Cronyism is appointing a friend without regard to qualifications.

You agree that Duncan is qualified ("most" qualified is purely subjective and includes your bias), so where's the cronyism?

I would argue cronyism is showing favoritism to those who are your friends or to those who you owe favors. And in this case, given the seriousness of the need for education reform, I truly would have considered this post one of the most important and would have selected an innovator with a track record of real success.

Hey, I loved that you responded to the point.:thumbsup:

Your premise was that the nominee was unqualified because he failed to improve Chicago's public schools. You had absolutely no real reason to think that he had failed to improve Chicago's public schools because you could produce absolutely no real data even comparing meaningful changes in school quality during his watch. All you could do was repeatedly assert that you wouldn't send your kids to a Chicago public school.

We all get your premise, and have been waiting and waiting for you to provide some sort of objective basis for it. Instead you just offer up tangential information about standard deviations and means, as if those things actually conclusively measure the quality of the person running the show.

Even if schools had improved dramatically on his watch, that wouldn't be conclusive proof that he was a good leader. School systems are complex beasts.

How's this, ace - I'm very seriously sending both of my kids to the local elementary school instead of Catholic school like we planned. That's because the school is quite good and offers a variety of programs and has excellent teachers.

Pretty much torpedoes your theory, doesn't it?

What, this thread died?

It is hard to imagine a more delicious scene than Teddy Kennedy explaining why Burriss shouldn't be seated because the person who appointed him is CHARGED with a crime.

We can't have people in the senate who know someone who might have committed a crime!

It's not any more silly than Republicans refusing to seat the certified winner of a close election because the court assisted recount procedure didn't go their way.

Tuesday should be an interesting day in the Senate.

I suspect Burris will get floor privileges but no office or desk on the floor.

And Coleman will lose his office and desk on the floor, but Franken will be shut out by a Republican fillibuster unless 2-3 Repubs show a little class.
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But nothing will be as entertaining as the end of the last session when Senators of both parties heaped hours of praise on the convicted felon (Alaskan Republican Stevens) in their midst.

In Mn. someone wins and someone loses, right? How could the GOP in the Senate block someone who's been certified the winner of the state*? Wouldn't that mean those citizens would have no rep.?

*I'm going with the thought Franken wins it, as it looks now he's up by a couple hundred. But if Coleman wins and he's certified by the state then they should seat him as well.

The counting, including all the questionable absentee ballots, is over in MN and Franken won.

The problem he faces is that MN is the only state in the country that wont certify an election UNTIL all legal challenges have been resolved. Colemen intends to take it to court and could potentially draw it out for months.

I almost think Coleman is a bigger douche than Blago. At least Blago seems to be certifiable. Coleman's just a sore-loser asshole.

Coleman is a douche bag who is also currently under an FBI investigation for allegations of taking $$$$ from benefactors w/o reporting it on Senate personal disclosures form - a charge very similar to that which resulted in the conviction of Ted Stevens....another felon in the Republican ranks?
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The really wild scenario would be for Blago to show up at the Senate on Tuesday, along with Burris. Under Senate rules, Blago could not be prevented from access to the Senate floor (all sitting governors have access) so that he could make the case, one-on-one with Senators, for his appointment.

Beyond that, if Burris wants to pursue it through the courts, I dont see how he can lose. The appointment was legal, by any measure.

The funny thing about Coleman: the day after election day, when he had eked out a small margin of victory, claimed victory and called on Franken to concede in order to "save the taxpayers of Minnesota money". He did this despite the fact that MN election law (and any sort of commonsense understanding of statistics) prescribes a recount for such infinitesimal margins. Now that he's losing by a small margin, he clearly isn't so concerned with fiscal responsibility.

He is a douche, but he's popular with the Michelle Bachman crowd, and those dipshits apparently make up a sizable portion of the middle part of the state.

I think its fair to say that he is not all that popular, having the distinction of losing to a professional wrestler (Ventura beat him for governor in 98) and now to a comedian. He only won his term in the Senate in 02 because the incumbent, Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash a week before the election.

Get the bum out now!

When Franken gets sworn in and if Burris does as well, the Democrats will have their largest majority (59) since 1979....and a lot to prove!

Actually, I think Blago's nomination of Burris was pretty shrewd. On the one hand, he can say "look, I didn't sell the Senate seat. No matter what spin you put on my words on the tape, the fact is that I nominated someone who really doesn't have any scandals in his past and I didn't get anything out of it personally." So he uses the nomination as part of his defense to impeachment and to the criminal charges. Yes, it's after the fact, but he still is going to say "no harm, no foul, folks" -- and who knows, it might just work.

It's also shrewd because he now has the Bobby Rushes of the world, and their ilk, sniffing around for "racist" opposition to Burris. Burris himself is, to all appearances, clean and honest (at least by IL standards), and he's been trying unsuccessfully to move up to higher office for a long time. Here is his chance. Blago gets points with the African-American political powers in Chicago and elsewhere and forces the rest of the Democratic party into either accepting his choice or having to publicly refuse to seat the only African-American face in the Senate. Understand, I'm not sure how the Democratic caucus can legally refuse to seat him -- he was duly appointed by the sitting governor (who is legally innocent until proven guilty), and he meets the constitutional qualifications for a Senator. How can they not seat him? And besides, if he does a marginally decent job (which shouldn't be that difficult; it's hard to screw up royally in less than two years) he will be the incumbent coming into the next election. What on earth are Reid, et al. thinking?

I would not have selected him based on his failure to actually improve the schools to a level that would make Chicago schools competitive with other school systems. I know he took on a big job, my point is give him time to prove he can actually accomplish something of note. I say reward results.

You don't accept my knowledge, experience or the information I provided. Do your own homework, if you conclude Chicago schools are good, so me how you came to that conclusion.
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No.

Chicago is a great city in many ways. There are a lot of good hard working people in the city and some of the schools are excellent. However on a whole the school system has been a failure relative to other school systems for decades.
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I think it further illustrates the lack of conviction on the part of Democrats. State legislators failed to act and Blogo simply exercised his power to appoint. Burris is a safe pick and should be seated, I doubt anyone expects that Burris would either run for reelection or gets reelected if he ran, so they should let him serve out the term. The state should be represented by two senators. Burris is going to tow the party line, I am not sure what the problem is, other than the fact that Democrats got caught up in their own empty rhetoric.

I agree....shewed on the part of Blago.

Inexplicable on the part of Reid and the Senate Democrats. ..other than not wanting to face a barrage of Republican ads for the next two years with photos of Burris and Blago leading up to the 2010 election for the full term of that seat.

Their Constitutional argument is that the Senate "shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members..."

The Senate could, for example, refuse to seat a person who won an election where there was compelling evidence that the election was corrupt. To extend that to invalidating an appointment by a governor facing compelling evidence that he is corrupt is a stretch of their constitutional authority.

I think Burris will be certified and seated by the end of the week and he will agree not to seek the full term in 2010.

I understand their consitutional argument, but I don't think it flies, especially in light of the Adam Clayton Powell case.

Burris was barred from being seated today.

Empty rhetoric is hardly unique to the Democrats.
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I agree....invoking the Senate rules, particularly Rule II - the rule requiring certification by the state's Sec of State, would not stand a Constitutional test.

Reid in particular. Did you see him on Meet the Press Sunday? He even admitted there was virtually no legal authority not to seat Burris. So, what's the point? And when is Reid going to tell us what he said to Blogo regarding the seat? So much for "open" government and Obama's hope and change campaign rhetoric, and he has not even been sworn in yet.

That sounds like "ace" rhetoric.

At least I will admit I use empty rhetoric from time to time.

They should simply seat Burris and move on.

Ace, I don't see how this taints Obama. I don't believe in guilt by association, and so far as I'm aware Obama had nothing to do with this whole Blago business. In fact, all indications are that Blago told Obama's people he wanted some sort of payoff, whether political horse-trading or otherwise, and Emanuel wouldn't go along with it. Why do you think this reflects badly on Obama?

My link to Obama was empty rhetoric. But he is the leader of the party, he should put an end to this.

he doesn't really have the authority to demand the transparency you allude to for another 2 weeks

What you seemed to be saying was that you wanted to hold results that didn't exist against him. If you were really concerned with rewarding results, you'd probably spend some time examining results instead of alluding to results that don't actually mean what you want them to mean.

I don't accept the knowledge, experience or information you provided because it is irrelevant. You can't use a single point data to determine a trend-- this is elementary. I can't point to the state of Baghdad right now to decide whether things have improved there-- I need to compare the current state of Baghdad with some previous state of Baghdad. Even that two-point analysis would probably be too simplistic to render meaningful results.

Your argument that he failed to improve the schools because some of them are rated poorly now is empty. Your argument that he failed to improve schools because you know people who wouldn't send their kids to a Chicago public school is empty. The emptiness of these arguments doesn't depend on the validity of the knowledge, experience or information you provided, because information isn't what is problematic about them. What is problematic is that you think your data means something that it does not, that it can not.

This isn't that hard to understand, is it?

i just want to add my hat--and that hat is immense, chatreuse and sports a feather---to the ring amongst others tossed by folk who really do not understand what the democrats in the senate are thinking of on the burris business.

now that those nimrods on cnn are saying that feinstein has come out in favor of seating him...(why o why do i watch this nonsense ever?)....

it seems that the presumption of innocence is out the window here, swamped by the rhetoric of the "taint" (fighting down the temptation to make a string of obvious jokes)...so obviously the problem is that the democrats are worried about tossing some ammunition to the right (which is not in this case a synonym for the media tout court).

i think this is a stupid fight to have undertaken: there are far more pressing matters.

Blago's statements yesterday had to be part of a larger legal plan--to bolster an insanity defense! I mean, who in their right mind would actually think he was being impeached because of policy initiatives? And who in their right mind would go public spouting such drivel, thinking someone would believe it?

I'm telling you, it was all part of the criminal defense plan--the man is unhinged, and here's evidence of it.

Are you taking the supply side position that tax cuts are good for the economy? If they are good for 98.6% of the people, why not the other 1.4%?