Roland Burris Taped Offering Check To Blagojevich
The transcript of a conversation between Gov. Blagojevich's brother and now-Sen. Burris has been released. Burris discusses ways to get a check to the Gov. for his re-election, interweaving his desire and worries about donating money with repeated reminders that he wants to be considered for the Senate. Sen. Durbin and Sen. Burris will meet tomorrow, presumably to discuss this in the context of the ongoing ethics investigation.
A transcript of a secretly recorded phone call between the brother of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Roland Burris was released in federal court today, a call in which Burris, then seeking the Senate seat, was recorded offering the Blagojevich campaign a campaign check."I know I could give him a check," Burris said. "Myself."
But in the same call, Burris tells Robert Blagojevich he is concerned he and Rod Blagojevich will "catch hell."
"And if I do get appointed that means I bought it," Burris said.
"And, and God knows number one, I, I wanna help Rod," Burris says later in the call. "Number two, I also wanna, you know, hope I get a consideration to get that appointment."
Illinois may need a new Senator soon...
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Stay classy Chicago...but you still have a long way to go to earn the 1st-place spot in corrupt politics. You may have a strong lock on the #2 spot, but Louisiana still has you far back in their rearview mirrors.
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What Minarchist said. -- Paleocon
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Too true.
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos
One has to begin wondering at this point whether there's something special in the water of Lake Michigan.
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One of my favorite history professors (William H. McNeal) taught at the University of Chicago. He would start off every semester with is now famous phrase "Let us assume for the purpose of this course that human beings do not have a nature, but rather a history.".
I tend to think, in the case of Chicago politics, he might be onto something.
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But why now? Why not when he was nominated? I can't believe this was recently discovered.
Mind you I am not in support of Burris. At best he seems sugary. At most times he seems a down right weasel.
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
He's been under investigation since he accepted, and it took this long to get a FOI request processed for the transcript.
Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular. -- GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos
Word.
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And this is a suprise, why? Blagojevich left under a giant cloud, and as his last action, says "this guy's great!".
I also refer you to the usage of the word "blag" in the British lexicon. That really made me laugh when the story first broke. It's like being a politician named Jeff Scamington.
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LarryC wrote:
I know I've got my bag of shock and surprise around here somewhere but I just can't seem to find it. I guess I'll just have to shrug and move on. It's not like anyone can honestly say "Yeah, I know the governor said on tape he'd only give a seat to someone who paid for it but I never thought the person he gave the seat to actually paid for it."
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I am not sure what bothers me more about this guy holding public office.
1. that he bought it
2. that he is stupid enough to get caught on tape when everyone knows that an ethics investigation is taking place.
You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f*ck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. - Senator Roy McDonald
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I'm with Kehama: stunned. Who could have seen this coming?
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I didn't look at the whole filing, but this sounds like a big pile of hypocritical crapola coming from the Senate Ethics committee. Chicago politics? Get real. This is the way Congress and politics works in America. You want something to happen, you hold fundraisers so your guy can get elected. If this sort of jockeying for favors was illegal, we'd be locking up presidents, congressmen, governors all the time.
Not that I'd object to that. It just strikes me as ridiculous for the senate to condemn Burris for doing something they all do.
It's only cheating if you get caught.
What's he gotten caught at that can't be divined by looking at senate voing records and campaign finance disclosure forms for other senators? I mean, we see $100,000 from a bank going to a senator sitting on the Senate Finance committee, do we assume that there's no attempt there to influence the senator's vote?
It's not a question of what he did, but with whom.
Blagojevich is a political Grim Reaper right now. If he touches you, you die. Burris would seem to have been caught shaking hands. You're absolutely right when you say what Burris is alleged to have done is par for the course in Washington, though generally the actors involved are slightly smarter about it. But a Senator taking money from some real estate developer that nobody's ever heard of isn't interesting, so it doesn't get airtime and thus isn't damaging. Blagojevich is already a known quantity...the media doesn't have to waste much time explaining who he is or why he's bad, so playing footsie with him will get airtime and thus is damaging. Almost certainly fatally so, in the case of Burris.
I'd care more if I'd seen anything to suggest that Burris isn't a complete tool.
If you're talking the politics of it, then it's a different story. This isn't driven by public outrage over Blago. The percentage of people who remember who Burris is by now outside Illinois can't be very high. Senate democrats may consider him toxic, but he's still a democrat. Harry Reid, as craven and ineffective as he may be, doesn't want to kick a democrat out of the senate if he doesn't have to. Or rather, someone at some point explained that to him in between his periodic lobotomies that if Burris goes there will be a decent chance of a special election with a political situation favoring a republican "outsider" candidacy.
So the senate democrats can be expected to condemn Burris in public, but I can't see them wanting him to get the boot no matter how toxic he gets. It would be shooting themselves in the foot (then again, we're talking about Harry Reid here- so maybe my prediction is too optimistic).
The proper thing to do would be to kick him out, and let the voters decide on the remedy.
Sacrificing principles for short-term expedience is what's screwing everything up so very, very badly. We don't even care what the right thing is anymore, just the convenient thing.
Elewis17 wrote:
I can't believe he was confirmed, honestly. I mean, sure, politics and all. But really?
As for #2, the guy's a complete tool. I recall him striding triumphantly down the streets of DC as he walked to the Senate building -- problem was, the dweeb wasn't walking towards the right structure.
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I suspect that if this information was widely available at the time of his seating, he would not have been seated. Unfortunately, the rules that exist to prevent the abuse of authority also protected him in the process of seating. Unless someone could have provided a clearly disqualifying reason, the refusal to seat would have been unethical and illegal.
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The man was appointed by a governor indicted days before, for trying to sell that seat.
Are we really shocked that he tried to buy it? This was so much better then just having a special election for seat.
Bear wrote:
This is the most recent thread I could find on the topic, so...
Rod Blagojevich convicted on 17 of 20 public corruption charges
He's probably trying to figure out why his payoffs to the jury didn't get him acquitted.
Stay classy, Illinois.
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See reply #1.
I like the cut of your jib, Minarchist. -- Podunk
What Minarchist said. -- Paleocon
Listen to Minarchist, for he is wise. -- Jonman
You think too small! I blame the whole state.
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Corruption is one thing, but Blagojevich was such a colossal, unrepentant douche during this entire process. He acted like we should be embarrassed to even suggest someone like him could ever do anything so foul, and if memory serves he wasted a lot of public time and money defending himself.
I think this says it all:
I'm sorry, but wasn't he just found guilty of a very serious crime? 17, in fact? Yet they pat him on the back and ask him to please come to prison when he's ready?
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I want to say that these allegations were brought to light long ago and were part of the basis for the Senate's initial refusal to seat Burris. The tape might be new, but the allegations aren't.
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This thread is 2 years old.
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Doh! That'll learn me.
Rules cannot trump power -- The Godfather Doctrine
He still has to have a sentencing hearing, correct? I'm not sure what standard procedure is for the delay between verdict and sentencing for high profile cases, but I do not recall the defendant usually being led away in chains or anything.
Edit: Wasn't he convicted of at least 1 charge in the previous trial? Why isn't he serving time for that?
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The sad thing is that what he did is the kind of stuff that goes on all the time in D.C. and state houses, only if it's done properly it's legal. When we see someone get convicted, it's usually only because they were too greedy or stupid to play the game like everyone else does.
Blago screwed his own party in Chicago after getting elected. Nobody wanted to help cover his tracks.
He had the option of serving time right away or waiting until the retrial and appeals were done. Given the sentences he's likely facing, he doesn't have the incentive Gov. Ryan did to start serving sooner to get out sooner.
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