oculus wanted to hear from Lawrence Tribe on the Blago/Burris farce and here is his take:

President-elect Barack Obama has urged the Senate to exclude from the seat he once occupied anyone appointed by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. . . Happily, the president-elect had his constitutional law right, and the critics who said the Senate would violate the Constitution if it carried out its threat to exclude any Blagojevich appointee had it wrong.

[MORE . .. ]

Perhaps, as a public service announcement, TalkLeft should have reminded readers that it's not a good idea to celebrate New Years Eve by shooting firearms into the air. It is, in fact, a downright dangerous practice, given the prevailing wisdom that what goes up must come down.

According to this article, "celebratory gunfire is common in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve." Common or not, it isn't smart, as two men discovered after Baltimore's police commissioner saw them firing shotguns into the air. The commissioner gave chase, resulting in the arrest of the two men. They're in trouble for discharging firearms within city limits, but probably in greater trouble because the shotguns in question were sawed-off. The men could face federal charges for possessing sawed-off shotguns.

Moral: leave the guns at home on New Year's Eve -- particularly the illegal ones.

While some Georgia politicians are unhappy that the state's jurors don't return a verdict of death in every capital trial, the state's legislators remain unwilling to fund an adequate defense in death penalty cases. The result may be tragic for Jamie Weis, who -- despite being charged with a capital crime -- has gone eight months without representation because Georgia doesn't want to pay for his defense.

The two lawyers initially appointed to represent Weis withdrew when they discovered that the state's public defender system didn't have money to pay them. Staff attorneys who were appointed in their stead also withdrew, citing a lack of time and resources to give Weis the adequate defense that is his constitutional right. The initial lawyers were reappointed with the agreement that the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council would sign a contract authorizing their payment. Weis has now filed suit, contending that the contract was never signed and that he therefore has no counsel working on his behalf.

[more ...]

I find myself again at odds with TalkLeft friend (and my friend) Jane Hamsher, who wrongfully accuses Harry Reid of ignoring the rule of law in the Blago Farce. Jane cites to Walter Dellinger to buttress her argument that Reid is ignoring the rule of law. Yet she fails to quote Dellinger's actual statement on the legal question at hand:

I do not mean to suggest that the constitutional question is an easy one to answer correctly. It isn’t. Under the Constitution, the Senate is “the judge of elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." . . . There is a possible argument for rejection. Even assuming selection of Burris himself was free from any allegations of bribes sought or offered, it might nonetheless be viewed as the culmination of process that was illegitimate from start to finish. That is, suppose Blagojevich appointed Burris not because of any bribe, but as part of an effort to ‘cover up,” defend against, or deflect attention from a bribery scheme. Suppose, to put it differently, the Senate concludes that, but for the bribery scheme, and Blagojevich's personal need to cabin the fallout from that scheme, he would never have appointed Burris.

More . . .

I hate this type of hypocrisy - TPM and JedL are criticizing Norm Coleman for exercising his legal right to contest the Minnesota Senate election (and Bowers joins the hypocritically ignorant train.) Excuse me, when Coleman was asking Franken to concede when Franken was trailing by 600 votes (Franken now leads by 49 votes), TPM and JedL (and me) were criticizing Coleman for what they are now doing.

Coleman has the right, I would argue he has a duty to his supporters, to make sure he really lost the election before he concedes. Minnesota law does not allow for certification of a winner until an election contest is resolved. No one wants to see Franken in the Senate more than I but this whining about Coleman exercising his legal right to an election contest is blatantly hypocritical and extremely unseemly. And stupid to boot. Coleman is going to contest the result and the Democrats in the Senate can not seat Franken until he is certified as the winner of the Minnesota Senate election. Let's follow the rules please.

Speaking for me only

Rocky Mountain News:

Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet is expected to be named Saturday as the future U.S. Senate replacement for Interior Secretary nominee Ken Salazar, according to two Democratic sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

I leave it to folks who know Colorado and the Denver school system to opine on this choice. In other words, I hope the rest of this post is written by Jeralyn.

ABC:

Officials say the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy will be the governor's choice to fill the New York Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Two people close to Gov. David Paterson tell The Associated Press they believe Caroline Kennedy will be his choice, but the governor cautions he's still looking.

I am fine with the choice personally. Kennedy is smart and holds the right views from my perspective. I would caution Kennedy that she needs to get better in her public appearances. While defeating her in 2010 would seem a tall order for any New York Republican, if her level of performance does not improve, it seems to me it could be doable.

Speaking for me only

In one of Jim Blanning's notes that he left at the Aspen Times after dropping off packages with homemade bombs at two banks on the afternoon of News Years Eve, he wrote “May Bob [Sheriff Braudis]help to understand it all.” In an interview with the Aspen Daily News, Braudis explains Blanning. He was mostly a man obsessed with mining claims.

“He was an encyclopedia of the mineral and geological reality here as far as silver and gold mining,” Braudis said. “Mineral extraction was a big part of his avocation and occupation.”

....Blanning also mastered the arcane world of mining claims dating back to the 1880s. The claims are typically rectangular pieces of property. On maps, the claims present a patchwork quilt of ownership of both the land on the surface and the minerals underneath.

“He was always looking for the mother lode,” Braudis said.

[More...]

Via Political Wire, a Military Times subscriber survey tells us their readers prefer Bush to Obama. Here's the tell though:

The responses are not representative of the opinions of the military as a whole. The survey group overall under-represents minorities, women and junior enlisted service members, and over-represents soldiers.

All righty then. Thanks for letting us know older white military men from the South are less likely to approve of Obama than Bush. We never would have known otherwise.

Speaking for me only

Good morning.

A question for our readers, what is the most important story we have not blogged about here at TalkLeft?

I think it is the college football national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma (to be played January 8), which I will begin to cover comprehensively on Monday. What say you?

This is an Open Thread.

Resolved, the Big Ten stinks.

This is an Open Thread.

Responding to my post criticizing her previous post, Digby argues that the politics of not seating Roland Burris, Blago's pick to fill the Illinois Senate seat, is horrible (I'll stick to the politics in this post, having written enough words on the legal issues). I disagree. Ian Welsh gets it right imo:

Here's the fact: Blagojevich was caught, on tape, trying to sell the seat. He is corrupt. He is tainted. It may be true, on the strict letter of the law, that Blagojevich is still entitled legally to appoint a Senator (since the Illinois Senate has refused to do its job). Morally, however, it is odious to allow a Governor who, again, is caught on tape trying to sell the seat, to appoint someone to it. Letting this play out legally, right to the Supreme Court, is the right thing to do. If the Supremes rule that Burris must be seated, so be it. It is then on them that a man appointed by a known seat-selling Governor is in the Senate. It is not on Senate Democrats that they were willing to allow someone who was willing to accept a tainted seat to enter the Senate.

Exactly.

Speaking for me only