Durbin won’t support Burris in 2010

By Jennifer J. Foster

As an update to my post this morning, we have this from the CNN Political Ticker:

Sen. Dick Durbin repeated Wednesday that he would not support his colleague from Illinois, Sen. Roland Burris, for re-election in 2010.

Durbin said he told Burris that he was “disappointed” to read a federal wiretap transcript, released on Tuesday, which showed that the junior senator had offered former Gov. Rod Blagojevich campaign cash while trying to win a Senate appointment.

“We stuck our neck out for him and said if you do this thing, you’ll do it in a proper, professional way, then we can stand behind you being sworn into the Senate,“ Durbin said, according to NBCChicago.com. “And I just don’t think his testimony was complete and accurate.“

Hey, wait a minute. I thought the deal was that Burris wouldn’t run in 2010. Am I remembering that wrong, or has he amended that position, too?

 

Burris wiretap released

By Jennifer J. Foster

Remember Roland I’m-such-a-humble-guy Burris?

Yeah, you remember him ... he’s the guy that Rod Blagojevich appointed to the Senate when Blagojevich stunned everyone by appointing someone to the Senate in that few-week span of time between when he had made bail on federal corruption charges and when the Illinois Senate kicked him out of office.

Blago and Burris stood side by side at the announcement, and both insisted that the deal was no deal at all—it was a legitimate appointment, based on nothing but Burris’s experience and ability.

Burris told a grand jury and fellow senators the same thing. And then—after being sworn in, of course—he had a series of epiphanies that caused him to tweak—er, amend his testimony to the grand jury and his statements to senators.

And then he stopped talking altogether and let other people talk for him.

Well, a federal judge cleared the way this week for the release of a long-awaited transcript of a wiretapped conversation between Burris and Blago’s brother, Robert Blagojevich, who headed the governor’s campaign fund.

According to the transcript, Burris appears to understand both the gravity of what he’s being asked to do and the public perception of those actions if he was to secure the Senate appointment. He references his efforts in trying to “figure out what the heck, you know, I can do,“ and mentions the possibility of putting on a fundraiser for Blagojevich organized in the name of one of Burris’s business partners.

Burris says twice that he will “personally” write a check to the governor, and Robert Blagojevich references prior conversations—“a number of conversations,“ in his words—that he and Burris have had about this issue.

You can read the rest here, or as part of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage here.

It’s unlikely that this evidence will be enough to spur the Senate Ethics Committee to censure or remove Burris ... at least, not until the grand jury comes back with a decision on whether to indict Burris for perjury, or other transcripts of other wiretapped conversations involving Burris are released. But it is a continuing problem for Democrats, who will need Burris as the 60th vote if the MMA/Senate cage grudge match between Norm Coleman and Al Franken is ever settled before 2010.

Byrne-in’ up the interstate

By Jennifer J. Foster

Alabama two-year college Chancellor Bradley Byrne is about 12 hours away from announcing his candidacy for the GOP nomination to succeed Gov. Bob Riley.

The Byrne for Governor campaign will kick off in Mobile, his hometown, at 8:45 a.m. tomorrow. Three other stops—in Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville—round out the first day’s schedule.

I’m told that Byrne will be in Opelika Friday night at the Martha Harlan Banquet, the annual fundraising dinner for the Lee County Republican Executive Committee. I hope to meet him there and ask him a few questions about his new campaign.

What would you like to know? Anything you’d like me to ask him on your behalf? Let me know, and I’ll do my best to get the answers for you.

In the meantime, let George Altman from the Mobile Press-Register introduce you to Byrne, if you don’t know him already (yes, the article is archived. See? Wouldn’t micropayments be better?). Or, you can read any or all of these articles about some of Byrne’s work:

“State, local officials promise training for BFGoodrich workers,“ an article by Opelika-Auburn News reporter Brittany Whitley on Byrne’s efforts to reach out to the more than 1,000 workers soon to be unemployed due to the closing of BFGoodrich; April 22, 2009.

“Byrne’s newest act helps bring credibility to diplomas,“ an Opelika-Auburn News editorial; July 16, 2008.

“Alabama chancellor cracking down on diploma mills,“ an Associated Press article; July 15, 2008.

“Search for permanent Southern Union president postponed,“ an article by Opelika-Auburn News reporter Amy Weaver on Byrne’s appearance at the Opelika Lions Club meeting; June 16, 2008.

“Byrne focuses on fixing community college system,“ an article by Opelika-Auburn News reporter Amy Weaver about a wide-ranging meeting Byrne had with the editorial board of the News; Feb. 7, 2008.

The complete itinerary for Byrne’s travels tomorrow is below.

Mobile:  8:45 a.m.
Five Rivers - Alabama’s Delta Resource Center
Tensaw Theater
30945 Five Rivers Boulevard
Spanish Fort, AL 36527

Montgomery:  Noon
Alabama State Capitol steps
Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36130

Birmingham:  2:30 p.m.
Press Conference: 
Atlantic Aviation East Conference Room
4725 65th Place North
Birmingham, AL 35206

Huntsville:  5 p.m.
US Space and Rocket Center
Space Shuttle Exhibit Area
One Tranquility Base
Huntsville, AL 35805

Dowdell off-base on race, Part 2

By Jennifer J. Foster

In case you missed it in Saturday’s print edition of the Opelika-Auburn News (or if you just live outside the print delivery area), you can catch my column about City Councilman Arthur Dowdell and his latest off-base race comments here.

Also, I was discussing this issue with a friend of mine last week, and he made an interesting point:

My lone question for you would be, though, if you feel it’s a good idea for a white person to be making these points. This isn’t an attack on you, because as you know I respect and value your insight on things, but I just don’t necessarily feel comfortable with a white columnist telling a black man how wrong he is that his race is underserved.

My initial reaction, of course, was to recoil in my own defense. If I’m not in a position to assess how well minorities are served in this community, then who is Dowdell, and what is his experience, that he can assess how well women—or students, or any other group, for that matter—are being served in this community? Because that’s what he’s doing when he makes a blanket assessment that minorities alone are underserved.

But I thought about it for a minute, and I realized that my friend may have a point. And it would be one thing if we didn’t have a good way to determine what minorities think about how they’re being served by city government.

But we do. It’s the city’s annual citizen survey.

This perennial statistical work merits the occasional mention in the News —usually as it’s announced, as the survey closes and as the survey results are presented to the council. The last article generally deals with the priorities Auburn residents would like to see their council undertake over the coming year, but that’s about it.

But as it turns out, there’s so much more to the survey.

In fact, you can view the results by geographic area—or, by another name, WARDS. So we can actually go to the map (I’ve always wanted to say that) and see what folks in Dowdell’s area think about how the city is doing when it comes to responding to their needs.

Here’s the city’s ward map. Ward 1, which Councilman Dowdell represents, is situated in the west-central portion of the city and is signified on this map by the aqua color. It’s shaped basically like a triangle on top of a square, with the lower-right hand corner cut off.

Now, back to the citizen survey: Beginning on page 66, survey results are broken down by degree of satisfaction by area. Here’s the amazing thing: Out of more than 80 individual measures of satisfaction with various city services and residents’ perceptions of Auburn, only two—TWO—reveal less-than-neutral results—ANYWHERE IN THE CITY.

What are people upset about? On page 102, you can see that there is a pocket of residents concerned about the city’s residential occupancy ordinance—not surprising, considering that this is a college town. And the other? On page 146, it’s apparent that folks want bicycle travel to be easier in Auburn.

Now, you can look at the end of the survey and find a couple of individual comments about the role of race in employment. One person simply wrote, “Racism.“ But concerns about traffic and development far outnumbered such comments. And one even included the desire for a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Starbucks coffee shop.

I don’t mean to minimize the concerns of those residents who did cite race in the survey. But I do want to emphasize that those comments should be read for what they are—individual responses—and not necessarily indicative of the community as a whole.

So, again, neither subpar rating indicates a connection to race, and neither subpar rating is inherent to Ward 1.

In other words, citizens of Ward 1 appear to see the city and its services pretty much the way the rest of the city’s residents see them. And overall, they’re as happy with them as everyone else.

That’s bad news for Dowdell and his haphazard, Johnny-come-lately argument that the city should redraw its ward map because the current council isn’t serving minorities’ interests.

It’s bad news for Dowdell. But it’s great news for Auburn—and the folks of every creed and color who live here.

See also:

Dowdell: Off-base on race, again

It’s Sotomayor

By Jennifer J. Foster

I am so glad I stayed up late to finish that previous post on the Supreme Court nomination. It made for a nice waking-up experience this morning.

So it’s Sonia Sotomayor, a name that was in the mix of President Obama’s potential picks from the start.

If you missed the announcement this morning, you can read the story and catch the video—including Sotomayor’s statement—here.

It’s clear the boundary lines that Republicans and Democrats are staking out. In introducing her, President Obama pointed out that Sotomayor was originally appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, and elevated to the appeals court by President Clinton. The message is that Sotomayor is a moderate nominee that Republicans and Democrats can live with—and have voted for.

On that note, NPR gives us the rundown (via Twitter) of how current Republican senators voted on Sotomayor’s appeals court nomination in 1998. Check it out here.

All this information may lead you to believe that Republicans have little wiggle room when it comes to confirming Sotomayor, even though she has made some curious, if not simply disturbing, statements, like this one:

“Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement,“ she added. “First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.“

Not a different conclusion. A “better“ conclusion. Count on that being explored more in her confirmation hearings.

But I just heard an interview with U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee since Arlen Specter fled the GOP coop. Sessions was complimentary of Sotomayor’s background and personal story—elements that the president is said to have especially appreciated about her as he was weighing his Court options—and said he and fellow Republicans are committed to giving Sotomayor a full and fair hearing.

Sessions, who opposed Sotomayor’s ‘98 appeals court nomination, said he didn’t remember the vote specifically, but that his team is going back to look at her hearings. He also took this opportunity to get the GOP’s talking points in—that Obama had indicated he wanted to find someone who would adjudicate with “empathy,“ that Sotomayor herself said that “policy is made” on appeals courts and that Republicans want to make sure that she understands the role of the Supreme Court, which is to interpret law, not to make law, from the bench.

Herein lies the clue.

In bringing up these talking points about the GOP’s concern over Sotomayor’s nomination, Sessions said he believes that she is entitled to a full and fair hearing—“a new hearing”—on her qualifications and suitability for the Court.

“A new hearing.“

In other words, we’re wiping the slate clean for Sonia Sotomayor. You should consider the slate just as clean for Republican senators who may have previously supported her before.

I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen. But there are legitimate issues of judicial philosophy that even the left admits must be thoroughly explored in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings.

I believe she will be confirmed in the end.

But it’s also likely to be a bit messier than most folks think.