The Daily Parker

Alleged felon Rod Blagojevich, the best governor Illinois has right now, leaked that he will appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the Senate will refuse to seat anyone Blagojevich appoints, though it's unclear whether the Senate actually has that power.

Can't wait for the press conference ten minutes from now:

Blagojevich, who has sole authority to name a replacement senator, scheduled a 2 p.m. news conference at his downtown Chicago office.

Burris left his downtown consulting office about 1:15 p.m., getting congratulatory hugs from several employees. But Burris refused comment when asked whether he was going to accept the appointment after word that Senate Democratic leadership would not seat him.

Burris has given more than $20,000 to Blagojevich's campaign fund on his own and through his consulting and law firms, state campaign finance records show. Burris' consulting company received about $290,000 in state contracts with the Illinois Department of Transportation a few years ago, according to state comptroller records.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada previously warned Blagojevich, following the governor's Dec. 9 arrest, that Senate Democrats would not seat any appointment the two-term Democratic governor made. Reid's warning was contained in a letter signed by all 50 sitting Democratic senators, including the No. 2 Democrat in Senate leadership, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.

So, now a reasonably intelligent person must ask—heck, even Ted Baxter must ask—why on Earth would Burris accept a nomination under these circumstances? His C.V. provides a clue:

Though he is 71, Burris has said that Obama's replacement should be able to win re-election and he has noted that despite a string of primary losses in races ranging from Chicago mayor to governor and U.S. senator, he's never lost to a Republican.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has weighed in:

White says he'll reject any paperwork that Gov. Rod Blagojevich files to name a new U.S. senator.

The secretary of state keeps state records and certifies official actions.

But White says he won't certify anything Blagojevich does to fill the Senate seat once held by President-elect Barack Obama.

White issued a statement today saying he can't accept any paperwork from Blagojevich on the Senate seat "because of the current cloud of controversy surrounding the governor."

It isn't clear if that administrative roadblock would keep the appointment from taking place.

So there you have it. No Democrat in the country, except perhaps the two most directly involved, wants this appointment to proceed. And yet, as we are a nation of laws, so we may be stuck with it.

The impeachment can't happen soon enough.

As happy as I am for my junior U.S. Senator and my Congressman, as of Friday I have neither:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel will resign his House seat Friday.

Emanuel, set to serve as chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama, sent a letter to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich Monday indicating that he planned to step down at the end of the week.

Yay! Another election! Approximately everyone in the Congressional district is running, too.

The best governor we have right now shall never surrender:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said today he "has done nothing wrong" and will not resign in the face of federal corruption charges.

"I will fight. I will fight. I will fight until I take my last breath," he said. "And I'm not going to quit a job that people hired me to do because of false accusations and a political lynch mob."

Blagojevich, however, did not get into the specifics of the political corruption charges he faces, saying he's "not going to talk about this case in 30-second sound bites ... on the TV news."

The governor went on to quote from the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling....

Stunning. His approval rating is within the margin of error of zero, and he thinks he's still serving the people of Illinois? Is he deluded or just stupid?

Har:

Just how much money do you think it would take to persuade Blagojevich to get the bleep out of the way?

I'm serious. Big corporations do it all the time. They've got a screw-up executive in the way, and they need to make a change. To save time and trouble, they pay him to get lost. It could be worth a try.

Would a year's salary do the trick? Probably not, but he'd have to give it serious thought.

In all seriousness, I've often wondered how my life might be simpler were I sociopathic. The best governor we have right now suggests that the unexamined life might not be so bad after all—at least, until the inevitable move to Duluth.

Note to Blagojevich: Even Nixon resigned.

Sheesh.

I've given up for the evening attempting to configure a recalcitrant firewall. To cheer up, I turn to Paul Krugman, who reminds us that a 0% Fed rate means we're in trouble:

ZIRP!

That's zero interest rate policy. And it has arrived. America has turned Japanese.

This is the thing I’ve been afraid of ever since I realized that Japan really was in the dreaded, possibly mythical liquidity trap. ...

Seriously, we are in very deep trouble. Getting out of this will require a lot of creativity, and maybe some luck too.

At least I think I've figured out where I mis-configured the firewall....

Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan has started impeachment proceedings against Governor Blagojevich:

Madigan, a veteran Southwest Side Chicago lawmaker and head of the Democratic Party of Illinois, announced the move against the state's first Democratic governor in more than a quarter century at a news conference at the State Capitol.

"It is my intention to appoint a special committee to begin immediately an investigation into the governor's conduct in office and to undertake the preparatory work that is a prerequisite to an impeachment proceeding in the Illinois House," Madigan said.

Yes, you read that right. His own party chair is heading up the impeachment. And he still won't resign. I mean, how does he think this is going to turn out?

People with a sense of history may find Nixon aide Dean's advice to the incoming president interesting:

Because of my own personal experience with Watergate, the mother of modern presidential scandals, not to mention being a student of scandals that followed, I speak as someone who learned the hard way by making mistakes and then watched as others made their own similar and unnecessary blunders.

...[I]n the interest of the nation presidents (which would include presidents-elect) must openly and aggressively confront any and all scandals that affect them. The more innocent they are the more aggressively they should address the problem to end it before it grows.

The best governor we have right now is so bad that convicted felons Dan Rostenkowski and George Ryan both felt moved to say something. And no one laughed at them.

Wow. That says something.

The AP calls his approval rating "shockingly low," missing the obvious point that it's shockingly high. Who, really, are those 8%? And 8% of what, one has to wonder?