On one side stood the president-elect, 50 Democratic senators on Capitol Hill and just about every politician in Illinois. On the other side was Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, criminal defendant and national punching bag.
Guess who won?
Blagojevich outfoxed everyone who had warned him not to try to fill the Senate seat he is charged with trying to sell. Despite the scandal around him, the governor got his way by staring down his opponents with the perfect pick: Roland Burris, a black politician who had an unblemished reputation and big ambitions, guaranteeing he would fight tirelessly for the seat.
Blagojevich’s choice put Democrats in the sticky position of trying to deny entry to the man who would become the chamber’s only black member — in the seat that last belonged to US president-elect Barack Obama, no less.
In the end, the combination of Blagojevich and Burris proved to be such a distraction that Obama himself reversed course and signaled to Senate leaders that they should seat Burris. Finally, on Monday, they said they would. US Vice President Dick Cheney will swear Burris in today on the Senate floor.
In related news, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton smoothly took on policy questions from the acute to the arcane in a gentle job interview to be the top US diplomat.
Her confirmation as secretary of state is not in doubt, and she could be on the job as soon as Tuesday.
Clinton gave a polished performance on Tuesday, offering well-prepared answers to questions on crises and trouble spots including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Cuba and Afghanistan. She offered few details about how she and Obama would handle those problems, except to say that in many cases they would offer a fresh approach to the job.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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