Harry Reid has decided to sabotage the beginning of Obama's presidency by preventing a qualified (if undistinguished) African-American leader, Roland Burris, legally appointed by the current legally-elected Illinois governor, from taking his seat in the Senate to finish the remainder of Obama's term. Because the man who has the legal right to make this appointment is a despised and disgusting clownish little crook, Burris is deemed unworthy of taking the sacred oath "to defend and support the Constitution." That oath, of course, is administered by a defiantly proud, even cheerful, self-admitted war criminal Dick Cheney, a serial subverter and despiser of the Constitution, with whose eternally disgraceful continued presence in office Reid and his minions have had no particular problem despite their profound Constitutional responsibility to end it by impeaching him.
When this greatly entertaining sideshow is over, when the Senate has time to turn its attention to some other problem (if there are any), when Burris is seated and Reid has again embarrassed his party and the country and again demonstrated his total unfitness for his leadership position, will the Mormon Quixote please resign? Please. Senator Reid, if you waste this time and energy and inaugural momentum on the Burris affair, and fail, will you please resign?
And Diane Feinstein is opposed to the Panetta appointment. Perhaps she would prefer Michael Mukasey. Feinstein approved Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General, even though he testified that Bush had the power to ignore any law Bush deemed an obstacle to his duty to defend America. How about that? Wouldn't a man like that, with that experience and those good democratic principles, make a good, tough, uber-American CIA leader? Talk about bipartisan! Are you holding out for Mukasey, Senator Feinstein?
And Nancy Pelosi has such a wonderful, relieved smile these days. Why not? She seems to have achieved her most important political goal: she has successfully protected Bush and his administration (and, incidentally, herself and the other Democratic Congressional leaders) from accountability for war crimes and the high crimes of subverting the Constitution.
Does anyone think the Democratic leadership would actually be worse if Rod Blagojevich had made the appointments?