I enjoy watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Tina Fay play Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. I never thought that I would watch Saturday Night type of skits at the United States Senate. But, I find that I am having quite an enjoyable time watching egos get punctured, and silly policies being skewered. I simply never expected that the ego-owners and the policy writers would be doing their own self-skewering!
About what am I talking? Well, yesterday, the following headline was published on one of the news sites.
U.S. Senate officials on Monday certified Roland Burris to fill the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama and Senate Democratic leaders said they expect to seat the next Illinois senator on Thursday.
“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,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement with his No. 2, Illinois senior Sen. Dick Durbin.
It appears that the end is close for a three-ring circus that has provided much joy to the writers of almost every comedian in the USA. And, it was a circus precisely because those involved had, so obviously, violated the Constitution of the United States as well as two of its founding principles: innocent until proven guilty and the rule of law.
As much as we may all dislike the Illinois governor, as much as we may think that he is guilty, one of the founding principles of our jurisprudence is that anyone charged of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Moreover, the Illinois Supreme Court has refused to suspend the Governor from his office precisely on those principles. I realize that the argument was that he could not be permitted to appoint anyone to the empty seat given that the charges were that he was trying to sell that seat. And, had he tried to appoint one of the people involved in the scandal, I suspect that there would have been sufficient reason to prevent the appointment.
However, under the rule of law in the USA, until such a time as he is convicted, or suspended, or removed from office through the impeachment process, or unless he has an injunction against him, he is allowed to exercise the full extent of his office. The statements by various of our politicians, news media, and “expert” commentators all ignored this principle, and fully ignored the fact that he ought to be considered innocent until proven guilty and that the rule of law means that we follow our rules, even when they are not popular.
And, so, given the failure to observe two key points of American jurisprudence, it was not that hard for Governor Ron Blagojevich to turn supposedly “ethical” stances into delightfully enjoyable political satire. How did he do it? Well, he appointed a clearly and obviously innocent African-American, Roland Burris. In a state known for its political corruption, in a state which called Al Capone a favorite son, in a state in which police brutality in Chicago was a given, Roland Burris stands out as a fairly innocent politician. And, the fact that he would become the only African-American in the USA Senate certainly gave the leaders of the Senate pause to think. Would you want to be known as the person who turned down America’s only African-American Senator who was appointed by a legitimately serving governor? Particularly when the appointed Senator appears to be completely innocent of any misdeed?
And, so, Saturday Night Live took charge of the USA Senate this past couple of weeks. And, now, those supposedly principled Senators, who were really taking a politically expedient, but highly illegal, stand are having to change their minds and publicly welcome the man they swore they would never welcome. Yes, Saturday Night Live, indeed! And, so, I am having a good laugh, and not feeling the least bit sorry for them.
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