By Steve Rhodes
BREAKING 11:19 A.M.: Gov. Pat Quinn just called on Roland Burris to resign. Quinn also asked the General Assembly to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. Jack Franks that would create special elections to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Temporary appointments would be made in any interim between the vacancy and the election.
–
Burris should run in the special election!
–
The [Friday] Papers
It just never ends.
“A former top official for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Thursday he got a ‘courtesy call’ from Roland Burris last fall noting Burris’ interest in a vacant U.S. Senate seat – a contact Burris failed to mention to lawmakers in his evolving testimony about how he got the job,” the Tribune reports.
This isn’t the biggest revelation in the world – the contacts (there was a second one too) sound innocuous. But how do we know? The point of Burris filing affidavits and testifying in Springfield was to find out – under oath – how Burris got his appointment. And like one state legislator said the other day, you can’t cross-examine an affidavit.
A bigger problem for Burris is this, from Dave McKinney and Natasha Korecki of the Sun-Times:
“Durbin said Burris first told him of the new affidavit Feb. 13, while they were both on the Senate floor taking part in the historic vote on an economic stimulus package. Burris made the approach after a Chicago Sun-Times reporter called him earlier that day with questions about his testimony before the House committee.”
That is not the behavior of a man with nothing to hide or nothing to fear from a new affidavit. That is the behavior of a man covering his ass.
“‘He said some of the information he had given was incomplete,’ Durbin said. ‘I think he said: They asked me five names. I responded to one. They didn’t follow up on the others’.”
Of course, they did follow-up on the others, as has been persuasively shown by now.
Fool Dick Durbin once, shame on you. Fool Dick Durbin twice, shame on Dick Durbin.
And that’s not all. McKinney and Korecki – two of the paper’s top-notch reporters – also have this:
“If Sen. Roland Burris misled an Illinois House impeachment panel with a false account of his appointment, he did the same thing with the Illinois Supreme Court last month.”
Uh-oh.
It turns out Burris filed the same no-longer-operative January 5 affidavit with the court in his lawsuit against Secretary of State Jesse White, who had refused to certify Burris’s appointment. He never filed his amended affidavit with the court, not that that necessarily matters. The damage was done.
“Burris’s law license could be in jeopardy regardless of whether there is a perjury finding,” McKinney and Korecki report.
An investigation by the state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission is almost certainly underway – the third body now investigating Burris.
Another Problem
This story by the Springfield State Journal-Register a couple days ago is starting to get picked up:
“A list of lobbying clients that U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has given state legislators doesn’t match records kept by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office or the Chicago Board of Ethics, both of which register lobbyists and keep track of their clients.”
The Daley Show
Our mayor, who has provably lied a number of times but gets a free pass not extended to Burris, played a childish game again with the media. Asked if Burris had a cloud over his head, the mayor said (roughly), “He voted on the stimulus bill. Did he have a cloud over his head when he did that?”
Um, yes. Just like you have a cloud over your head, Mr. Mayor. It’s a foreboding cloud that darkens everything you do.
Taint Feint
Mary Schmich repeats the utterly false narrative in her column today that “[Burris] reached an advanced age without political taint.”
Maybe Schmich doesn’t read her own paper’s Op-Ed pages.
Cobb Job
Delmarie Cobb lays out Burris’s coming media strategy – if he makes it through the weekend. Ugh.
Burris Bunk
Hey, they can’t all be winners . . . but here they are anyway:
* Burris Behind Closed Doors
* Imagine: Burris’ Last Lines
* Blago vs. Burris
Chicago Power!
–
That’s all I have time for right now . . .
The Beachwood Tip Line: Takeout and delivery.
Posted on February 20, 2009