Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Blago's Revenge

Apparently, the cagey disgraced Governor, Rod Blagojevich, has decided to put the political systems in Illinois and in Washington D.C. between a rock and a hard place.

He knows that appointing a replacement for Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat is his exclusive right under the Constitution of Illinois. Further, the U.S. Senate, under our Constitution, has no right to block the seating of any Senator (or Congressman) from any State. It is part of the State's rights to send whoever they want, under their respective Constitutions, to act as their Representatives in Congress. Of course, once a Senator is seated, the U.S. Senate has the right to unseat any Senator for corruption and ethics violations.

To top all that off, Blago appointed a black man, Roland Burris. This makes things even stickier than if he had appointed a white. Now, any attempts to block the seating of Roland Burris can be viewed as having anti-racial overtones. The not-so-eminent and the former founder of the Black Panthers in Illinois and an Illinois Congressman, Bobby Rush, made that perfectly clear in one of the worst speeches (or lack there of) that I have ever heard. Rush's only justification of having Roland Burris in the Senate is because he is black and has a clean record and, without Obama, no other black person exists in the Senate. Further, he used the word "lynch" as to imply that not seating Burris would be a racial thing (See Video). If their is one word that get black's ire up, it is that codeword of "lynch" or lynching.

I have to hand it to Blago. Singlehandedly, he has managed to somewhat tarnish the incoming President; expose the corruption of Illinois politics to the broader United States; and tie both Illinois and Washington D.C. into knots trying to turn this gigantic lemon into even a thimble full of lemonade. Nice job!

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