The burgeoning dispute over President-elect Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat could spill into the federal courts. Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, facing federal corruption charges, shocked the political world Tuesday by naming his choice to fill the seat, former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris.
Top Senate Democrats immediately said they would refuse to seat Mr. Burris because of the allegations surrounding Mr. Blagojevich, who was arrested Dec. 9. But some legal scholars said that such a move might not stand up in court, if Mr. Burris chose to challenge it.
A prolonged legal fight over Mr. Obama's former Senate seat could complicate the Democrats' agenda in Washington. Without senators seated in Illinois and Minnesota -- where the senate election is still being contested -- Democrats can count on the support of 57 senators. That means they will have to peel off three Republican lawmakers to defeat any Republican filibuster aimed at blocking legislation.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
12/31/2008 00:00 ||
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My reading of the Constitution is that the Senate doesn't have to seat Burris, but then I'm not one of the "best and the brightest" {spit}
#2
From the Constitution, Article I, Section 5. Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, ...
The Instapundit notes that this likely means that the Senate can only judge that the election/appointment was legitimate and that Burris is qualified since he's over age 30 and is an Illinois resident, and he cites a couple of USSC decisions.
Me: I think it means what it says, and that the USSC is in error: the Senate is the judge of the elections and qualifications of its members. If they find a problem with Burris' appointment they can refuse to seat him, and it isn't clear to me that the 'problem' they might find is limited to what's explicitly written in Section 5.
Later in Section 5 is this: Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.
Which to me means that if they really, really don't want Burris they can expel him. And the reasons for expulsion can be pretty much whatever they want said reasons to be.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/31/2008 10:24 Comments ||
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1)He is the sitting Governor of Illinois, since the good citizens have managed to do zero about his little hickup(and won't)
2) The Illinois State Constitution gives sole authority to appoint replacements to a vacant US Senate seat to said governor, just like New Yawk.
3) The only thread Horseface Harry can pursue is that Burris is unqualified to serve. Ha! He's more qualifed than ole Harry hisownself.
4) If it goes to Fed. Court. it goes down in flames.
5) Blago wins again and is still around to cause more trouble for Bambirino. And will. Just like a big burr under your favorite saddle.
#5
Forget Clinton, make The Blagonator Secretary of State. He'll have UN member nations paying us greens fees in no time at all. This guy has real talent!
#6
The Senate will lose on the issue of not seating Blago's appointment. It is a legal appointment. A reading of the constitution that would allow the Senate to decide who is allowed in would mean that if Norm Coleman were to win and the Dem. majority didn't like it, they could decide to keep him out and force Minnesota to give them someone they do like, e.g. Al Franken. That reading of the constitution would clearly take away the power of the electorate to decide who they want to represent them and of duly elected governors to make lawful appointments. It is also worth noting that when the constitution was written, senators were not elected. They are now. The Powell case will trump the Senate's desire to keep Burris out. The destinction between "elected" and legally "selected" will be one without a difference.
#7
Wish some "reporters" had the guts to ask (and keep asking) Mr. Burris how much he paid for the seat.
Burrus can deny it all he wants, but Blago's on tape record as intending to sell it.
So how much did you and/or your "friends" pay for this "honor," Mr. Burrus?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/31/2008 14:21 Comments ||
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Blago could have picked anyone. Picking a lawyer with lots of connections in the community wasn't such a bad choice. Might need one or two somewhere down the road.
A House Democrat is daring Senate leaders to block a black man from taking President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois points out that Roland Burris would be the only black man in a chamber populated overwhelmingly by white senators. Bobby Rush, who's made a career outta blaming THE MAN!
Senate Democratic leaders earlier Tuesday added an explicit note of support for Burris personally, but not for his appointment by the embattled governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. The leaders said the Democratic caucus would refuse to seat Burris if Blagojevich appoints him, and called their stance a reflection of the scandal-tainted governor. Blagojevich denies charges that he tried to sell Obama's Senate seat for personal gain.
The 71-year-old Burris is a former Illinois attorney general.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/31/2008 00:00 ||
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"There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs ... There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
-- Booker T. Washington
With only mistakenly rejected absentee ballots left to tally in Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, Democrat Al Franken has a 50-vote lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.
The lead, Franken's largest since Election Day, buoyed the Franken campaign. "We are absolutely thrilled with where we stand," said Marc Elias, Franken recount attorney.
The Coleman campaign was less than thrilled. "We're faced with an artificial Franken lead," said Coleman recount attorney Tony Trimble. The Coleman campaign has all but promised it will contest the election results in court because it believes more than 100 votes from Franken-friendly areas were double counted.
The 50-vote lead is provisional because there are still rejected absentee ballots to count. Those absentee ballots, which local election judges mistakenly didn't count, are the latest focus of recount controversy.
In deciding a suit brought by the Coleman campaign over the absentee ballots the state Supreme Court ordered that mistakenly rejected absentee ballots could be included in the recount -- but only if the two campaigns agree they should on a ballot-by-ballot basis.
While local officials believe there are about 1,350 wrongly rejected ballots, it's not clear how many ballots the campaigns will actually send to the state for counting. Over the weekend, the Franken campaign had said it would be willing to have all those sent to the state.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/31/2008 00:00 ||
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The state Republican Party yesterday blasted Gov. Deval Patrick for creating a $120,000 job for a neighbor and Democratic donor at the same time he was announcing 1,000 other state workers were headed for the unemployment line. "At a time when Massachusetts workers are receiving lumps of coal, it seems like the only people receiving holiday cheer are the governor's friends," Mass. GOP spokesman Barney Keller said yesterday.
The Herald reported yesterday that attorney and real estate consultant Dana Harrell, who lives less than a quarter mile from Patrick in Milton, has been named the state's new director of real estate services. Since 2005, Harrell and his wife have donated $1,450 to the governor's election campaign and another $700 to the Democratic State Committee. Ummm... Wait a minute here. I can have a $120,000 a year job for a donation of a mere $2150, and I don't have to pay it all in one year? Shit, bump it up to $2500 and he'll make you a judge.
Harrell, 60, was introduced to staff at the Division of Capital Asset Management on Oct. 27, less than two weeks after Patrick announced the state was $1.4 billion in the red and 1,000 jobs would be lost as a result. "Is this a new position created for a friend of Deval Patrick's just like the campaign contributor who he wanted to make chief of staff for his wife?" asked Keller, referring to Amy Gorin.
Gorin, who co-chaired the governor's fund-raising committee with her husband, was hired in 2007 for $72,000 to be attorney Diane Patrick's right-hand gal, but resigned a month later after the first couple was heavily criticized for creating the post after just taking office.
Patrick spokesman Cyndi Roy said yesterday DCAM Commissioner David Perini would not be commenting further on Harrell's hiring.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/31/2008 00:00 ||
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Another Axelrod disciple finding success at the public trough. Taxachuscetts is going to royally regret elevating him to the top elected spot in the state. Ummmm, there's Teddy and Kerry and....well, maybe not.
Two mayoral candidates have liens filed against them for unpaid income taxes; another lives with his mother who is behind on her real estate taxes; and two more were delinquent since September on property taxes until they settled in the past few weeks.
As the race to complete the term of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick speeds toward the Feb. 24 primary, tax liabilities are expected to come under scrutiny as 15 candidates seek to succeed a mayor whose fall from grace began when he used taxpayer money for private gain. Last week, for example, Dave Bing disclosed his personal income and challenged his opponents to do the same. Dave Bing, one of the smoothest shooting guards I ever seen? That Dave Bing?
Bing, who moved to a Detroit condo this fall from Oakland County, paid $9,995, including $384 in interest, this month to settle property taxes on his home in Franklin. Campaign spokesman Cliff Russell said the bill was a "mishap" that was corrected once it was discovered.
Last week, Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans paid $11,656 in delinquent summer taxes on his Washtenaw County horse farm. He bought the roughly 20-acre farm in 2001 for $590,000, according to property records. Tax bills on his three rental properties in Detroit and Grosse Pointe had already been up to date. "It was an oversight," said Bob Berg, a spokesman for Evans' campaign. Evans rents an apartment in Detroit and that address is on his voter registration, but he uses the address for his farm, located along a gravel road in Salem Township, to register his motorcycle. It also is listed as the address on some of the mortgages and tax records for his business interests. Evans, who does not declare any of the properties as a primary residence to reduce his tax bill, paid the overdue bill after his campaign was contacted by The Detroit News.
Owing the most for unpaid income tax is candidate Duane Montgomery, an engineering consultant. According to liens filed by the IRS and the state of Michigan, he owes $34,697 in federal and Michigan income taxes. Montgomery outlines some of his woes on his Web site — www.4etr.com — that includes a receipt from the IRS stating he overpaid his federal taxes last year and the excess was used to reduce his debt. "If there are skeletons in my closet, then they are listed here," writes Montgomery on the site. He didn't return phone calls seeking elaboration.
First-time candidate Jerroll Sanders, a businesswoman who recently moved to Michigan from Missouri, owes $19,650 in taxes, according to liens filed in St. Louis. On Dec. 23, Sanders explained the liens as the result of "political malfeasance" waged against her by operatives in the federal government that began in 1999 when she lost a government contract. "We are going to slug this out," she said last week from a home she owns in Missouri. My campaign slogan would be, "Detroit: Let's Burn It and Split the Insurance Money".
Posted by: Fred ||
12/31/2008 00:00 ||
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Last week, Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans paid $11,656 in delinquent summer taxes
Seasonal taxes? Hope The One doesn't discover this option.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The burgeoning dispute over President-elect Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat could spill into the federal courts. Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, facing federal corruption charges, shocked the political world Tuesday by naming his choice to fill the seat, former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris.
A House Democrat is daring Senate leaders to block a black man from taking President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois points out that Roland Burris would be the only black man in a chamber populated overwhelmingly by white senators. 
With only mistakenly rejected absentee ballots left to tally in Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, Democrat Al Franken has a 50-vote lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. 
Two mayoral candidates have liens filed against them for unpaid income taxes; another lives with his mother who is behind on her real estate taxes; and two more were delinquent since September on property taxes until they settled in the past few weeks. 
