ethically challenged". The House could vote to expel him once he had been seated, but not prevent his being seated.
One thing I don't see mentioned (by anyone, really), is that Powell had just successfully won re-election from his district. There was never any question that the election wasn't fair and honest. Although not part of the legal reasons as far as I know, there is no reason not to suppose that the Justices took that factor into consideration when they made their decision.
So the question really is: does the Powell decision apply to a member of Congress whose appointment was made by a person under indictment for corruption?
I do wonder why Reid just doesn't say that the matter will be referred to the appropriate Committee for investigation into any possible corruption in the process of Mr. Burris' appointment and that whether Mr. Burris will be be seated will depend on the outcome of that investigation.

does the Powell decision apply to a member of Congress whose appointment was made by a person under indictment for corruption?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Blago hadn't been indicted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Blago hadn't been indicted. -kc

No correction necessary. A criminal complaint was filed; the pending indictment, per Fitzgerald's request, will likely be postponed until April.

Seems a little like Fitz jumped the gun, to me. I wonder why?

So the Constitution of the United States is now less important than the the Senate's right to refuse to seat anyone it chooses. So next week if it decides Caroline Kennedy is unqualified it can refuse to seat her too. What a road we have traveled folks, what a road.

"no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

Just one more reason to wish Reid would lose his House Majority post. The guy's a disaster. He rolls over for Bush and the Republican leadership (no matter what he says beforehand), but he's going to make a spectacle of the entire Democratically-led Senate by preventing, perhaps even calling the Capitol cops in, Burris from being seated. Totally idiotic.

Even more idiotic than the spectacle is the precedent he is establishing. Under Reid's reasoning the acts of an impeached Bill Clinton would have been void. The votes of his pal Ted Stevens should have been void. Any lawmaker could potentially be put under a cloud of suspicion by a partisan US attorney and with enough media denuciation could be denied the right to perform his official duties just on mere suspicion and smoke. The Democrats could easily have applied this same standard to Vitter who like Blago has not been indicted or convicted and wisely left it alone. This trial in the media without evidence is going to come back to bite them. You would have thought they would have learned from Whitewater.

Couldn't happen to a nicer pre-felon

This is a psychotic distraction, and how is that abrasive egomaniac able to keep on projecting himself into our daily collective consciousness... I resent it and am sick of it

According to Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution, each house of Congress is "the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own members." At the founding, Senators were elected by state legislatures. If the Senate believed that legislators in a given state had been bribed into voting for a particular candidate, the Senate could refuse to seat him. Because of the word "returns" in Section 5, what is true of elected Senators is equally true of appointed Senators. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "Return" in the time of the framers involved a report of an appointment made by a sheriff or other official. Thus, if the Senate may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt election, it likewise may refuse to seat a person picked in a corrupt appointment process, all this according to constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar and Josh Chafetz.

They go on to say that the power to judge elections and returns, that is, to judge the process, has been used on countless occasions in American history, at both the state and federal level, to exclude candidates whose elections and appointments were suspect. True, in the 1969 case of Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court properly held that the Constitution imposes limits on the power of the Senate and the House to exclude members. Some legal commentators say this decision trumps the Senate's power to exclude Burris. But the letter and spirit of Powell actually cut against him. The case involved a qualified and properly elected congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, whom the voters had clearly chosen in a fair election and whom the House nevertheless excluded--wrongly, the court held. The key fact is that there was no doubt whatsoever that Powell was the people's choice, and in issuing its ruling the Warren Court repeatedly stressed this. The justices insisted that their ruling was aimed at protecting the people's right to vote. None of that spirit applies here. And that's why the Powell case doesn't stand in the Senate's way now.

The Senate will send the Burris appointment to the Rules committee for 90 days to investigate the appointment process, not Burris' qualifications, for any fraud, bribery or other impropriety (and its not like they have no cause to wonder), but in half that time Blagojevich will have been impeached and convicted and his successor, Pat Quinn, will have sent his own nomination to the Senate for the still unfilled seat.

The Senate will then have to choose between two competing nominees, something they have done a number of times in the past, and guess who they will pick. Come next Tuesday Roland Burris, the long, long ago Peter-principled-out egomaniac, will be left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind until the Senate decides it is time to choose.

The attempt to pressure the Senate by charging racism won't work. The Senate said they wouldn't seat anyone Blagojevich appointed weeks before they had any idea who that person might be. And currently there are several senators who are not “white.” Plus the genuinely respected black Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, who is refusing to sign off on this ploy, and PEOTUS Barack Obama, whose seat this recently was, provide considerable political cover against charges of racism.

The Republicans impeached and tried Bill Clinton, who had a 70% approval rating throughout and was the POTUS, in 61 days. The Illinois House started its impeachment process on Dec. 15 with a governor having a 7% approval rating and disturbing psychopathic tendencies. Particularly characteristic of the psychopath are shallow emotions, the utter absence of empathy, guilt, or remorse, glibness/superficial charm, manipulativeness, inconsistency, deceitfulness/lying and a grandiose sense of self-worth.

The current Illinois Senate President is Emil Jones. Jones is very close to Blago and won't allow a vote to convict on impeachment. Jones is retiring, however, and the new Senate President, John Cullerton, takes over January 14. Expect an impeachment and conviction soon after.

Chicago,
If this is true, don't be surprised if Madigan rushes this through like a man possessed to get it to the senate before the end of Jones' term. Thus forcing Jones to look like the chief obstructionist to the impeachment, in league with Blagojevich. Drawing a neat distinction between Jones and Madigan's daughter for the 2010 race.