Blind squirrel alert: Senate finds the right line on Burris

Politico:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) suggested Sunday evening that Democratic leaders may not require that a Senate panel review the appointment of Roland Burris before he is sworn in as the next senator from Illinois.

"This thing changes by the day," Durbin said. "We’ll have to wait and see."

"We'll have to wait and see."

Well, there it is. Nearly two weeks into the Burris saga, Dick Durbin (D-IL) has found the right line on this.

Yes, I know everyone thinks they wanted to distance themselves from Blagojevich, and so needed to sound tough. And I don't mean to suggest that they should forgo any investigation, if they want to conduct one. But if there was ever a wait and see situation, this was it. Anyone should have been able to see that this episode would be replete with twists and turns. If they'd wanted to distance themselves, they could have done exactly that, but simply added the caveat that the situation was novel and complex, and we'd just have to wait and see whether they were able to distance themselves as much as they'd wanted to. Simple enough. Instead, we were treated to two weeks of stumbling, bluster and backtracking that frustrated and annoyed everyone, whether on the inside or watching from the sidelines.

Durbin, on CBS’s "Face the Nation" earlier Sunday, pointed out that the certification filed on behalf of Burris is "different from those that are submitted by virtually every senator in more than a century.

"The question," Durbin asked, "is whether they are adequate."

Durbin said Sunday evening he wants the Senate’s legal counsel to issue an opinion by the end of the day Monday, and that the Senate would likely side with that decision.

Well, that's the question that Durbin has suggested all along was in Burris' way, but it's the least interesting of the questions about Burris. It'd be funny (the sad, strange kind) if it turned out in the end that the formalities really weren't a pretext, and while the rest of the world is concerned that Blagojevich is corrupt and that his corruption might somehow have reached either Burris and/or the appointment process, the Senate really was concerned only with whether or not the Secretary of State would provide what the Illinois Supreme Court says is an unnecessary scribbling.

It's just a suggestion, but I think the Senate would be best served if they asked their legal counsel for an opinion on whether Rule II ought to be amended in light of the court's ruling. It may well be that the signature "requirement" has never been waived, but other issues surrounding the non-use of the recommended forms from the Rule have been waived, so long as the material facts of the appointment were laid out in the documentation. The Senate's counsel ought to give some thought to whether or not a signature of dubious value really deserves to be enshrined in the rules.