Just days before a high-stakes showdown in the nation’s capital, the man selected to take US president-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat sought spiritual and political support on Sunday at a South Side Chicago church.
Warm words of support and prayers for Roland Burris contrasted with the frigid reactions from Senate leaders, many of whom say his appointment by embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is so badly stained that Burris shouldn’t be seated when the new Congress convenes this week.
Burris took the stage at New Covenant Church on Sunday evening to a crescendo of drums, organ music and applause from hundreds of supporters, including black leaders and ministers.
PHOTO: AP
“The appointment is legal,” he said, thanking those gathered at the prayer service. “That is all there is. I don’t know what all the confusion is about.”
Before the service, Burris supporter US Representative Bobby Rush and about 60 ministers condemned Senate Democratic leaders for rejecting Burris.
Rush, a Chicago Democrat, called the Senate “the last bastion of plantation politics.”
“We are just faced with a hard-headed room of people in the Senate who want to keep an African-American out of the Senate,” Rush said.
The Senate’s top two Democrats defended their right to deny the seat to Burris, while refusing to rule out a deal as Congress and its new members begin work this week.
Democrats say Burris’ appointment is tainted because it was made by Blagojevich, who is accused by federal authorities of offering to sell the vacancy to the highest bidder.
Burris, a former state attorney general, says the appointment is legal and the governor had the authority to do it. He has threatened to sue Senate Democrats if they refuse to swear him in as the chamber’s only black member.
“Anything can happen,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.
But he described the chances of Burris joining the Senate as “very difficult.”
The second-ranking Democrat, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, acknowledged that his governor has the state constitutional authority to fill the vacancy.
“The Senate of the United States has the US constitutional responsibility to decide if Mr. Burris was chosen in a proper manner, and that is what we’re going to do,” Durbin said.
While the Burris furor dominated public discussion, Illinois lawmakers quietly continued work that could lead to Blagojevich being removed from office.
Members of the Illinois House impeachment committee reviewed a 54-page draft summary of the allegations against the Democratic governor. Lawmakers said the summary did not include any recommendations on whether Blagojevich should be impeached. That will come after the panel finishes its fact-finding — perhaps by the middle of this week.
The impeachment committee hoped to learn yesterday whether it would be given access to some of the federal government’s recordings of Blagojevich.
It also wants Burris to testify about his conversations with the governor that led to the Senate appointment.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to