Caught in the act!

This stunning photo shows Illinois senate nominee Roland Burris taking a cashier's check from his pocket to hand to Gov. Rod Blagojevich in payment for appointing him to Barack Obama's senate seat.

Shocking!

Blago & Burris

To be honest, I've only been half-following the whole Rod Blagojevich story, including the latest with his nomination of Roland Burris to take Barack Obama's vacated senate seat.

It seems the Senate Democratic leadership is freaking out about the Burris nomination, not so much over Burris himself but over Blago's appointment of anyone to the seat. If I understand things correctly, Democrats are worried that anyone appointed by Blagojevich will be so tainted that they'd have no chance to keep the seat in Democrat hands in the 2010 election.

So once again with the Democrats, it's a matter of party over principle. Blagojevich remains Governor of Illinois. He's been charged with crimes, but as yet remains not only unconvicted but unindicted. And Patrick Fitzgerald - the federal prosecutor investigating Blago - has just requested a 90 day extension on the deadline for filing an indictment with a grand jury. As Governor, Blago still has duties to discharge, and one of those duties is to appoint a replacement to congress in the event of death or resignation of one of his state's representatives or senators.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has threatened to deny Burris' seating under Article 1, Section 5 of the constitution, which reads:

Section 5: Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide.

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.

Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.

Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

It's the bolded part that leads Harry Reid to believe he can keep Blago's appointee out of the senate. But here's what the constitution says about senate qualifications:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Now I've got nowhere near enough self-loathing to be a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear to me that Roland Burris meets the constitutional definition of qualification. But that doesn't matter to Democrats who'll engage in any kind of chicanery necessary to keep a senate seat in the hands of the Democrats.

Update: A couple of law professors say the senate can refuse to seat Burris on the basis of judging the "returns" laid out in Article 1, Section 5 if they can legitimately say they believe he was selected under dubious circumstances.

What are they hiding?

I was talking to my brother tonight about a news item he'd seen on the KHQA web site dated 5 November which mentioned a meeting Barack Obama was to have with Gov. Rod Blagojevich on filling Obama's vacated senate seat. He said he still had the page open, but that if you tried to get to it now, it was gone. I walked him through the steps for snagging a screen shot of it and posting it on his blog.

On checking KHQA's web site, I came across this "clarification".

KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama’in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday.

The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.

What in the hell are they hiding, and at whose request? My brother later e-mailed me this link to American Digest, which correctly notes that the previous innocuous news item reported a mundane story of a meeting between Obama and Blagojevich that would have been completely expected and not out of the ordinary.

AD states that not only did KHQA dump the story, but it has also since been scrubbed from Google's cache. What the hell is going on here? Why deny that a meeting - one which would have been completely routine even in the hindsight after Blago's arrest - ever took place?