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Miles Thinks He's Still Small Enough to Sleep Under the Desk, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

-Tom Geoghegan for Congress by James Fallows.

-Nate Silver explains why the Democrats won't improve their relative position in the Senate until Franken wins and Illinois seats a senator. IMO, the Dems should just seat Burris and ban him from the Democratic caucus. He'll probably vote with the Democrats anyway. Burris is a rare commodity, a guy we have positive reason to think is non-corrupt. Blago has been under surveillance for years. The reason we think Blago tried to sell the seat is that he was caught on tape discussing how to sell the seat to people other than Burris. That plan fell through when the feds swooped in and arrested Blago. Burris is Plan B. The Burris pick is widely seen as an ostentatious display of non-corruption to burnish Blago's image. If the DOJ has nothing on Burris today, they've got nothing. Blago is still the governor. The Illinois legislature dropped the ball on impeachment. If he's not in the Democratic caucus, he's not Harry Reid's problem. If the goal is to distract people from the idea that corrupt Democrats exist, an anti-Burris crusade is shortsighted indeed. The people of Illinois elected Blago and he's still their governor until someone gets around to removing him. It's not fair to compound the injury by making Illinois go without half its representation in the Senate for several months.

Comments

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Burris is a rare commodity, a guy we have positive reason to think is non-corrupt.

I'll repeat a point I made on another thread. While serving as Illinois Attorney General, Burris pushed for the execution of Rolando Cruz, even though the deputy attorney general assigned to the case argued that there was compelling that Cruz was innocent. This happened while Burris was running for governor, and the conclusion that his support for Cruz' execution was due to political considerations. Doesn't this qualify as corruption?

[togolosh]

parse - sadly, that qualifies as bog-standard politics as usual. I don't support the death penalty, but as long as we have it it will be politicized.

Burris should be treated as any other senator. Blago's issues belong to Blago, and absent some reason to believe that Burris is corrupt he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

[parse]

parse - sadly, that qualifies as bog-standard politics as usual

I think much of what qualifies as bog-standard politics as usual can be fairly described as corrupt.

My argument isn't that Burris should be denied a seat, but that he shouldn't be described as "non-corrupt." That might be the case if corrupt is defined as synonymous with illegal, and I do realize it's often used that way. But I wouldn't endorse that meaning, myself. Merriam-Webster online supplies morally degenerate and perverted as the primary meaning of the word. I think that pretty well describes Burris' behavior in the Cruz case.

[Another Chris]

Wow, Geoghegan is actually running?? I thought that was an "if only" column at first. I've read some of the guy's books, and they're really great. I think there's a section in Secret Lives of Citizens where he mulls over running for the state legislature.