The Blog of Record

I know that everything is George W. Bush’s fault, but knock it off already: Sen. Ronald Burris, D-Ill., says President Obama’s failure to bring the Olympics to Chicago is Bush’s fault:

Senator Rowland [sic] Burris of Illinois, the Senator who was appointed to fill President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, blames George Bush for Chicago not getting the Olympics in 2016. Burris stated in an interview, shortly after the announcement, that the image of the U. S. has been so tarnished in the last 8 years that, even Barack Obama making an unprecedented pitch for the games could not overcome the hatred the world has for us as a result of George Bush.

That’s what you get when you let Rod Blagojevich appoint senators.

Why am I not surprised? Because it’s Chicago:

Four former members of a now-disbanded Chicago police unit admitted Friday to taking part in a brazen scheme in which they barged into homes and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from suspected drug dealers and others — once after withholding insulin from a diabetic man until he told them where to find the cash.

Apparently, this kind of police behavior doesn’t surprise anyone in Chicago, because guess what prison term they got?

Wait for it…

Six months.

It’s the Chicago way.

Keeping it in the family:

Have I mentioned lately that my alderman is the daughter of the previous alderman, my mayor is the son of a previous mayor, the president of the county board is the son of the previous president, and, until recently, the governor of my state was the son of a powerful Chicago alderman?

Roland Burris’s memory of how he got Barack Obama’s Senate seat from Blagojevich keeps evolving:

Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) has acknowledged that he tried to raise campaign money for then-Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was making a pitch for the Senate seat previously held by President Obama.

In comments to reporters after appearing at a Democratic dinner, the senator several times contradicted his latest sworn affidavit that he quietly filed with the Illinois House impeachment panel this month. The affidavit was an attempt to clean up his sworn testimony to the panel Jan. 8, which made no mention of his contacts with several Blagojevich insiders.

Is it now just a matter of time until this fine Chicago politician remembers that his fundraising attempts for Blago in exchange for the Senate seat were actually successful?

Campbell Brown: “Don’t be fooled by Burris again“:

This, of course, means that Burris lied under oath to an Illinois House impeachment panel. What will he remember next – that he did, after all, pay something to Blago to get Barack Obama’s Senate seat?

He says when he was being arrested, he thought of Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi, but he can’t even keep a straight face as he says that.

Update: John Kass’s Blagojevich column in the Chicago Tribune: As the stakes sharpen, Blago bares his fangs.

All day Friday, he was speaking to three audiences at once:

• The public, arguing he was not being treated fairly;

• The media, including the Chicago Tribune, which he is accused of threatening, asking them to champion his cause;

• And the politicians, dropping enough hints about the road builders and so on to let them know he’s now dangerous and about to go nuclear.

These are not the calculations of a madman, but a governor hinting at the corruption of his fellows, and for this they call him cuckoo.

CNN:

Bob Shromper, the program director of Chicago’s WLS-AM, said Friday he’s prepared to offer Blagojevich his own show on Sundays if the governor agrees to resign from office rather than be forcibly removed by the state Senate.

Do they have Sundays off in Illinois prisons?

And he’s “humbled“.

I wonder if he’s humbled enough to leave blank the free space he providently left on the granite slabs of his mausoleum where his accomplishments are chiseled. You know, “the first African-American student to Hamburg University in Germany from Southern Illinois University”.

And if he’s humbled but not that humbled, I still wonder if there’s enough space to chisel “First African-American senator to be appointed by a governor days after his arrest and days before his impeachment for trying to sell that very same Senate seat, and to be denied entry to the Senate when he showed up”. That’s a lot of words to fit on a small, humble granite mausoleum.

The Democrats are finally free to do what they wanted to do all along – sit Ronald Burris. They just wanted him to put his paperwork in order.

The Illinois House of Representatives impeached the state’s governor today. The article of impeachment will now go the state Senate for a trial, but until then (likely Jan. 26), Blagojevich will still govern the good people of Illinois to the best of his ability.

Hot Air’s Allahpundit has a question:

I’m not even sure what the charges against him in the impeachment trial will be at this point. Supposedly he can no longer perform the duties of governor effectively. Really? He was effective enough to make the entire U.S. Senate choke on the Burris appointment.

Ace of Spades has the related stories. He already misses Blagojevich’s hair, but I’ll miss the eyes.

Senate Democrats are now searching for a way ouf of the Burris scandal:

“We don’t have a problem with him as an individual,” Reid said at a news conferencein which he dramatically softened his party’s opposition to seating any appointee of embattled Gov. Rod Blogojevich.

If they were not prepared to go the distance, why did they start it at all? If the Dems weren’t sure they had the authority to bar Burris, they at least could have make it look as if they didn’t want to seat him but had no choice under the law. Instead, after making a lot of noise initially, they now appear to be looking for any excuse to seat him. This isn’t making them look good. Or smart.

Looks like Blagojevich made a great move by appointing a black man who’s not afraid to play the race card.

Update: Dems admit they were bluffing and Blagojevich called their bluff.

John Kass answers Blagojevich questions from Chicago Tribune readers and has this to say about Obama’s role:

Obama could have forcefully and publicly demanded that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and fellow Illinois Democrats support legislation for a special election to fill his vacated Senate seat. Obama had a responsibility to the people of Illinois to do so. But he kept his mouth shut. As always, he avoided conflict with machine political bosses, a consistent character trait stubbornly ignored by his media cheerleaders.

His top White House strategist and his chief of staff are creatures of the Daley machine, and Democrats didn’t want to risk the Senate seat. What happened to the promise of transcending the old politics?

So when the freak show comes to Washington next week and political hack Roland “I’m a tool of the people” Burris is denied entry to the Senate, and the national political class shrieks in fake outrage and Blagojevich surrounds himself with African-American ministers and he sings “Let my people go!” remember who could have stopped all this: Obama, Madigan, Daley and the Illinois Democrats.

Plus: how the governor’s wife, Patti, is doing.

Bob Krumm writes:

Roland Burris is constitutionally qualified to be a U.S. Senator, and absent evidence of a quid pro quo appointment, his appointment is lawful. Sadly, it appears that this appointment may be the only lawful thing Governor Blagojevich has done during his term of office.

There real question about Burris is at least as important as the lawfulness of his appointment: what kind of man would want to be appointed to the Senate by Blagojevich now? Oh yes – a man who wants to add a crowning accomplishment to the list he’s had chiseled in granite on his mausoleum. And this is why the Senate Democrats want to bar Burris - because he’d be damaging to them, and not because they care about the legality of his appointment.

And it’s all first African-American this, first African-American that, all the way down to things like being “the first African-American exchange student to Hamburg University in Germany from Southern Illinois University”.

He’s definitely fit to serve in the Senate as a Blagojevich appointee – especially as a Blagojevich appointee.

Update: Blago chose Burris because he’s black? Makes sense – he’ll be harder for Harry Reid to ban when there are no other black senators.

Attempts to shame Blago into decency aren’t working? You don’t say!

U.S. senators are in for a major fight if they intend to follow through with threats to bar Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment to replace President-elect Barack Obama from entering the U.S. Senate next week, say legal scholars, political analysts and even some elected officials.

Which moves will help the book deal?

How about appointing himself to Obama’s seat?

No surprises here. Well, no pleasant surprises, anyway.

Plus:

Interesting that Mr. Obama’s seat is now considered a wholly owned subsidiary of the Black folks from Chicago.

News here and here. I guess one can kinda hope he didn’t sell the seat despite everything. On the other hand, Blagojevich knew he was under investigation for three years – and still put the seat up for auction. If he was stupid enough to do that…

The biggest question is what kind of man would want this seat if it comes by way of a Blago appointment.

One thing is for sure – Blagojevich doesn’t care the slightest bit about the damage he’s doing to the Democratic Party’s image.

Even MSNBC is asking some tough questions of the Democrats. Such as, Why didn’t Dems do something earlier? Or the obvious, So who’s corrupt now? It even agrees that

[a]s for the scandal’s impact on Obama, no doubt that it will be embarrassing for him and his incoming administration.

A one-party system in a state (or anywhere else) corrupts the party. It may even corrupt it to such an extent that the press will start asking the right questions.

The Democratic governor’s chief of staff, John Harris, has also been arrested. Be sure to watch the video of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald reciting a long list of accusations against Rod Blagojevich. The most common words in his intercepted conversations, after redaction: “bleep” and “bleeping”.

Blagojevich has been under investigation for corruption for the last three years, and knowing this, he still couldn’t stop? This has to be an aggravating circumstance.

I bet he thought he’d found a gold mine with the Obama Senate seat sale. Don Surber:

Shoot, Blagojevich would have made a killing on that appointment. Maybe Oprah and Jesse Jackson Jr. could have gotten into a bidding war.