Another memorable press conference in Chicago. Rod Blagojevich announced he was appointing a beaming Roland Burris to Obama’s vacant Senate seat, and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) made a cameo appearance heavily laced with references to race.

Video soon.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White is apparently going to shut down Blago’s appointment gambit before it even gets to the senate.

Senate Dems are reiterating that they will not seat anyone appointed by Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama’s Senate seat:

It is truly regrettable that despite requests from all 50 Democratic Senators and public officials throughout Illinois, Gov. Blagojevich would take the imprudent step of appointing someone to the United States Senate who would serve under a shadow and be plagued by questions of impropriety. We say this without prejudice toward Roland Burris’s ability, and we respect his years of public service. But this is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat. Under these circumstances, anyone appointed by Gov. Blagojevich cannot be an effective representative of the people of Illinois and, as we have said, will not be seated by the Democratic Caucus.

There’s not much hope for people who lost their shirts on the Madoff scam. But you’ll be happy to hear that some of them will recoup losses courtesy of your tax dollars.

I’d heard recently that among its other choice decisions, AIG (now a ward of the federal government) had managed to offer insurance for some of Benard Madoff’s fraudulent investments. The dollar amounts aren’t that high. So far AIG has received 85 claims for Madoff losses. And the individual policies only cover up to $100,000, though I’m told the policies were sometimes layered together in ways that could make the effective insurance limits much higher. What’s more, a private insurance company can insure anything they want, be as stupid as they want to be.

But the fact that some of your tax dollars are going to go to people who lost money to Madoff does get us back to the premise of the government’s take over of AIG, and to be specific, the highly questionable premise that AIG isn’t simply bankrupt.

Remember, the idea of taking over AIG was that it had so much systemic exposure through the world of finance (through CDOs, credit default swaps, etc.) that letting it go under would just be too damaging to the macro-economy. In principle, that makes sense to me. But presumably there’s no systemic damage involved in not paying out these Madoff claims. A lot of the hundred-fifty-plus billion dollars of US government money has simply been passed through to other banks like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Deutsche Bank, etc.

As Carlos Mendez told the Wall Street Journal recently, “It’s like a home run for some of the banks. They bought insurance from a company that ran into trouble and still managed to get all, or most, of their money back.”

Will Goldman fail without the few more billion the government gave the bank through AIG? I doubt it. Will the taxpayer be made whole for covering the losses Goldman incurred by dealing with AIG? Of course not.

I said below that the Senate had full power to seat or not to seat any Blago appointee. And the senate does have extensive power to judge elections and qualifications. But Jeff Greenfield points out that the senate may not actually have that power with regards to an appointment …

Hey, Josh–re the Senate’s power.

I think you’re wrong about saying the Senate has full power not to seat the Gov’s pick. In Powell vs McCormick, a 1969 case involving Adam Clayton Powell, the Supreme Court said, 7-2, that a house of Congress does NOT have such power-they can judge “qualifications” in the Constitutional sense (age, citizenship, etc). And they can judge elections, but say nothing about appointments. (Nate Silver did a great piece on this awhile back).

They can probably EXPEL a member as they see fit–though the Court’s decision does not make that clear—but on what grounds? Just because they don’t like the guy who picked him?

PS–just know these are tentative notions…I’m sure all sorts of folks are trying to tease out this one…(don’t know if every Senate official and/or academic is on vacation this week)

We’ve just gotten word that Gov. Blagojevich has decided to appoint Roland Burris to Obama’s senate seat.

I’ve heard the name before. But I don’t know much more than that. So we’re trying to get a better read on his background and just who he is. But on the face of it, he’s a respected black politician from Illinois, (a former state AG (1991-1995)), who’s a generation older than Obama. He’s 71.

The idea has been that the senate simply wouldn’t seat anyone appointed by Blagojevich, as is their right. The senate has total authority over who it chooses to seat in the body. But assuming Burris is respected and there’s no apparent crooked bargain behind the appointment, I think the senate may be hard pressed not to seat him, notwithstanding all that’s happened.

One question David poses, is why, if Burris is clean, he would accept an appointment from such a tainted governor. Not sure I have a good answer to that one.

As TPM Reader RP puts it, this guy won’t go down quietly.

Late Update: TPM Reader PD chimes in on Burris …

My home state’s culture of political corruption is well documented. Roland Burris managed to build a career in politics in this state without falling into that muck. He is, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, squeaky clean, and he’s highly respected. He’s 71 years old, so I wonder if he intends to serve as a caretaker. But he’s an honorable guy, well liked by people across the state in both parties. It’s a stroke of brilliance by Blagojevich in my opinion.

Zbig to Joe: “You have a such stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.”