U.S. Sen. Roland Burris

By Jennifer J. Foster

Well, the U.S. Senate has finally caved in to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Illinois’s senior senator, Dick Durbin, have reached an agreement to seat Roland Burris, Blagojevich’s choice to replace Barack Obama. Burris will be sworn in as soon as the end of this week.

“The Secretary of the Senate has determined that the new credentials presented today on behalf of Mr. Burris now satisfy Senate Rules and validate his appointment to the vacant Illinois Senate seat. In addition, as we requested, Mr. Burris has provided sworn testimony before the Illinois House Committee on Impeachment regarding the circumstances of his appointment,“ the two said in a statement.

“We have spoken to Mr. Burris to let him know that he is now the Senator-designate from Illinois and as such, will be accorded all the rights and privileges of a Senator-elect.“

Flashback: Remember when it was Burris was notifying the Senate that he was the junior senator from Illinois?

It’s not clear exactly how the “new credentials presented today” on Burris’s behalf “now satisfy Senate Rules and validate his appointment to the vacant Illinois Senate seat.“ As we discussed here last week, Senate rules are quite clear on the paperwork necessary to meet the requirement, and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has still refused to sign Burris’s certificate of appointment. So, unless the Senate somehow tweaked its rules without us knowing about it, Burris still doesn’t meet the requirements, but he’s getting an exception that doesn’t apply to anyone else.

So, now that this controversy has apparently been settled, let’s learn a little more about the guy from Illinois. You already know his history as the first African-American to serve in statewide office in Illinois, so let’s look a little deeper.

For instance, did you know that Burris is a planner? Oh, yeah. He plans far in advance. Did you know that he’s actually already had his grave site arranged? And I don’t just mean that he’s bought a plot. He’s bought the headstone ... which is actually more of a memorial than a headstone. And he’s also written all the text to go on it.

Check it out here. Go ahead; there’s a picture, and you’ll be really impressed.

Democrats’ ethical conundrum

By Jennifer J. Foster

Just over a week ago, I read an item by Democratic uberstrategist James Carville about his predictions for 2009.

One, an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement. He says it’s a “priority” of the new Obama administration. Presumably, he’s getting some inside info from his good friend Hillary Clinton, who, as secretary of state-in-waiting, might know a little something about that.

Two, Carville predicts a catastrophic ideological rift in the Republican Party. I love James Carville and his political analysis, but this one doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see coming down the pike.

The other prediction he made was the interesting one for me. He said that he expects Democrats to face some trouble, and not just with President-elect Obama’s tax cut plan:

The Democratic Party has had a recent run of corruption and sex scandals. Mathematicians say that there are no such things as streaks and that the last event has nothing to do with the next. The only people who disagree are crapshooters and political operatives. Since I am both, I firmly believe that there are streaks and that political scandals happen in clusters.

Carville goes on to say that because of the sheer number of Democrats now in Congress, statistics hold that more of them will be caught up in “some sort of scandal” over the next year or so.

Hmmm. Interesting.

If you know Carville, you know he’s no Rush Limbaugh. Actually, he’s the anti-Rush Limbaugh. He’s the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh: Witty, intelligent and fierce, Carville doesn’t hesitate with a well-placed one-liner. You probably know of his most famous one-liner, which made a relatively unknown Arkansas governor the most powerful man in the world: “It’s the economy, stupid.“ But my favorite Carville-ism was a line he uttered in reference to Howard Dean. At the time, Dean was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, and he had developed a habit of saying crazy things on the campaign trail. Here was Carville on that phenomenon:

“It seems like he’s come down with a case of ‘mad mouth’ disease,” quipped Democratic strategist James Carville. “He may be candid, but there is the glory of the unspoken thought here.”

Hee hee. But I digress.

Carville fortells ethical trouble of all kinds for Democrats. It’s sad to hear the almost resigned tone he takes in his prognostication. It’s as if he’s just accepted it as fact. But in doing so, he seemed to echo concerns expressed by Kimberley Strassel in her Dec. 17 column in The Wall Street Journal. In it, Strassel ticks off a number of congressional Democrats who are already mired in ethical quicksand: Charlie Rangel. Alan Mollohan. Silvertre Reyes. Paul Kanjorski, John Murtha and Luis Gutierrez. And that’s just on the House side. Across the Capitol, you have Chris Dodd, not to mention all the drama surrounding Obama’s successor (which includes several other House members, most notably, Jesse Jackson Jr.).

It’s true that Republicans aren’t in a position to point out the speck in their brother’s eye, what with having the planks removed from their own eye by voters—and federal prosecutors.

But when is all this going to stop?

Strassel skims over the solution:

Shockingly, this has happened despite all those campaign-finance laws, and Congress’s legislation to ban lobbyist lunches. The members took credit for those publicity stunts, and went right back to their “culture” of earmarking.

“Shockingly?“ I hope she was being sarcastic. Whom does this shock? Not me.

There’s only one way to reform the budget process in Congress, and not surprisingly, it’s the one thing that will reform the legislative process, too: Public financing of elections. Only when legislators can focus on policy instead of fundraising will the playing field be evened out for the general public against high-powered lobbyists and the interest groups they represent.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to put up with the ethical lapses of our legislators until we can throw them out—or until the feds do it for us.

See also:

Here’s one local Democratic official who’s starting off 2009 with an ethical crisis: Baltimore Mayor Sheila A. Dixon faces 12 counts of felony theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office stemming in part, according to The Baltimore Sun, from at least $15,348 in gifts Dixon allegedly received from her former boyfriend, prominent city developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, while she was City Council president. Dixon also is accused of using as much as $3,400 in gift cards, some donated to her office for distribution to “needy families,“ to purchase Best Buy electronics and other items for herself and her staff, The Sun says:

Lipscomb was not indicted in the Dixon case, but he and City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton were charged this week in a separate $12,500 bribery scheme. Both cases grew out of a nearly three-year probe by the state prosecutor into City Hall corruption.

Last week, Dixon became the city’s first sitting mayor to be criminally indicted.

Democrats are hoping Dixon’s case isn’t setting the tone for their 2009.

Gaza update

By Jennifer J. Foster

As things heat up in Gaza, I wanted to give you one more example of the lunacy that is negotiation with people who want to kill you.

Here’s what a senior Hamas figure had to say about Egyptian-led efforts to forge a truce between his terrorist group and the country it has vowed to destroy:

Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal gave a fiery speech on the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera condemning Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, describing it as a “holocaust.“

“You have finished off the last chance and breath for settlement and negotiations,“ he said, calling on Arabs to continue their protests to pressure their leaders and the international community. “We are living the hardest moments of the resistance now, we want another intifada in Palestine and on the Arab street.“

Hmm ... yes, that sounds like someone ready to coexist with his Jewish neighbors. Not only is this guy not interested in a cease-fire for the current conflict; he’s actually calling for a new one.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged both sides to agree to the truce, but he “singled out the Jewish state:“

In a news conference Saturday in Cairo after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Mahmoud Abbas also stressed that there was no time to waste in ending the bloodshed in Gaza, home to 1.4 million people.

“If any party does not accept it (the truce), regrettably it will be the one bearing the responsibility, and if Israel doesn’t want to accept, it will take the responsibility of perpetuating a waterfall of blood,“ Abbas said.

In other words, accept the truce ... even though the other side has no intention of honoring it.

Yes, this sounds like a recipe for a long and lasting peace.

Lunacy.

P-I on the block

By Jennifer J. Foster

It hasn’t been two weeks since we talked about the pros and cons of newspaper bailouts. I mentioned then that industry analysts believe that 2009 will be the year when newspapers start to die off.

Well, 11 days in to the new year, we have our first major metropolitian daily on life support.

Hearst announced last week that over the next 60 days, it will be looking for a buyer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

No buyer, no paper—at least, not in printed form:

“In no case will Hearst continue to publish the P-I in printed form” once the 60 days are up, Hearst said.

If no buyer is found, the possibility remains that the P-I may become an Internet-only operation. It’s unclear what that would mean, exactly—though it’s clear it would mean many fewer people practicing journalism.

This story also mentions that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune failed to reach an agreement on a request for concessions from its union, “setting the stage for a possible bankruptcy filing by Minnesota’s largest newspaper.“

You know why newspapers are dying: Ad revenue is drying up.

Well, yes, that’s a big part of it. But here’s a little window into another possible culprit:

Hearst said it is not considering buying The Seattle Times, the city’s other daily paper, which has handled non-news functions for the P-I since 1983 under a federally approved joint operating agreement. Hearst has owned the P-I since 1921, and the paper has had operating losses since 2000, including $14 million last year ...

In 1999, Seattle’s joint operating agreement was modified to allow The Times to switch from afternoon to morning publication, directly competing with the P-I. Hearst began paying The Times $1 million a year for the right of first refusal should The Times be put up for sale.

The Times gave notice in 2003 that it was seeking to end the JOA, saying the agreement was no longer financially viable. Hearst sued to block The Times from doing so, and the matter was settled in April 2007, with Hearst paying The Times $25 million not to end the agreement before 2016.

As part of that settlement, The Times paid $49 million to settle Hearst’s legal claims and to erase a provision of the JOA that called for Hearst to collect 32 percent of The Times’ profits through 2083 should the P-I go out of business and leave The Times with a monopoly.

Times Publisher and CEO Frank Blethen said in a statement that the JOA structure is inefficient and had been a big part of the deep losses both papers have experienced.

Read those last three paragraphs again.

Lemme get this straight:

Hearst began paying a $1 million right-of-first-refusal fee to The Times right around the time that the P-I began operating at a loss.

Hearst continued to pay the ROFR fee even as prospects dimmed for the P-I, much less for prospects of buying The Times.

Hearst sued to keep its competitor in its JOA agreement until 2016, while simultaneously giving up its hedge-betting: A provision in the JOA that guaranteed it a portion of The Times‘s profits if the P-I foundered and left Seattle to The Times.

?????????????

Ad revenue or no ad revenue, with management like that, the poor P-I has been doomed for a while.