Welcome to Illinois, WP

This morning the Washington Post has an editorial urging Roland Burris to resign the Senate seat to which now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed him:

From the moment that Mr. Burris was selected, he strove to portray himself as a blameless public servant. The sad pictures of Mr. Burris being cast out into the rain by the Democratic leadership of the Senate, which initially refused to seat him, turned public opinion in his favor. Mr. Burris got his seat. But this latest revelation makes a mockery of his professions of no quid pro quo. It is a violation of the public trust. The people of Illinois have suffered enough. Mr. Burris should resign.

Forget it, WP. This is Illinois.

There are a lot of things that should’ve happened. The Illinois legislature should have removed the governor’s power to appoint. They should’ve impeached Rod Blagojevich before he had the opportunity to appoint a replacement for Barack Obama. Heck, they could have impeached him a year ago.

The Illinois legislature should have enacted provisions for a special election—that could have been done three months or six months ago.

And, of course, none of the public officials involved in all of this should have tolerated pay-for-play to begin with.

Neither Rod Blagojevich nor, I presume, Sen. Burris, nor any of the hundreds of other elected officials in Illinois engaged in corrupt practices or the appearance of corrupt practice believe they’re doing anything wrong. And yet we keep right on re-electing them.

5 comments… add one
  • Drew Link

    Sing along with me: Roland, Roland, Roland, keep the fraud a rollin’…Raw Lies !

  • PD Shaw Link

    I have to admit that I did not see this coming. In Illinois we always have to deal with the bizarro-world triangle — how much of the politician’s behavior can be explained by stupidity, ineptitude or corruption. I didn’t think Burris fell in the corrupt corner until this week, though its still mixed with levels of stupidity and ineptitude. I would like to see the State of Illinois retract his nomination.

  • Honestly, I think it’s too late, PD. The state doesn’t have the power to remove him from office by any action of the legislature. The only body that could remove him from office now is the U. S. Senate under its self-regulatory powers.

  • Drew Link

    “I didn’t think Burris fell in the corrupt corner until this week”

    I’m a tad surprised to see you post that, PD. I realize it is a gross generalization to indict all IL pols. But we certainly seem to have a disproportionate share, and I’ve alway understood Burris to be in that general crowd. Further, and maybe it was just intuition, something stunk about this Blago/Burris nexus from the start.

    Perhaps I’m too cynical, but years ago, as just a lad of 30 years, I got to watch how Chicago politics works after we fired a guy, and a certain Ald Ed B came to his rescue. Icky.

  • PD Shaw Link

    Dave, I don’t know if you saw one of my comments/responses to you in a OTB thread, but I’ve been giving this some thought and been asking some smart people about it.

    I’ve been on the losing side of retroactive legislation and here’s how I understand the Illinois Supreme Court’s views: 1) The ex post facto clause only bars retroactive criminal laws; 2) there is no constitutional prohibition against retroactive non-criminal laws; 3) however, a retroactive non-criminal law cannot substantially impair a constitutionally protected interest.

    As I see it, the General Assembly could pass a law stating that vacancies in any Senate seat as of December 1, 2008, will hereafter be filled by special election, but no such special election will nullify or discredit votes already cast by any interim appointee. The question becomes whether such a law harms any Constitutionally protected interest. An elected official has no due process right to his office. The nullification doesn’t undermine previous Senate votes. Burris was not selected by election, so no voter rights issues are presented.

    Also, there does not appear to be any alternative available to the people of Illinois. There is no impeachment process. If Burris commits high crimes, Illinois is stuck with him unless Congress acts? What if Congress likes Burris in jail during votes? And if Burris is kicked out of the Senate, does Illinois get to replace him?

    I don’t doubt what I am proposing presents messy legal and political issues that nobody wants to deal with and therefore it may be impractical.

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