Childe Roland to take his sword and leave town amid (surprise) no ethics investigation since the administration needs his vote through 2010

A few days ago our friends in the Democratic wing of the Demopublican Party were all rejoicing at the seating of Al Franken in the US Senate to give them a fairly meaningless 60-vote majority (since the idea of any 60 Democrats agreeing on anything is pretty far out there)....

Strangely enough, while they are doing the Franken victory dance and enjoying the bizarre roadshow that is Sarah Palin, they seem quite mum on the fact that their 60-vote majority is also dependent (at least for the next year and and a half) on the vote of Illinois Senator Roland Burris.

Remember Burris? The guy even Dick Durbin said ought to resign? Except that he didn't, and the Illinois prosecutors abruptly forgot about pursuing his corruption case, and the Senate ethics investigation has ... evaporated.

Today poor Roland announced that he's doing a Ted Kauffmann--not running again--only in his case it seems to be because nobody will give him any money.

Strangely enough, it all escapes the notice of our friends that passage of the Obama agenda in health care, cap and trade, yada yada yada is heavily dependent on a handful of Senators who were appointed [one might even say selected] not elected, at least one of whom would be getting prosecuted if the idea of an Illinois ethics investigation wasn't something better suited for Comedy Central than the court system.

Miko--a frequent commenter here--is right: politics in America has now descended into being a professional team sport. As long as your team is winning it doesn't matter if you cheat.

Comments

tom said…

unfortunately the chances of a non-Democrat, who isn't Mike Castle, getting elected to a statewide office in Delaware any time soon are about nil.

July 9, 2009 at 11:31 PM

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

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More of This, Please

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Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point: Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo: Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1. Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...

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