In case folks were wondering what the people of Illinois think of the Blago/Burris Farce:

Roland Burris is paying the price for an appointment that is tarnished and tainted by the cloud of corruption and scandal that hovers menacingly over the head of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to a new poll by the Glengariff Group. The poll indicates that 52 percent of Illinois voters oppose the appointment. Only 32 percent support it and only 21 percent approve of the governor's decision to exercise his appointment power, while 72 per cent want a special election or an appointment by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to fill the Senate seat. "I think rather than a judgment on Roland, this is a judgment on the process," said Don Rose, political analyst.

(Emphasis supplied.) By contrast, a plurality of Minnesotans support the seating of Al Franken. If all politics is local, then the questions of the political wisdom of seating Roland Burris has to be questioned. I oppose the seating of Burris on ethical grounds and believe the Constitution provides the Senate the legal power to judge the "return" of the tainted Blago appointment of Roland Burris. If and when Blago is removed from office and indicted and convicted, the politics of this will be even clearer. That will be closer to election day 2010.

Speaking for me only

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would close Guantanamo during his first 100 days in office. This morning, on ABC's This Week with Stephanopoulos, he backtracked:

"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," the President-elect explained. "Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true.

And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."

Shorter version: It will close at some point, just not as soon as he promised.[More...]

President Elect Barack Obama will be on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos this morning. What's hegoing to say?

[F]ixing our economy over the long term will require sacrifice from every American and scaling back some of his campaign promises.

Or in Obama's words:

"Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game," Obama said.

On January 06, 2009 House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) introduced H.R. 104, a bill to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. The resolution will establish a Blue Ribbon Commission comprised of experts outside government service to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush administration that were undertaken by the Bush administration under claims of unreviewable war powers.

Co-sponsors of the bill include Nadler, Johnson, Jackson-Lee, Cohen, Gutierrez, Delahunt, Wasserman Schultz.

If you are on Facebook, the easiest way to join is to go to the group's facebook page and click on the group to join. I found it through Daily Kos writer Joan McCarter and joined on the spot.

You can read the full text of the legislation here (pdf.)

A site called Revolution Day is stealing blogposts written by others and publishing them on its site without attribution back to the original blog link.

I've written and asked them to remove TalkLeft's material from their site and gotten no answer. As of now, they have posted 684 of TalkLeft's posts on their site.

Their contact information is provided as: mensajeria@live.com. The company is Powered by PotencialNetworks.com // Administrado por elrOx.

We're not the only blog whose work they are stealing. And they seem to be using feedburner to do it. Check it out and see if your stuff is on their site too.

After 20 months, Jack Bauer and "24" are back with a four hour premiere, spread over Sunday and Monday nights.

Janeane Garafolo joins the cast as an FBI high tech analyst. Catfights with Cloe?

The President is a woman, Cherry Jones. Thoughts of Hillary?

Is this going to be a revamped "24", cognizant that torture is wrong? Probably not ... then there would be no need to call on Jack during emergencies. And if they merely put dialogue in the mouths of the agents claiming torture is wrong, who will believe them? It will be comical and the show will lose any vestige of its remaining credibility.

Here's a guide to the new season. [More...]

Is anyone here going to try and catch up on movie going this weekend for tomorrow night's Golden Globes? Slumdog Millionaire is the film I most want to see.

Here's an open thread for those of you online today, all topics welcome.

The Caribbean island of St. Kitts has reinstituted the death penalty for violent crimes, hoping to deter a recent increase in murders on the tiny island.

They came for the condemned man on the stroke of midnight. But for Charles Elroy Laplace there was no slap-up last supper of the type served on Death Row in America, nor the company of a reassuring pastor. Instead, he was bound hand and foot and cast on to a grubby mattress in the corner of his fetid cell, then left for eight hours to contemplate his impending fate.

Paralysed and rendered incontinent with fear, Laplace lay there all night, begging the Lord for mercy and pleading for someone to call his mother or his lawyer - anyone who might save him at the last. But his wretched entreaties were drowned out by the singing of his prison guards, who saw fit to celebrate his coming execution with a rum-fuelled 'gallows party' that lasted long into the small hours.

The article goes on to describe the hangman and reasons the island is resuming hangings. [More...]

Stanley Fish writes an elegant column in the NYTimes about the Blago/Burris affair. I disagree with it but it raises some interesting questions. Fish cites Augustine's works denouncing the Donatists to support his view that Burris should be seated by the Senate (which seem certain to happen now, the Senate is not engaged in this intellectual exercise - political calculation, wrongheaded in my view, leading it to abandon the principle stated in the December 2008 letter from Senate Democrats to Blagojevich.) More . . .

It's a jail day for me....Here's an open thread for you. What haven't we discussed that's on your mind?

Do immigrants have the right to effective representation at removal hearings? Eric Holder should be asked that question at his confirmation hearing, in light of this:

On Wednesday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued a decision stating that immigrants in removal proceedings do not have a legal right to counsel, or to effective representation.

Mukasey’s interpretation is that immigrants facing deportation cannot petition to have their cases re-opened because of the errors or incompetence of attorneys. Rather, according to the attorney general, they can throw themselves at the mercy of the DOJ’s discretion.

[More....]

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was impeached today by the Illinois House of Representatives. The vote was 114-1 with one voting present. His impeachment has been referred to the Illinois Senate for trial on removal of Blagojevich from office.

Among the charges brought against Blagojevich was of trying to sell the appointment to the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama and for which Blagojevich has named Roland Burris, whose testimony before the Illinois House Impeachment Committee raised questions regarding his contacts with Blagojevich: [More...]