Harry Reid’s Constitution
Harry Reid has an interesting view of the U.S. Constitution:
Under the Constitution, Reid said, “We determine who sits in the Senate. And the House (of Representatives) determines who sits in the House. So there’s clearly legal authority for us to do whatever we want to do. This goes back for generations.”
So the Constitution allows the Senate and the House to decide who their own respective members will be. Not the governors who appoint them on occasion, or the voters who elect them under normal circumstances. It’s up to the legislative bodies themselves. So why have elections at all? And why didn’t the Republican House and Senate have the good sense to retain their majorities in ‘06 by refusing to seat all the newly elected Democrats, and choosing to seat unelected Republicans instead?
Reid’s sabre-rattling notwithstanding, I remain convinced that Reid and his fellow Democrats really don’t want to win their frivolous fight against Roland Burris. Burris is the best they can hope for right now, and the alternative could be a special election that the Democrat (who Reid probably won’t like any better than Burris, anyway) may lose. The only reason Democrats are pretending to oppose Burris’s appointment is because it wouldn’t fly politically to support it. So better to “oppose” it on a frivolous legal theory where they know they will ultimately “lose,” getting both what they want and the credit for having the “principle” to oppose it.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Reid is doubtless referring to Article 1, Section 5, which states (in relevant part): Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.
Since Gov. Blagojevich appointed the Senator with a “Writ of Election”, it’s an election in the technical term of art in this case.
It is not entirely implausible to suggest that the Senate could reject the election as corrupt, on notional available evidence (just as they could on the evidence of a thoroughly corrupted general election).
I don’t think Reid’s right that this is “clear” and “goes back generations”, as I’m not aware of it ever being done.
But it’s also not clearly wrong that they could refuse to seat a member in sufficiently dubious circumstances.
(I think that practically speaking the circumstances aren’t that dubious, as there’s no evidence that this appointment involved any wrongdoing, despite the conspiracy to commit some regarding the office earlier.
In other words, I think Reid is wrong as a practical matter, and when he says “do whatever we want to do” as if frivolous or arbitrary attempts to apply the Section 5 power would be valid – but he is at least plausibly right to the extent that he claims the Senate can refuse to seat a member if it believes his election was corrupt.)
January 6th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
So … is the Illinois Secretary of State claiming that Blago didn’t elect Burris?
They should consider themselves lucky Blago didn’t appoint himself to the post.
Ain’t gonna fly … I agree, nothing but political Kabuki Theatre.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Sigivald, I’m not disputing the power of the Senate to refuse to seat a putative Senator if the election were tainted. That’s not the case here, though. All that’s tainted is the SOB who did the electing. That’s like refusing to seat a democratically elected Senator on the theory that the majority who elected the guy were assholes.
That said, if Reid et al. really do want to “win” this, they probably can, by making a kangaroo court “finding” that Burris bribed his way into office, and relying on the political question doctrine to keep the courts from re-visiting the issue. But once we go that route, watch for the first Republican Congress over the next 6 years (if indeed there is one) to impeach Obama for the high crime and misdemeanor of “being a douchebag.” No court would rule on that, either, so if “abiding by the Constitution” means “doing stuff courts will let us get away with,” then there really aren’t all that many limits, after all.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
So … exactly when is the majority NOT assholes?